Chapter: I

THE strike which turned Zenith into two belligerent camps; white and
red, began late in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and
linemen, in protest against a reduction of wages. The newly formed union
of dairy-products workers went out, partly in sympathy and partly
in demand for a forty-four hour week. They were followed by the
truck-drivers' union. Industry was tied up, and the whole city was
nervous with talk of a trolley strike, a printers' strike, a general
strike. Furious citizens, trying to get telephone calls through
strike-breaking girls, danced helplessly. Every truck that made its way
from the factories to the freight-stations was guarded by a policeman,
trying to look stoical beside the scab driver. A line of fifty
trucks from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company was attacked by
strikers-rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling drivers from the seats,
smashing carburetors and commutators, while telephone girls cheered from
the walk, and small boys heaved bricks.

The National Guard was ordered out. Colonel Nixon, who in private life
was Mr. Caleb Nixon, secretary of the Pullmore Tractor Company, put on
a long khaki coat and stalked through crowds, a .44 automatic in hand.
Even Babbitt's friend, Clarence Drum the shoe merchant--a round and
merry man who told stories at the Athletic Club, and who strangely
resembled a Victorian pug-dog--was to be seen as a waddling but
ferocious captain, with his belt tight about his comfortable little
belly, and his round little mouth petulant as he piped to chattering
groups on corners. "Move on there now! I can't have any of this
loitering!"

Every newspaper in the city, save one, was against the strikers. When
mobs raided the news-stands, at each was stationed a militiaman, a
young, embarrassed citizen-soldier with eye-glasses, bookkeeper or
grocery-clerk in private life, trying to look dangerous while small boys
yelped, "Get onto de tin soldier!" and striking truck-drivers inquired
tenderly, "Say, Joe, when I was fighting in France, was you in camp
in the States or was you doing Swede exercises in the Y. M. C. A.? Be
careful of that bayonet, now, or you'll cut yourself!"

There was no one in Zenith who talked of anything but the strike, and
no one who did not take sides. You were either a courageous friend of
Labor, or you were a fearless supporter of the Rights of Property; and
in either case you were belligerent, and ready to disown any friend who
did not hate the enemy.

A condensed-milk plant was set afire--each side charged it to the
other--and the city was hysterical.

And Babbitt chose this time to be publicly liberal.

He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing, and at first he
agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot. He was sorry when
his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of
going to Doane and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a
broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls
had been hungry, he was troubled. "All lies and fake figures," he said,
but in a doubtful croak.

For the Sunday after, the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church announced a
sermon by Dr. John Jennison Drew on "How the Saviour Would End Strikes."
Babbitt had been negligent about church-going lately, but he went to
the service, hopeful that Dr. Drew really did have the information as
to what the divine powers thought about strikes. Beside Babbitt in the
large, curving, glossy, velvet-upholstered pew was Chum Frink.

Frink whispered, "Hope the doc gives the strikers hell! Ordinarily,
I don't believe in a preacher butting into political matters--let him
stick to straight religion and save souls, and not stir up a lot of
discussion--but at a time like this, I do think he ought to stand right
up and bawl out those plug-uglies to a fare-you-well!"

"Yes--well--" said Babbitt.

The Rev. Dr. Drew, his rustic bang flopping with the intensity of his
poetic and sociologic ardor, trumpeted:

"During the untoward series of industrial dislocations which have--let
us be courageous and admit it boldly--throttled the business life of
our fair city these past days, there has been a great deal of loose talk
about scientific prevention of scientific--SCIENTIFIC! Now, let me tell
you that the most unscientific thing in the world is science! Take the
attacks on the established fundamentals of the Christian creed which
were so popular with the 'scientists' a generation ago. Oh, yes, they
were mighty fellows, and great poo-bahs of criticism! They were going to
destroy the church; they were going to prove the world was created and
has been brought to its extraordinary level of morality and civilization
by blind chance. Yet the church stands just as firmly to-day as ever,
and the only answer a Christian pastor needs make to the long-haired
opponents of his simple faith is just a pitying smile!

