Chapter: I

HE 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?

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 slave-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

HIS 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.


II

Her card read "Mrs. Daniel Judique." Babbitt knew of her as the widow of
a wholesale paper-dealer. She must have been forty or forty-two but he
thought her younger when he saw her in the office, that afternoon. She
had come to inquire about renting an apartment, and he took her away
from the unskilled girl accountant. He was nervously attracted by her
smartness. She was a slender woman, in a black Swiss frock dotted with
white, a cool-looking graceful frock. A broad black hat shaded her face.
Her eyes were lustrous, her soft chin of an agreeable plumpness, and her
cheeks an even rose. Babbitt wondered afterward if she was made up, but
no man living knew less of such arts.

She sat revolving her violet parasol. Her voice was appealing without
being coy. "I wonder if you can help me?"

"Be delighted."

"I've looked everywhere and--I want a little flat, just a bedroom, or
perhaps two, and sitting-room and kitchenette and bath, but I want one
that really has some charm to it, not these dingy places or these new
ones with terrible gaudy chandeliers. And I can't pay so dreadfully
much. My name's Tanis Judique."

"I think maybe I've got just the thing for you. Would you like to chase
around and look at it now?"

"Yes. I have a couple of hours."

In the new Cavendish Apartments, Babbitt had a flat which he had been
holding for Sidney Finkelstein, but at the thought of driving beside
this agreeable woman he threw over his friend Finkelstein, and with a
note of gallantry he proclaimed, "I'll let you see what I can do!"

He dusted the seat of the car for her, and twice he risked death in
showing off his driving.

"You do know how to handle a car!" she said.

He liked her voice. There was, he thought, music in it and a hint of
culture, not a bouncing giggle like Louetta Swanson's.

He boasted, "You know, there's a lot of these fellows that are so scared
and drive so slow that they get in everybody's way. The safest driver
is a fellow that knows how to handle his machine and yet isn't scared to
speed up when it's necessary, don't you think so?"

"Oh, yes!"

"I bet you drive like a wiz."

"Oh, no--I mean--not really. Of course, we had a car--I mean, before
my husband passed on--and I used to make believe drive it, but I don't
think any woman ever learns to drive like a man."

"Well, now, there's some mighty good woman drivers."

"Oh, of course, these women that try to imitate men, and play golf and
everything, and ruin their complexions and spoil their hands!"

"That's so. I never did like these mannish females."

"I mean--of course, I admire them, dreadfully, and I feel so weak and
useless beside them."

"Oh, rats now! I bet you play the piano like a wiz."

"Oh, no--I mean--not really."

"Well, I'll bet you do!" He glanced at her smooth hands, her diamond and
ruby rings. She caught the glance, snuggled her hands together with
a kittenish curving of slim white fingers which delighted him, and
yearned:

"I do love to play--I mean--I like to drum on the piano, but I haven't
had any real training. Mr. Judique used to say I would 've been a
good pianist if I'd had any training, but then, I guess he was just
flattering me."

"I'll bet he wasn't! I'll bet you've got temperament."

"Oh--Do you like music, Mr Babbitt?"

"You bet I do! Only I don't know 's I care so much for all this
classical stuff."

"Oh, I do! I just love Chopin and all those."

"Do you, honest? Well, of course, I go to lots of these highbrow
concerts, but I do like a good jazz orchestra, right up on its toes,
with the fellow that plays the bass fiddle spinning it around and
beating it up with the bow."

"Oh, I know. I do love good dance music. I love to dance, don't you, Mr.
Babbitt?"

"Sure, you bet. Not that I'm very darn good at it, though."

"Oh, I'm sure you are. You ought to let me teach you. I can teach
anybody to dance."

"Would you give me a lesson some time?"

"Indeed I would."

"Better be careful, or I'll be taking you up on that proposition. I'll
be coming up to your flat and making you give me that lesson."

"Ye-es." She was not offended, but she was non-committal. He warned
himself, "Have some sense now, you chump! Don't go making a fool of
yourself again!" and with loftiness he discoursed:

"I wish I could dance like some of these young fellows, but I'll tell
you: I feel it's a man's place to take a full, you might say, a creative
share in the world's work and mold conditions and have something to show
for his life, don't you think so?"

"Oh, I do!"

"And so I have to sacrifice some of the things I might like to tackle,
though I do, by golly, play about as good a game of golf as the next
fellow!"

"Oh, I'm sure you do.... Are you married?"

"Uh--yes.... And, uh, of course official duties I'm the vice-president
of the Boosters' Club, and I'm running one of the committees of the
State Association of Real Estate Boards, and that means a lot of work
and responsibility--and practically no gratitude for it."

