Chapter: I

WHEN he was away from her, while he kicked about the garage and swept
the snow off the running-board and examined a cracked hose-connection,
he repented, he was alarmed and astonished that he could have flared out
at his wife, and thought fondly how much more lasting she was than the
flighty Bunch. He went in to mumble that he was "sorry, didn't mean to
be grouchy," and to inquire as to her interest in movies. But in the
darkness of the movie theater he brooded that he'd "gone and tied
himself up to Myra all over again." He had some satisfaction in taking
it out on Tanis Judique. "Hang Tanis anyway! Why'd she gone and got him
into these mix-ups and made him all jumpy and nervous and cranky? Too
many complications! Cut 'em out!"

He wanted peace. For ten days he did not see Tanis nor telephone to her,
and instantly she put upon him the compulsion which he hated. When
he had stayed away from her for five days, hourly taking pride in his
resoluteness and hourly picturing how greatly Tanis must miss him, Miss
McGoun reported, "Mrs. Judique on the 'phone. Like t' speak t' you 'bout
some repairs."

Tanis was quick and quiet:

"Mr. Babbitt? Oh, George, this is Tanis. I haven't seen you for
weeks--days, anyway. You aren't sick, are you?"

"No, just been terribly rushed. I, uh, I think there'll be a big revival
of building this year. Got to, uh, got to work hard."

"Of course, my man! I want you to. You know I'm terribly ambitious for
you; much more than I am for myself. I just don't want you to forget
poor Tanis. Will you call me up soon?"

"Sure! Sure! You bet!"

"Please do. I sha'n't call you again."

He meditated, "Poor kid! . . . But gosh, she oughtn't to 'phone me at
the office.... She's a wonder--sympathy 'ambitious for me.' . . . But
gosh, I won't be made and compelled to call her up till I get ready.
Darn these women, the way they make demands! It'll be one long old time
before I see her! . . . But gosh, I'd like to see her to-night--sweet
little thing.... Oh, cut that, son! Now you've broken away, be wise!"

She did not telephone again, nor he, but after five more days she wrote
to him:


Have I offended you? You must know, dear, I didn't mean to. I'm so
lonely and I need somebody to cheer me up. Why didn't you come to the
nice party we had at Carrie's last evening I remember she invited you.
Can't you come around here to-morrow Thur evening? I shall be alone and
hope to see you.


His reflections were numerous:

"Doggone it, why can't she let me alone? Why can't women ever learn a
fellow hates to be bulldozed? And they always take advantage of you by
yelling how lonely they are.

"Now that isn't nice of you, young fella. She's a fine, square, straight
girl, and she does get lonely. She writes a swell hand. Nice-looking
stationery. Plain. Refined. I guess I'll have to go see her. Well, thank
God, I got till to-morrow night free of her, anyway.

"She's nice but--Hang it, I won't be MADE to do things! I'm not married
to her. No, nor by golly going to be!

"Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her."


II

Thursday, the to-morrow of Tanis's note, was full of emotional crises.
At the Roughnecks' Table at the club, Verg Gunch talked of the Good
Citizens' League and (it seemed to Babbitt) deliberately left him out
of the invitations to join. Old Mat Penniman, the general utility man
at Babbitt's office, had Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his
oldest boy was "no good," his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with
his brother-in-law. Conrad Lyte also had Troubles, and since Lyte was
one of his best clients, Babbitt had to listen to them. Mr. Lyte, it
appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and
the garage had overcharged him. When Babbitt came home, everybody had
Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the
impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave; and Tinka desired to
denounce her teacher.

"Oh, quit fussing!" Babbitt fussed. "You never hear me whining about my
Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office--Why, to-day I
found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched
my finger in my desk, and Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever."

He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape
to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, "Got to go out. Be back by
eleven, should think."

"Oh! You're going out again?"

"Again! What do you mean 'again'! Haven't hardly been out of the house
for a week!"

"Are you--are you going to the Elks?"

"Nope. Got to see some people."

Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt,
though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into
the hall, jerked on his ulster and furlined gloves, and went out to
start the car.

He was relieved to find Tanis cheerful, unreproachful, and brilliant in
a frock of brown net over gold tissue. "You poor man, having to come
out on a night like this! It's terribly cold. Don't you think a small
highball would be nice?"

"Now, by golly, there's a woman with savvy! I think we could more or
less stand a highball if it wasn't too long a one--not over a foot
tall!"

He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot the compulsion of her
demands, he stretched in a large chair and felt that he had beautifully
come home. He was suddenly loquacious; he told her what a noble and
misunderstood man he was, and how superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and
the other men of their acquaintance; and she, bending forward, chin
in charming hand, brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to
ask, "Well, honey, how's things with YOU," she took his duty-question
seriously, and he discovered that she too had Troubles:

"Oh, all right but--I did get so angry with Carrie. She told Minnie that
I told her that Minnie was an awful tightwad, and Minnie told me Carrie
had told her, and of course I told her I hadn't said anything of the
kind, and then Carrie found Minnie had told me, and she was simply
furious because Minnie had told me, and of course I was just boiling
because Carrie had told her I'd told her, and then we all met up at
Fulton's--his wife is away--thank heavens!--oh, there's the dandiest
floor in his house to dance on--and we were all of us simply furious
at each other and--Oh, I do hate that kind of a mix-up, don't you? I
mean--it's so lacking in refinement, but--And Mother wants to come and
stay with me for a whole month, and of course I do love her, I suppose
I do, but honestly, she'll cramp my style something dreadful--she never
can learn not to comment, and she always wants to know where I'm going
when I go out evenings, and if I lie to her she always spies around and
ferrets around and finds out where I've been, and then she looks like
Patience on a Monument till I could just scream. And oh, I MUST tell
you--You know I never talk about myself; I just hate people who do,
don't you? But--I feel so stupid to-night, and I know I must be boring
you with all this but--What would you do about Mother?"