"And now these same 'scientists' want to replace the natural condition
of free competition by crazy systems which, no matter by what
high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but a despotic
paternalism. Naturally, I'm not criticizing labor courts, injunctions
against men proven to be striking unjustly, or those excellent unions in
which the men and the boss get together. But I certainly am criticizing
the systems in which the free and fluid motivation of independent labor
is to be replaced by cooked-up wage-scales and minimum salaries and
government commissions and labor federations and all that poppycock.

"What is not generally understood is that this whole industrial matter
isn't a question of economics. It's essentially and only a matter
of Love, and of the practical application of the Christian religion!
Imagine a factory--instead of committees of workmen alienating the boss,
the boss goes among them smiling, and they smile back, the elder brother
and the younger. Brothers, that's what they must be, loving brothers,
and then strikes would be as inconceivable as hatred in the home!"

It was at this point that Babbitt muttered, "Oh, rot!"

"Huh?" said Chum Frink.

"He doesn't know what he's talking about. It's just as clear as mud. It
doesn't mean a darn thing."

"Maybe, but--"

Frink looked at him doubtfully, through all the service kept glancing at
him doubtfully, till Babbitt was nervous.


II

The strikers had announced a parade for Tuesday morning, but Colonel
Nixon had forbidden it, the newspapers said. When Babbitt drove west
from his office at ten that morning he saw a drove of shabby men heading
toward the tangled, dirty district beyond Court House Square. He hated
them, because they were poor, because they made him feel insecure. "Damn
loafers! Wouldn't be common workmen if they had any pep," he complained.
He wondered if there was going to be a riot. He drove toward the
starting-point of the parade, a triangle of limp and faded grass known
as Moore Street Park, and halted his car.

The park and streets were buzzing with strikers, young men in blue denim
shirts, old men with caps. Through them, keeping them stirred like a
boiling pot, moved the militiamen. Babbitt could hear the soldiers'
monotonous orders: "Keep moving--move on, 'bo--keep your feet warm!"
Babbitt admired their stolid good temper. The crowd shouted, "Tin
soldiers," and "Dirty dogs--servants of the capitalists!" but the
militiamen grinned and answered only, "Sure, that's right. Keep moving,
Billy!"

Babbitt thrilled over the citizen-soldiers, hated the scoundrels who
were obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity, admired Colonel
Nixon's striding contempt for the crowd; and as Captain Clarence Drum,
that rather puffing shoe-dealer, came raging by, Babbitt respectfully
clamored, "Great work, Captain! Don't let 'em march!" He watched the
strikers filing from the park. Many of them bore posters with "They
can't stop our peacefully walking." The militiamen tore away the
posters, but the strikers fell in behind their leaders and straggled
off, a thin unimpressive trickle between steel-glinting lines of
soldiers. Babbitt saw with disappointment that there wasn't going to be
any violence, nothing interesting at all. Then he gasped.

Among the marchers, beside a bulky young workman, was Seneca Doane,
smiling, content. In front of him was Professor Brockbank, head of
the history department in the State University, an old man and
white-bearded, known to come from a distinguished Massachusetts family.

"Why, gosh," Babbitt marveled, "a swell like him in with the strikers?
And good ole Senny Doane! They're fools to get mixed up with this bunch.
They're parlor socialists! But they have got nerve. And nothing in it
for them, not a cent! And--I don't know 's ALL the strikers look like
such tough nuts. Look just about like anybody else to me!"

The militiamen were turning the parade down a side street.

"They got just as much right to march as anybody else! They own the
streets as much as Clarence Drum or the American Legion does!" Babbitt
grumbled. "Of course, they're--they're a bad element, but--Oh, rats!"

At the Athletic Club, Babbitt was silent during lunch, while the others
fretted, "I don't know what the world's coming to," or solaced their
spirits with "kidding."

Captain Clarence Drum came swinging by, splendid in khaki.

"How's it going, Captain?" inquired Vergil Gunch.

"Oh, we got 'em stopped. We worked 'em off on side streets and separated
'em and they got discouraged and went home."

"Fine work. No violence."