"Oh, I know! Public men never do get proper credit."

They looked at each other with a high degree of mutual respect, and at
the Cavendish Apartments he helped her out in a courtly manner, waved
his hand at the house as though he were presenting it to her, and
ponderously ordered the elevator boy to "hustle and get the keys." She
stood close to him in the elevator, and he was stirred but cautious.

It was a pretty flat, of white woodwork and soft blue walls. Mrs.
Judique gushed with pleasure as she agreed to take it, and as they
walked down the hall to the elevator she touched his sleeve, caroling,
"Oh, I'm so glad I went to you! It's such a privilege to meet a man who
really Understands. Oh! The flats SOME people have showed me!"

He had a sharp instinctive belief that he could put his arm around her,
but he rebuked himself and with excessive politeness he saw her to the
car, drove her home. All the way back to his office he raged:

"Glad I had some sense for once.... Curse it, I wish I'd tried. She's a
darling! A corker! A reg'lar charmer! Lovely eyes and darling lips and
that trim waist--never get sloppy, like some women.... No, no, no! She's
a real cultured lady. One of the brightest little women I've met these
many moons. Understands about Public Topics and--But, darn it, why
didn't I try? . . . Tanis!"


III

He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that he was turning
toward youth, as youth. The girl who especially disturbed him--though he
had never spoken to her--was the last manicure girl on the right in the
Pompeian Barber Shop. She was small, swift, black-haired, smiling. She
was nineteen, perhaps, or twenty. She wore thin salmon-colored blouses
which exhibited her shoulders and her black-ribboned camisoles.

He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim. As always, he
felt disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber
Shop. Then, for the first time, he overthrew his sense of guilt.
"Doggone it, I don't have to go here if I don't want to! I don't own the
Reeves Building! These barbers got nothing on me! I'll doggone well get
my hair cut where I doggone well want to! Don't want to hear anything
more about it! I'm through standing by people--unless I want to. It
doesn't get you anywhere. I'm through!"

The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh,
largest and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith. Curving marble
steps with a rail of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the
barber shop. The interior was of black and white and crimson tiles,
with a sensational ceiling of burnished gold, and a fountain in which
a massive nymph forever emptied a scarlet cornucopia. Forty barbers
and nine manicure girls worked desperately, and at the door six colored
porters lurked to greet the customers, to care reverently for their hats
and collars, to lead them to a place of waiting where, on a carpet like
a tropic isle in the stretch of white stone floor, were a dozen leather
chairs and a table heaped with magazines.

Babbitt's porter was an obsequious gray-haired negro who did him an
honor highly esteemed in the land of Zenith--greeted him by name. Yet
Babbitt was unhappy. His bright particular manicure girl was engaged.
She was doing the nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him.
Babbitt hated him. He thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful
system of the Pompeian was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted
into a chair.

About him was luxury, rich and delicate. One votary was having a
violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo. Boys wheeled about
miraculous electrical massage-machines. The barbers snatched
steaming towels from a machine like a howitzer of polished nickel and
disdainfully flung them away after a second's use. On the vast marble
shelf facing the chairs were hundreds of tonics, amber and ruby and
emerald. It was flattering to Babbitt to have two personal slaves at
once--the barber and the bootblack. He would have been completely happy
if he could also have had the manicure girl. The barber snipped at his
hair and asked his opinion of the Havre de Grace races, the baseball
season, and Mayor Prout. The young negro bootblack hummed "The Camp
Meeting Blues" and polished in rhythm to his tune, drawing the shiny
shoe-rag so taut at each stroke that it snapped like a banjo string.
The barber was an excellent salesman. He made Babbitt feel rich and
important by his manner of inquiring, "What is your favorite tonic, sir?
Have you time to-day, sir, for a facial massage? Your scalp is a little
tight; shall I give you a scalp massage?"

Babbitt's best thrill was in the shampoo. The barber made his hair
creamy with thick soap, then (as Babbitt bent over the bowl, muffled in
towels) drenched it with hot water which prickled along his scalp, and
at last ran the water ice-cold. At the shock, the sudden burning cold on
his skull, Babbitt's heart thumped, his chest heaved, and his spine was
an electric wire. It was a sensation which broke the monotony of life.
He looked grandly about the shop as he sat up. The barber obsequiously
rubbed his wet hair and bound it in a towel as in a turban, so that
Babbitt resembled a plump pink calif on an ingenious and adjustable
throne. The barber begged (in the manner of one who was a good fellow
yet was overwhelmed by the splendors of the calif), "How about a little
Eldorado Oil Rub, sir? Very beneficial to the scalp, sir. Didn't I give
you one the last time?"

He hadn't, but Babbitt agreed, "Well, all right."