He gave her facile masculine advice. She was to put off her mother's
stay. She was to tell Carrie to go to the deuce. For these valuable
revelations she thanked him, and they ambled into the familiar gossip
of the Bunch. Of what a sentimental fool was Carrie. Of what a lazy
brat was Pete. Of how nice Fulton Bemis could be--"course lots of people
think he's a regular old grouch when they meet him because he doesn't
give 'em the glad hand the first crack out of the box, but when they get
to know him, he's a corker."

But as they had gone conscientiously through each of these analyses
before, the conversation staggered. Babbitt tried to be intellectual
and deal with General Topics. He said some thoroughly sound things about
Disarmament, and broad-mindedness and liberalism; but it seemed to him
that General Topics interested Tanis only when she could apply them to
Pete, Carrie, or themselves. He was distressingly conscious of their
silence. He tried to stir her into chattering again, but silence rose
like a gray presence and hovered between them.

"I, uh--" he labored. "It strikes me--it strikes me that unemployment is
lessening."

"Maybe Pete will get a decent job, then."

Silence.

Desperately he essayed, "What's the trouble, old honey? You seem kind of
quiet to-night."

"Am I? Oh, I'm not. But--do you really care whether I am or not?"

"Care? Sure! Course I do!"

"Do you really?" She swooped on him, sat on the arm of his chair.

He hated the emotional drain of having to appear fond of her. He stroked
her hand, smiled up at her dutifully, and sank back.

"George, I wonder if you really like me at all?"

"Course I do, silly."

"Do you really, precious? Do you care a bit?"

"Why certainly! You don't suppose I'd be here if I didn't!"

"Now see here, young man, I won't have you speaking to me in that huffy
way!"

"I didn't mean to sound huffy. I just--" In injured and rather childish
tones: "Gosh almighty, it makes me tired the way everybody says I
sound huffy when I just talk natural! Do they expect me to sing it or
something?"

"Who do you mean by 'everybody'? How many other ladies have you been
consoling?"

"Look here now, I won't have this hinting!"

Humbly: "I know, dear. I was only teasing. I know it didn't mean to talk
huffy--it was just tired. Forgive bad Tanis. But say you love me, say
it!"

"I love you.... Course I do."

"Yes, you do!" cynically. "Oh, darling, I don't mean to be rude but--I
get so lonely. I feel so useless. Nobody needs me, nothing I can do
for anybody. And you know, dear, I'm so active--I could be if there was
something to do. And I am young, aren't I! I'm not an old thing! I'm not
old and stupid, am I?"

He had to assure her. She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased
under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness. He was
impatient. He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world.
Through her delicate and caressing fingers she may have caught something
of his shrugging distaste. She left him--he was for the moment
buoyantly relieved--she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking
beseechingly up at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the
flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and
jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now
as middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own
thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how the
soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her
eyes, at the base of her wrists. A patch of her throat had a minute
roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old! She was younger in
years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him
with rolling great eyes--as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making
love to him.

He fretted inwardly, "I'm through with this asinine fooling around. I'm
going to cut her out. She's a darn decent nice woman, and I don't want
to hurt her, but it'll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good
clean surgical operation."

He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By every rule of
self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself, that it was her
fault.

"I suppose maybe I'm kind of out of sorts to-night, but honest, honey,
when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and
figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited
till I came back. Can't you see, dear, when you MADE me come, I--being
about an average bull-headed chump--my tendency was to resist? Listen,
dear, I'm going now--"

"Not for a while, precious! No!"

"Yep. Right now. And then sometime we'll see about the future."

"What do you mean, dear, 'about the future'? Have I done something I
oughtn't to? Oh, I'm so dreadfully sorry!"

He resolutely put his hands behind him. "Not a thing, God bless you, not
a thing. You're as good as they make 'em. But it's just--Good Lord, do
you realize I've got things to do in the world? I've got a business to
attend to and, you might not believe it, but I've got a wife and kids
that I'm awful fond of!" Then only during the murder he was committing
was he able to feel nobly virtuous. "I want us to be friends but, gosh,
I can't go on this way feeling I got to come up here every so often--"

"Oh, darling, darling, and I've always told you, so carefully, that you
were absolutely free. I just wanted you to come around when you were
tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you could enjoy our parties--"

She was so reasonable, she was so gently right! It took him an hour to
make his escape, with nothing settled and everything horribly settled.
In a barren freedom of icy Northern wind he sighed, "Thank God that's
over! Poor Tanis, poor darling decent Tanis! But it is over. Absolute!
I'm free!"

 While he's away from Myra, Babbitt feels guilty about the way he's treated her. Ultimately, he respects her way more than he respects Tanis Judique and The Bunch. When he tries to stay away from Tanis, though, she starts calling him at his office and asking why he doesn't come around anymore. She wants to know that he hasn't forgotten her and she promises not to call him at home again. Five more days go by before Tanis writes a letter to him asking why he still hasn't come around to her apartment. After debating with himself for a while, he decides to go see her. As the week goes by, Babbitt finds himself growing more and more fed up with the people at his Athletic Club and their dumb, rich-people problems. That night, he visits Tanis and finds that she's quite grumpy. He asks her what the matter is, and she answers by ordering him to say that he loves her. He agrees and says it. Shortly after that, though, he gets up to leave and thinks to himself that he'll never see Tanis again. She seems to know it, too, and she wants him to know that she has never wanted to force him into anything. She just feels lonely and likes having him around.