"Fine work nothing!" groaned Mr. Drum. "If I had my way, there'd be a
whole lot of violence, and I'd start it, and then the whole thing would
be over. I don't believe in standing back and wet-nursing these fellows
and letting the disturbances drag on. I tell you these strikers are
nothing in God's world but a lot of bomb-throwing socialists and thugs,
and the only way to handle 'em is with a club! That's what I'd do; beat
up the whole lot of 'em!"

Babbitt heard himself saying, "Oh, rats, Clarence, they look just about
like you and me, and I certainly didn't notice any bombs."

Drum complained, "Oh, you didn't, eh? Well, maybe you'd like to take
charge of the strike! Just tell Colonel Nixon what innocents the
strikers are! He'd be glad to hear about it!" Drum strode on, while all
the table stared at Babbitt.

"What's the idea? Do you want us to give those hell-hounds love and
kisses, or what?" said Orville Jones.

"Do you defend a lot of hoodlums that are trying to take the bread and
butter away from our families?" raged Professor Pumphrey.

Vergil Gunch intimidatingly said nothing. He put on sternness like a
mask; his jaw was hard, his bristly short hair seemed cruel, his silence
was a ferocious thunder. While the others assured Babbitt that they must
have misunderstood him, Gunch looked as though he had understood only
too well. Like a robed judge he listened to Babbitt's stammering:

"No, sure; course they're a bunch of toughs. But I just mean--Strikes me
it's bad policy to talk about clubbing 'em. Cabe Nixon doesn't. He's
got the fine Italian hand. And that's why he's colonel. Clarence Drum is
jealous of him."

"Well," said Professor Pumphrey, "you hurt Clarence's feelings, George.
He's been out there all morning getting hot and dusty, and no wonder he
wants to beat the tar out of those sons of guns!"

Gunch said nothing, and watched; and Babbitt knew that he was being
watched.


III

As he was leaving the club Babbitt heard Chum Frink protesting to Gunch,
"--don't know what's got into him. Last Sunday Doc Drew preached a
corking sermon about decency in business and Babbitt kicked about that,
too. Near 's I can figure out--"

Babbitt was vaguely frightened.


IV

He saw a crowd listening to a man who was talking from the rostrum of a
kitchen-chair. He stopped his car. From newspaper pictures he knew that
the speaker must be the notorious freelance preacher, Beecher Ingram,
of whom Seneca Doane had spoken. Ingram was a gaunt man with flamboyant
hair, weather-beaten cheeks, and worried eyes. He was pleading:

"--if those telephone girls can hold out, living on one meal a day,
doing their own washing, starving and smiling, you big hulking men ought
to be able--"

Babbitt saw that from the sidewalk Vergil Gunch was watching him. In
vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically drove on, while
Gunch's hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the way.


V

"There's a lot of these fellows," Babbitt was complaining to his wife,
"that think if workmen go on strike they're a regular bunch of fiends.
Now, of course, it's a fight between sound business and the destructive
element, and we got to lick the stuffin's out of 'em when they challenge
us, but doggoned if I see why we can't fight like gentlemen and not go
calling 'em dirty dogs and saying they ought to be shot down."

"Why, George," she said placidly, "I thought you always insisted that
all strikers ought to be put in jail."

"I never did! Well, I mean--Some of 'em, of course. Irresponsible
leaders. But I mean a fellow ought to be broad-minded and liberal about
things like--"

"But dearie, I thought you always said these so-called 'liberal' people
were the worst of--"

"Rats! Woman never can understand the different definitions of a word.
Depends on how you mean it. And it don't pay to be too cocksure about
anything. Now, these strikers: Honest, they're not such bad people. Just
foolish. They don't understand the complications of merchandizing and
profit, the way we business men do, but sometimes I think they're
about like the rest of us, and no more hogs for wages than we are for
profits."

"George! If people were to hear you talk like that--of course I KNOW
you; I remember what a wild crazy boy you were; I know you don't mean a
word you say--but if people that didn't understand you were to hear you
talking, they'd think you were a regular socialist!"

"What do I care what anybody thinks? And let me tell you right now--I
want you to distinctly understand I never was a wild crazy kid, and when
I say a thing, I mean it, and I stand by it and--Honest, do you think
people would think I was too liberal if I just said the strikers were
decent?"