With quaking eagerness he saw that his manicure girl was free.

"I don't know, I guess I'll have a manicure after all," he droned, and
excitedly watched her coming, dark-haired, smiling, tender, little. The
manicuring would have to be finished at her table, and he would be able
to talk to her without the barber listening. He waited contentedly, not
trying to peep at her, while she filed his nails and the barber shaved
him and smeared on his burning cheeks all the interesting mixtures which
the pleasant minds of barbers have devised through the revolving ages.
When the barber was done and he sat opposite the girl at her table, he
admired the marble slab of it, admired the sunken set bowl with its tiny
silver taps, and admired himself for being able to frequent so costly a
place. When she withdrew his wet hand from the bowl, it was so sensitive
from the warm soapy water that he was abnormally aware of the clasp of
her firm little paw. He delighted in the pinkness and glossiness of her
nails. Her hands seemed to him more adorable than Mrs. Judique's thin
fingers, and more elegant. He had a certain ecstasy in the pain when she
gnawed at the cuticle of his nails with a sharp knife. He struggled not
to look at the outline of her young bosom and her shoulders, the more
apparent under a film of pink chiffon. He was conscious of her as an
exquisite thing, and when he tried to impress his personality on her he
spoke as awkwardly as a country boy at his first party:

"Well, kinda hot to be working to-day."

"Oh, yes, it is hot. You cut your own nails, last time, didn't you!"

"Ye-es, guess I must 've."

"You always ought to go to a manicure."

"Yes, maybe that's so. I--"

"There's nothing looks so nice as nails that are looked after good. I
always think that's the best way to spot a real gent. There was an auto
salesman in here yesterday that claimed you could always tell a fellow's
class by the car he drove, but I says to him, 'Don't be silly,' I says;
'the wisenheimers grab a look at a fellow's nails when they want to tell
if he's a tin-horn or a real gent!"'

"Yes, maybe there's something to that. Course, that is--with a pretty
kiddy like you, a man can't help coming to get his mitts done."

"Yeh, I may be a kid, but I'm a wise bird, and I know nice folks when
I see um--I can read character at a glance--and I'd never talk so frank
with a fellow if I couldn't see he was a nice fellow."

She smiled. Her eyes seemed to him as gentle as April pools. With great
seriousness he informed himself that "there were some roughnecks who
would think that just because a girl was a manicure girl and maybe not
awful well educated, she was no good, but as for him, he was a democrat,
and understood people," and he stood by the assertion that this was a
fine girl, a good girl--but not too uncomfortably good. He inquired in a
voice quick with sympathy:

"I suppose you have a lot of fellows who try to get fresh with you."

"Say, gee, do I! Say, listen, there's some of these cigar-store sports
that think because a girl's working in a barber shop, they can get away
with anything. The things they saaaaaay! But, believe me, I know how to
hop those birds! I just give um the north and south and ask um, 'Say,
who do you think you're talking to?' and they fade away like love's
young nightmare and oh, don't you want a box of nail-paste? It will keep
the nails as shiny as when first manicured, harmless to apply and lasts
for days."

"Sure, I'll try some. Say--Say, it's funny; I've been coming here ever
since the shop opened and--" With arch surprise. "--I don't believe I
know your name!"

"Don't you? My, that's funny! I don't know yours!"

"Now you quit kidding me! What's the nice little name?"

"Oh, it ain't so darn nice. I guess it's kind of kike. But my folks
ain't kikes. My papa's papa was a nobleman in Poland, and there was a
gentleman in here one day, he was kind of a count or something--"

"Kind of a no-account, I guess you mean!"

"Who's telling this, smarty? And he said he knew my papa's papa's folks
in Poland and they had a dandy big house. Right on a lake!" Doubtfully,
"Maybe you don't believe it?"

"Sure. No. Really. Sure I do. Why not? Don't think I'm kidding you,
honey, but every time I've noticed you I've said to myself, 'That kid
has Blue Blood in her veins!'"

"Did you, honest?"

"Honest I did. Well, well, come on--now we're friends--what's the
darling little name?"

"Ida Putiak. It ain't so much-a-much of a name. I always say to Ma, I
say, 'Ma, why didn't you name me Doloress or something with some class
to it?'"

"Well, now, I think it's a scrumptious name. Ida!"

"I bet I know your name!"

"Well, now, not necessarily. Of course--Oh, it isn't so specially well
known."

"Aren't you Mr. Sondheim that travels for the Krackajack Kitchen Kutlery
Ko.?"

"I am not! I'm Mr. Babbitt, the real-estate broker!"

"Oh, excuse me! Oh, of course. You mean here in Zenith."

"Yep." With the briskness of one whose feelings have been hurt.

"Oh, sure. I've read your ads. They're swell."

"Um, well--You might have read about my speeches."

"Course I have! I don't get much time to read but--I guess you think I'm
an awfully silly little nit!"

"I think you're a little darling!"

"Well--There's one nice thing about this job. It gives a girl a
chance to meet some awfully nice gentlemen and improve her mind with
conversation, and you get so you can read a guy's character at the first
glance."

"Look here, Ida; please don't think I'm getting fresh--" He was hotly
reflecting that it would be humiliating to be rejected by this child,
and dangerous to be accepted. If he took her to dinner, if he were seen
by censorious friends--But he went on ardently: "Don't think I'm getting
fresh if I suggest it would be nice for us to go out and have a little
dinner together some evening."

"I don't know as I ought to but--My gentleman-friend's always wanting to
take me out. But maybe I could to-night."


IV

There was no reason, he assured himself, why he shouldn't have a
quiet dinner with a poor girl who would benefit by association with an
educated and mature person like himself. But, lest some one see them and
not understand, he would take her to Biddlemeier's Inn, on the outskirts
of the city. They would have a pleasant drive, this hot lonely evening,
and he might hold her hand--no, he wouldn't even do that. Ida was
complaisant; her bare shoulders showed it only too clearly; but he'd be
hanged if he'd make love to her merely because she expected it.

Then his car broke down; something had happened to the ignition. And he
HAD to have the car this evening! Furiously he tested the spark-plugs,
stared at the commutator. His angriest glower did not seem to stir the
sulky car, and in disgrace it was hauled off to a garage. With a renewed
thrill he thought of a taxicab. There was something at once wealthy and
interestingly wicked about a taxicab.

But when he met her, on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Thornleigh,
she said, "A taxi? Why, I thought you owned a car!"

"I do. Of course I do! But it's out of commission to-night."

"Oh," she remarked, as one who had heard that tale before.

All the way out to Biddlemeier's Inn he tried to talk as an old friend,
but he could not pierce the wall of her words. With interminable
indignation she narrated her retorts to "that fresh head-barber" and the
drastic things she would do to him if he persisted in saying that she
was "better at gassing than at hoof-paring."

At Biddlemeier's Inn they were unable to get anything to drink. The
head-waiter refused to understand who George F. Babbitt was. They
sat steaming before a vast mixed grill, and made conversation about
baseball. When he tried to hold Ida's hand she said with bright
friendliness, "Careful! That fresh waiter is rubbering." But they came
out into a treacherous summer night, the air lazy and a little moon
above transfigured maples.

"Let's drive some other place, where we can get a drink and dance!" he
demanded.

"Sure, some other night. But I promised Ma I'd be home early to-night."

"Rats! It's too nice to go home."

"I'd just love to, but Ma would give me fits."

He was trembling. She was everything that was young and exquisite. He
put his arm about her. She snuggled against his shoulder, unafraid,
and he was triumphant. Then she ran down the steps of the Inn, singing,
"Come on, Georgie, we'll have a nice drive and get cool."

It was a night of lovers. All along the highway into Zenith, under the
low and gentle moon, motors were parked and dim figures were clasped in
revery. He held out hungry hands to Ida, and when she patted them he was
grateful. There was no sense of struggle and transition; he kissed her
and simply she responded to his kiss, they two behind the stolid back of
the chauffeur.

Her hat fell off, and she broke from his embrace to reach for it.

"Oh, let it be!" he implored.

"Huh? My hat? Not a chance!"

He waited till she had pinned it on, then his arm sank about her. She
drew away from it, and said with maternal soothing, "Now, don't be a
silly boy! Mustn't make Ittle Mama scold! Just sit back, dearie, and see
what a swell night it is. If you're a good boy, maybe I'll kiss you when
we say nighty-night. Now give me a cigarette."

He was solicitous about lighting her cigarette and inquiring as to
her comfort. Then he sat as far from her as possible. He was cold with
failure. No one could have told Babbitt that he was a fool with more
vigor, precision, and intelligence than he himself displayed. He
reflected that from the standpoint of the Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew
he was a wicked man, and from the standpoint of Miss Ida Putiak, an old
bore who had to be endured as the penalty attached to eating a large
dinner.

"Dearie, you aren't going to go and get peevish, are you?"

She spoke pertly. He wanted to spank her. He brooded, "I don't have to
take anything off this gutter-pup! Darn immigrant! Well, let's get it
over as quick as we can, and sneak home and kick ourselves for the rest
of the night."