"Of course they would. But don't worry, dear; I know you don't mean
a word of it. Time to trot up to bed now. Have you enough covers for
to-night?"

On the sleeping-porch he puzzled, "She doesn't understand me. Hardly
understand myself. Why can't I take things easy, way I used to?

"Wish I could go out to Senny Doane's house and talk things over with
him. No! Suppose Verg Gunch saw me going in there!

"Wish I knew some really smart woman, and nice, that would see what I'm
trying to get at, and let me talk to her and--I wonder if Myra's right?
Could the fellows think I've gone nutty just because I'm broad-minded
and liberal? Way Verg looked at me--"





I

MISS McGOUN came into his private office at three in the afternoon with
"Lissen, Mr. Babbitt; there's a Mrs. Judique on the 'phone--wants to see
about some repairs, and the salesmen are all out. Want to talk to her?"

"All right."

The voice of Tanis Judique was clear and pleasant. The black cylinder
of the telephone-receiver seemed to hold a tiny animated image of her:
lustrous eyes, delicate nose, gentle chin.

"This is Mrs. Judique. Do you remember me? You drove me up here to the
Cavendish Apartments and helped me find such a nice flat."

"Sure! Bet I remember! What can I do for you?"

"Why, it's just a little--I don't know that I ought to bother you, but
the janitor doesn't seem to be able to fix it. You know my flat is on
the top floor, and with these autumn rains the roof is beginning to
leak, and I'd be awfully glad if--"

"Sure! I'll come up and take a look at it." Nervously, "When do you
expect to be in?"

"Why, I'm in every morning."

"Be in this afternoon, in an hour or so?"

"Ye-es. Perhaps I could give you a cup of tea. I think I ought to, after
all your trouble."

"Fine! I'll run up there soon as I can get away."

He meditated, "Now there's a woman that's got refinement, savvy, CLASS!
'After all your trouble--give you a cup of tea.' She'd appreciate a
fellow. I'm a fool, but I'm not such a bad cuss, get to know me. And not
so much a fool as they think!"

The great strike was over, the strikers beaten. Except that Vergil
Gunch seemed less cordial, there were no visible effects of Babbitt's
treachery to the clan. The oppressive fear of criticism was gone, but a
diffident loneliness remained. Now he was so exhilarated that, to prove
he wasn't, he droned about the office for fifteen minutes, looking at
blue-prints, explaining to Miss McGoun that this Mrs. Scott wanted more
money for her house--had raised the asking-price--raised it from seven
thousand to eighty-five hundred--would Miss McGoun be sure and put
it down on the card--Mrs. Scott's house--raise. When he had thus
established himself as a person unemotional and interested only in
business, he sauntered out. He took a particularly long time to start
his car; he kicked the tires, dusted the glass of the speedometer, and
tightened the screws holding the wind-shield spot-light.

He drove happily off toward the Bellevue district, conscious of the
presence of Mrs. Judique as of a brilliant light on the horizon. The
maple leaves had fallen and they lined the gutters of the asphalted
streets. It was a day of pale gold and faded green, tranquil and
lingering. Babbitt was aware of the meditative day, and of the
barrenness of Bellevue--blocks of wooden houses, garages, little shops,
weedy lots. "Needs pepping up; needs the touch that people like Mrs.
Judique could give a place," he ruminated, as he rattled through the
long, crude, airy streets. The wind rose, enlivening, keen, and in a
blaze of well-being he came to the flat of Tanis Judique.

She was wearing, when she flutteringly admitted him, a frock of black
chiffon cut modestly round at the base of her pretty throat. She seemed
to him immensely sophisticated. He glanced at the cretonnes and colored
prints in her living-room, and gurgled, "Gosh, you've fixed the place
nice! Takes a clever woman to know how to make a home, all right!"

"You really like it? I'm so glad! But you've neglected me, scandalously.
You promised to come some time and learn to dance."

Rather unsteadily, "Oh, but you didn't mean it seriously!"

"Perhaps not. But you might have tried!"

"Well, here I've come for my lesson, and you might just as well prepare
to have me stay for supper!"

They both laughed in a manner which indicated that of course he didn't
mean it.