He snorted, "Huh? Me peevish? Why, you baby, why should I be peevish?
Now, listen, Ida; listen to Uncle George. I want to put you wise about
this scrapping with your head-barber all the time. I've had a lot
of experience with employees, and let me tell you it doesn't pay to
antagonize--"

At the drab wooden house in which she lived he said good-night briefly
and amiably, but as the taxicab drove off he was praying "Oh, my God!"





I

HE awoke to stretch cheerfully as he listened to the sparrows, then to
remember that everything was wrong; that he was determined to go astray,
and not in the least enjoying the process. Why, he wondered, should he
be in rebellion? What was it all about? "Why not be sensible; stop all
this idiotic running around, and enjoy himself with his family,
his business, the fellows at the club?" What was he getting out of
rebellion? Misery and shame--the shame of being treated as an offensive
small boy by a ragamuffin like Ida Putiak! And yet--Always he came back
to "And yet." Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with
a world which, once doubted, became absurd.

Only, he assured himself, he was "through with this chasing after
girls."

By noontime he was not so sure even of that. If in Miss McGoun, Louetta
Swanson, and Ida he had failed to find the lady kind and lovely, it did
not prove that she did not exist. He was hunted by the ancient thought
that somewhere must exist the not impossible she who would understand
him, value him, and make him happy.


II

Mrs. Babbitt returned in August.

On her previous absences he had missed her reassuring buzz and of her
arrival he had made a f�te. Now, though he dared not hurt her by letting
a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming
before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of
meeting her and looking joyful.

He loitered down to the station; he studied the summer-resort posters,
lest he have to speak to acquaintances and expose his uneasiness. But
he was well trained. When the train clanked in he was out on the cement
platform, peering into the chair-cars, and as he saw her in the line of
passengers moving toward the vestibule he waved his hat. At the door he
embraced her, and announced, "Well, well, well, well, by golly, you look
fine, you look fine." Then he was aware of Tinka. Here was something,
this child with her absurd little nose and lively eyes, that loved him,
believed him great, and as he clasped her, lifted and held her till she
squealed, he was for the moment come back to his old steady self.

Tinka sat beside him in the car, with one hand on the steering-wheel,
pretending to help him drive, and he shouted back to his wife, "I'll bet
the kid will be the best chuffer in the family! She holds the wheel like
an old professional!"

All the while he was dreading the moment when he would be alone with his
wife and she would patiently expect him to be ardent.


III

There was about the house an unofficial theory that he was to take
his vacation alone, to spend a week or ten days in Catawba, but he was
nagged by the memory that a year ago he had been with Paul in Maine. He
saw himself returning; finding peace there, and the presence of Paul,
in a life primitive and heroic. Like a shock came the thought that he
actually could go. Only, he couldn't, really; he couldn't leave his
business, and "Myra would think it sort of funny, his going way off
there alone. Course he'd decided to do whatever he darned pleased, from
now on, but still--to go way off to Maine!"

He went, after lengthy meditations.

With his wife, since it was inconceivable to explain that he was going
to seek Paul's spirit in the wilderness, he frugally employed the lie
prepared over a year ago and scarcely used at all. He said that he had
to see a man in New York on business. He could not have explained even
to himself why he drew from the bank several hundred dollars more than
he needed, nor why he kissed Tinka so tenderly, and cried, "God bless
you, baby!" From the train he waved to her till she was but a scarlet
spot beside the brown bulkier presence of Mrs. Babbitt, at the end of a
steel and cement aisle ending in vast barred gates. With melancholy he
looked back at the last suburb of Zenith.

All the way north he pictured the Maine guides: simple and strong and
daring, jolly as they played stud-poker in their unceiled shack, wise
in woodcraft as they tramped the forest and shot the rapids. He
particularly remembered Joe Paradise, half Yankee, half Indian. If he
could but take up a backwoods claim with a man like Joe, work hard with
his hands, be free and noisy in a flannel shirt, and never come back to
this dull decency!

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 to 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

As 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."

"Oh. Like dancing?"

"Naturally. I like dancing and pretty women and good food better than
anything else in the world. Most men do."

"But gosh, Doane, I thought you fellows wanted to take all the good eats
and everything away from us."

"No. Not at all. What I'd like to see is the meetings of the
Garment Workers held at the Ritz, with a dance afterward. Isn't that
reasonable?"

"Yuh, might be good idea, all right. Well--Shame I haven't seen more
of you, recent years. Oh, say, hope you haven't held it against me,
my bucking you as mayor, going on the stump for Prout. You see, I'm an
organization Republican, and I kind of felt--"

"There's no reason why you shouldn't fight me. I have no doubt you're
good for the Organization. I remember--in college you were an unusually
liberal, sensitive chap. I can still recall your saying to me that you
were going to be a lawyer, and take the cases of the poor for nothing,
and fight the rich. And I remember I said I was going to be one of
the rich myself, and buy paintings and live at Newport. I'm sure you
inspired us all."

"Well.... Well.... I've always aimed to be liberal." Babbitt was
enormously shy and proud and self-conscious; he tried to look like the
boy he had been a quarter-century ago, and he shone upon his old friend
Seneca Doane as he rumbled, "Trouble with a lot of these fellows, even
the live wires and some of 'em that think they're forward-looking, is
they aren't broad-minded and liberal. Now, I always believe in giving
the other fellow a chance, and listening to his ideas."

"That's fine."

"Tell you how I figure it: A little opposition is good for all of us,
so a fellow, especially if he's a business man and engaged in doing the
work of the world, ought to be liberal."

"Yes--"

"I always say a fellow ought to have Vision and Ideals. I guess some of
the fellows in my business think I'm pretty visionary, but I just let
'em think what they want to and go right on--same as you do.... By
golly, this is nice to have a chance to sit and visit and kind of, you
might say, brush up on our ideals."

"But of course we visionaries do rather get beaten. Doesn't it bother
you?"

"Not a bit! Nobody can dictate to me what I think!"

"You're the man I want to help me. I want you to talk to some of
the business men and try to make them a little more liberal in their
attitude toward poor Beecher Ingram."

"Ingram? But, why, he's this nut preacher that got kicked out of
the Congregationalist Church, isn't he, and preaches free love and
sedition?"

This, Doane explained, was indeed the general conception of Beecher
Ingram, but he himself saw Beecher Ingram as a priest of the brotherhood
of man, of which Babbitt was notoriously an upholder. So would Babbitt
keep his acquaintances from hounding Ingram and his forlorn little
church?

"You bet! I'll call down any of the boys I hear getting funny about
Ingram," Babbitt said affectionately to his dear friend Doane.

Doane warmed up and became reminiscent. He spoke of student days in
Germany, of lobbying for single tax in Washington, of international
labor conferences. He mentioned his friends, Lord Wycombe, Colonel
Wedgwood, Professor Piccoli. Babbitt had always supposed that Doane
associated only with the I. W. W., but now he nodded gravely, as one
who knew Lord Wycombes by the score, and he got in two references to Sir
Gerald Doak. He felt daring and idealistic and cosmopolitan.

Suddenly, in his new spiritual grandeur, he was sorry for Zilla
Riesling, and understood her as these ordinary fellows at the Boosters'
Club never could.


II

Five hours after he had arrived in Zenith and told his wife how hot it
was in New York, he went to call on Zilla. He was buzzing with ideas and
forgiveness. He'd get Paul released; he'd do things, vague but highly
benevolent things, for Zilla; he'd be as generous as his friend Seneca
Doane.

He had not seen Zilla since Paul had shot her, and he still pictured her
as buxom, high-colored, lively, and a little blowsy. As he drove up
to her boarding-house, in a depressing back street below the wholesale
district, he stopped in discomfort. At an upper window, leaning on her
elbow, was a woman with the features of Zilla, but she was bloodless
and aged, like a yellowed wad of old paper crumpled into wrinkles. Where
Zilla had bounced and jiggled, this woman was dreadfully still.

He waited half an hour before she came into the boarding-house parlor.
Fifty times he opened the book of photographs of the Chicago World's
Fair of 1893, fifty times he looked at the picture of the Court of
Honor.

He was startled to find Zilla in the room. She wore a black streaky gown
which she had tried to brighten with a girdle of crimson ribbon. The
ribbon had been torn and patiently mended. He noted this carefully,
because he did not wish to look at her shoulders. One shoulder was lower
than the other; one arm she carried in contorted fashion, as though it
were paralyzed; and behind a high collar of cheap lace there was a gouge
in the anemic neck which had once been shining and softly plump.

"Yes?" she said.

"Well, well, old Zilla! By golly, it's good to see you again!"

"He can send his messages through a lawyer."

"Why, rats, Zilla, I didn't come just because of him. Came as an old
friend."

"You waited long enough!"

"Well, you know how it is. Figured you wouldn't want to see a friend of
his for quite some time and--Sit down, honey! Let's be sensible. We've
all of us done a bunch of things that we hadn't ought to, but maybe we
can sort of start over again. Honest, Zilla, I'd like to do something to
make you both happy. Know what I thought to-day? Mind you, Paul doesn't
know a thing about this--doesn't know I was going to come see you. I got
to thinking: Zilla's a fine? big-hearted woman, and she'll understand
that, uh, Paul's had his lesson now. Why wouldn't it be a fine idea if
you asked the governor to pardon him? Believe he would, if it came from
you. No! Wait! Just think how good you'd feel if you were generous."