"But first I guess I better look at that leak."

She climbed with him to the flat roof of the apartment-house a detached
world of slatted wooden walks, clotheslines, water-tank in a penthouse.
He poked at things with his toe, and sought to impress her by being
learned about copper gutters, the desirability of passing plumbing pipes
through a lead collar and sleeve and flashing them with copper, and the
advantages of cedar over boiler-iron for roof-tanks.


"You have to know so much, in real estate!" she admired.

He promised that the roof should be repaired within two days. "Do you
mind my 'phoning from your apartment?" he asked.

"Heavens, no!"

He stood a moment at the coping, looking over a land of hard little
bungalows with abnormally large porches, and new apartment-houses,
small, but brave with variegated brick walls and terra-cotta trimmings.
Beyond them was a hill with a gouge of yellow clay like a vast wound.
Behind every apartment-house, beside each dwelling, were small garages.
It was a world of good little people, comfortable, industrious,
credulous.

In the autumnal light the flat newness was mellowed, and the air was a
sun-tinted pool.

"Golly, it's one fine afternoon. You get a great view here, right up
Tanner's Hill," said Babbitt.

"Yes, isn't it nice and open."

"So darn few people appreciate a View."

"Don't you go raising my rent on that account! Oh, that was naughty
of me! I was just teasing. Seriously though, there are so few who
respond--who react to Views. I mean--they haven't any feeling of poetry
and beauty."

"That's a fact, they haven't," he breathed, admiring her slenderness and
the absorbed, airy way in which she looked toward the hill, chin lifted,
lips smiling. "Well, guess I'd better telephone the plumbers, so they'll
get on the job first thing in the morning."

When he had telephoned, making it conspicuously authoritative and gruff
and masculine, he looked doubtful, and sighed, "S'pose I'd better be--"

"Oh, you must have that cup of tea first!"

"Well, it would go pretty good, at that."

It was luxurious to loll in a deep green rep chair, his legs thrust
out before him, to glance at the black Chinese telephone stand and the
colored photograph of Mount Vernon which he had always liked so much,
while in the tiny kitchen--so near--Mrs. Judique sang "My Creole Queen."
In an intolerable sweetness, a contentment so deep that he was wistfully
discontented, he saw magnolias by moonlight and heard plantation darkies
crooning to the banjo. He wanted to be near her, on pretense of helping
her, yet he wanted to remain in this still ecstasy. Languidly he
remained.

When she bustled in with the tea he smiled up at her. "This is awfully
nice!" For the first time, he was not fencing; he was quietly and
securely friendly; and friendly and quiet was her answer: "It's nice to
have you here. You were so kind, helping me to find this little home."

They agreed that the weather would soon turn cold. They agreed that
prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was
cultural. They agreed about everything. They even became bold. They
hinted that these modern young girls, well, honestly, their short skirts
were short. They were proud to find that they were not shocked by such
frank speaking. Tanis ventured, "I know you'll understand--I mean--I
don't quite know how to say it, but I do think that girls who pretend
they're bad by the way they dress really never go any farther. They give
away the fact that they haven't the instincts of a womanly woman."

Remembering Ida Putiak, the manicure girl, and how ill she had used him,
Babbitt agreed with enthusiasm; remembering how ill all the world had
used him, he told of Paul Riesling, of Zilla, of Seneca Doane, of the
strike:

"See how it was? Course I was as anxious to have those beggars licked to
a standstill as anybody else, but gosh, no reason for not seeing their
side. For a fellow's own sake, he's got to be broad-minded and liberal,
don't you think so?"

"Oh, I do!" Sitting on the hard little couch, she clasped her hands
beside her, leaned toward him, absorbed him; and in a glorious state of
being appreciated he proclaimed:

"So I up and said to the fellows at the club, 'Look here,' I--"

"Do you belong to the Union Club? I think it's--"

"No; the Athletic. Tell you: Course they're always asking me to join
the Union, but I always say, 'No, sir! Nothing doing!' I don't mind the
expense but I can't stand all the old fogies."

"Oh, yes, that's so. But tell me: what did you say to them?"