"Yes, I wish to be generous." She was sitting primly, speaking icily.
"For that reason I wish to keep him in prison, as an example to
evil-doers. I've gotten religion, George, since the terrible thing that
man did to me. Sometimes I used to be unkind, and I wished for worldly
pleasures, for dancing and the theater. But when I was in the hospital
the pastor of the Pentecostal Communion Faith used to come to see me,
and he showed me, right from the prophecies written in the Word of God,
that the Day of Judgment is coming and all the members of the older
churches are going straight to eternal damnation, because they only do
lip-service and swallow the world, the flesh, and the devil--"

For fifteen wild minutes she talked, pouring out admonitions to flee the
wrath to come, and her face flushed, her dead voice recaptured something
of the shrill energy of the old Zilla. She wound up with a furious:

"It's the blessing of God himself that Paul should be in prison now, and
torn and humbled by punishment, so that he may yet save his soul, and so
other wicked men, these horrible chasers after women and lust, may have
an example."

Babbitt had itched and twisted. As in church he dared not move during
the sermon so now he felt that he must seem attentive, though her
screeching denunciations flew past him like carrion birds.

He sought to be calm and brotherly:

"Yes, I know, Zilla. But gosh, it certainly is the essence of religion
to be charitable, isn't it? Let me tell you how I figure it: What we
need in the world is liberalism, liberality, if we're going to get
anywhere. I've always believed in being broad-minded and liberal--"

"You? Liberal?" It was very much the old Zilla. "Why, George Babbitt,
you're about as broad-minded and liberal as a razor-blade!"

"Oh, I am, am I! Well, just let me tell you, just--let me--tell--you,
I'm as by golly liberal as you are religious, anyway! YOU RELIGIOUS!"

"I am so! Our pastor says I sustain him in the faith!"

"I'll bet you do! With Paul's money! But just to show you how liberal
I am, I'm going to send a check for ten bucks to this Beecher Ingram,
because a lot of fellows are saying the poor cuss preaches sedition and
free love, and they're trying to run him out of town."

"And they're right! They ought to run him out of town! Why, he
preaches--if you can call it preaching--in a theater, in the House of
Satan! You don't know what it is to find God, to find peace, to behold
the snares that the devil spreads out for our feet. Oh, I'm so glad to
see the mysterious purposes of God in having Paul harm me and stop
my wickedness--and Paul's getting his, good and plenty, for the cruel
things he did to me, and I hope he DIES in prison!"

Babbitt was up, hat in hand, growling, "Well, if that's what you call
being at peace, for heaven's sake just warn me before you go to war,
will you?"


III

Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. More than mountains
or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its character, imperturbable,
cynical, holding behind apparent changes its essential purpose. Though
Babbitt had deserted his family and dwelt with Joe Paradise in the
wilderness, though he had become a liberal, though he had been quite
sure, on the night before he reached Zenith, that neither he nor the
city would be the same again, ten days after his return he could not
believe that he had ever been away. Nor was it at all evident to his
acquaintances that there was a new George F. Babbitt, save that he was
more irritable under the incessant chaffing at the Athletic Club, and
once, when Vergil Gunch observed that Seneca Doane ought to be hanged,
Babbitt snorted, "Oh, rats, he's not so bad."

At home he grunted "Eh?" across the newspaper to his commentatory wife,
and was delighted by Tinka's new red tam o'shanter, and announced, "No
class to that corrugated iron garage. Have to build me a nice frame
one."

Verona and Kenneth Escott appeared really to be engaged. In
his newspaper Escott had conducted a pure-food crusade against
commission-houses. As a result he had been given an excellent job in a
commission-house, and he was making a salary on which he could marry,
and denouncing irresponsible reporters who wrote stories criticizing
commission-houses without knowing what they were talking about.

This September Ted had entered the State University as a freshman in the
College of Arts and Sciences. The university was at Mohalis only fifteen
miles from Zenith, and Ted often came down for the week-end. Babbitt was
worried. Ted was "going in for" everything but books. He had tried to
"make" the football team as a light half-back, he was looking forward
to the basket-ball season, he was on the committee for the Freshman
Hop, and (as a Zenithite, an aristocrat among the yokels) he was being
"rushed" by two fraternities. But of his studies Babbitt could learn
nothing save a mumbled, "Oh, gosh, these old stiffs of teachers just
give you a lot of junk about literature and economics."

One week-end Ted proposed, "Say, Dad, why can't I transfer over from the
College to the School of Engineering and take mechanical engineering?
You always holler that I never study, but honest, I would study there."

"No, the Engineering School hasn't got the standing the College has,"
fretted Babbitt.

"I'd like to know how it hasn't! The Engineers can play on any of the
teams!"

There was much explanation of the "dollars-and-cents value of being
known as a college man when you go into the law," and a truly oratorical
account of the lawyer's life. Before he was through with it, Babbitt had
Ted a United States Senator.

Among the great lawyers whom he mentioned was Seneca Doane.

"But, gee whiz," Ted marveled, "I thought you always said this Doane was
a reg'lar nut!"

"That's no way to speak of a great man! Doane's always been a good
friend of mine--fact I helped him in college--I started him out and you
might say inspired him. Just because he's sympathetic with the aims of
Labor, a lot of chumps that lack liberality and broad-mindedness think
he's a crank, but let me tell you there's mighty few of 'em that rake
in the fees he does, and he's a friend of some of the strongest; most
conservative men in the world--like Lord Wycombe, this, uh, this big
English nobleman that's so well known. And you now, which would you
rather do: be in with a lot of greasy mechanics and laboring-men, or
chum up to a real fellow like Lord Wycombe, and get invited to his house
for parties?"

"Well--gosh," sighed Ted.

The next week-end he came in joyously with, "Say, Dad, why couldn't I
take mining engineering instead of the academic course? You talk about
standing--maybe there isn't much in mechanical engineering, but the
Miners, gee, they got seven out of eleven in the new elections to Nu Tau
Tau!"

 Three marks the beginning of Babbitt's rebellion against the moral life. Myra and Tinka are away, Ted and Verona are in bed, and Babbitt is outside looking into the fog. Frink appears through the fog and is brandishing his walking stick. It is clear that he is drunk and calls himself a traitor to poetry. When he is back in his house, Babbitt wonders about the meaning of life and what he wants out of it. He wants wealth, social position, travel and servants only incidentally, but he does know he wants to see Paul. From this thought, Babbitt moves on and admits that he wants the fairy girl 'in the flesh'. As he falls asleep, he feels he has 'made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal.' The next day he forgets this idea, but for the first time he leaves the office to go to the cinema: 'He comes out with a vicious determination to do what he pleased.' At his table at the Athletic Club , he is teased about his visit to the cinema in working hours. He leaves the club feeling like he wants to run to the comfort of the fairy child. Babbitt is friendlier towards his secretary when he returns to work, but she remains faithful to the business in hand. Later, the Swansons hold a supper and invite him along. He finds Louetta Swanson alluring and decides he wants to 'be like one of those Bohemians'. Myra is still away and when he sits next to Louetta he identifies her with the fairy girl. They dance together and he tries to kiss her, but she mechanically tells him to stop.. She also shows she is not interested in him when they sit alone on the porch. Babbitt visits Paul in prison in Chapter Twenty Four and he thinks of it as 'unreal'. On his way home, Babbitt feels as though something has died in him, such as his loyalty, fear of disfavor, and pride in success. At work, he shows Tanis Judique around an apartment and she offers to teach him to dance. He restrains himself from flirting too much because he is afraid to make a fool of himself. Generally, Babbitt is turning towards the attractiveness of youth and is weary of feeling loyal. He flirts with a young female manicurist and asks her to dinner. On the way home from dinner, he kisses her in the car but then she stops him. Chapter Twenty Five begins with Babbitt deciding he has had enough of chasing girls, but by noon he is not so sure. Myra returns in August and this time he is sorry she has come back. He takes his holiday alone in Maine and fantasises about being a 'Real Guy' and living in the woods. On holiday, he realizes he cannot run away, 'because he could never run away from himself'. Instead, he decides he is going to 'start something'. On the train home from his holiday, in Chapter Twenty Six, Babbitt talks to Seneca Doane . Doane says he remembers Babbitt from college as a 'liberal sensitive chap'. He also recalls Babbitt saying he intended to be a lawyer and would take the cases of the poor for nothing. Doane says that at this time he just wanted to be rich and Babbitt inspired him to think differently. Babbitt is flattered by this, and says how a fellow needs 'Visions and Ideals'. Doane wants Babbitt to speak to other businessmen to go easier on 'poor Beecher Ingram' . Doane's flattery encourages Babbitt to do this and makes him think of Zilla in a more generous light. Babbitt visits her for the first time since Paul shot her and notes that she has aged from her experience. He asks if she will help get Paul pardoned, but she replies that she has turned to religion and keeping Paul in prison will be a generous act as he will be an example to 'evil-doers'. When Babbitt tells her he has always been liberal, she tells him he is as liberal as a razor blade. The action then shifts as we are told that Ted has entered the State University in September, but wants to transfer to Engineering School. Babbitt states again that this does not have enough standing and he should be a lawyer, like Doane.