"Oh, you don't want to hear it. I'm probably boring you to death with my
troubles! You wouldn't hardly think I was an old duffer; I sound like a
kid!"

"Oh, you're a boy yet. I mean--you can't be a day over forty-five."

"Well, I'm not--much. But by golly I begin to feel middle-aged
sometimes; all these responsibilities and all."

"Oh, I know!" Her voice caressed him; it cloaked him like warm silk.
"And I feel lonely, so lonely, some days, Mr. Babbitt."

"We're a sad pair of birds! But I think we're pretty darn nice!"

"Yes, I think we're lots nicer than most people I know!" They smiled.
"But please tell me what you said at the Club."

"Well, it was like this: Course Seneca Doane is a friend of mine--they
can say what they want to, they can call him anything they please, but
what most folks here don't know is that Senny is the bosom pal of some
of the biggest statesmen in the world--Lord Wycombe, frinstance--you
know, this big British nobleman. My friend Sir Gerald Doak told me
that Lord Wycombe is one of the biggest guns in England--well, Doak or
somebody told me."

"Oh! Do you know Sir Gerald? The one that was here, at the McKelveys'?"

"Know him? Well, say, I know him just well enough so we call each other
George and Jerry, and we got so pickled together in Chicago--"

"That must have been fun. But--" She shook a finger at him. "--I can't
have you getting pickled! I'll have to take you in hand!"

"Wish you would! . . . Well, zize saying: You see I happen to know what
a big noise Senny Doane is outside of Zenith, but of course a prophet
hasn't got any honor in his own country, and Senny, darn his old hide,
he's so blame modest that he never lets folks know the kind of an outfit
he travels with when he goes abroad. Well, during the strike Clarence
Drum comes pee-rading up to our table, all dolled up fit to kill in his
nice lil cap'n's uniform, and somebody says to him, 'Busting the strike,
Clarence?'

"Well, he swells up like a pouter-pigeon and he hollers, so 's you
could hear him way up in the reading-room, 'Yes, sure; I told the
strike-leaders where they got off, and so they went home.'

"'Well,' I says to him, 'glad there wasn't any violence.'

"'Yes,' he says, 'but if I hadn't kept my eye skinned there would 've
been. All those fellows had bombs in their pockets. They're reg'lar
anarchists.'

"'Oh, rats, Clarence,' I says, 'I looked 'em all over carefully, and
they didn't have any more bombs 'n a rabbit,' I says. 'Course,' I says,
'they're foolish, but they're a good deal like you and me, after all.'

"And then Vergil Gunch or somebody--no, it was Chum Frink--you know,
this famous poet--great pal of mine--he says to me, 'Look here,' he
says, 'do you mean to say you advocate these strikes?' Well, I was so
disgusted with a fellow whose mind worked that way that I swear, I had a
good mind to not explain at all--just ignore him--"

"Oh, that's so wise!" said Mrs. Judique.

"--but finally I explains to him: 'If you'd done as much as I have on
Chamber of Commerce committees and all,' I says, 'then you'd have the
right to talk! But same time,' I says, 'I believe in treating your
opponent like a gentleman!' Well, sir, that held 'em! Frink--Chum I
always call him--he didn't have another word to say. But at that, I
guess some of 'em kind o' thought I was too liberal. What do you think?"

"Oh, you were so wise. And courageous! I love a man to have the courage
of his convictions!"

"But do you think it was a good stunt? After all, some of these fellows
are so darn cautious and narrow-minded that they're prejudiced against a
fellow that talks right out in meeting."

"What do you care? In the long run they're bound to respect a man who
makes them think, and with your reputation for oratory you--"

"What do you know about my reputation for oratory?"

"Oh, I'm not going to tell you everything I know! But seriously, you
don't realize what a famous man you are."

"Well--Though I haven't done much orating this fall. Too kind of
bothered by this Paul Riesling business, I guess. But--Do you know,
you're the first person that's really understood what I was getting at,
Tanis--Listen to me, will you! Fat nerve I've got, calling you Tanis!"

"Oh, do! And shall I call you George? Don't you think it's awfully nice
when two people have so much--what shall I call it?--so much analysis
that they can discard all these stupid conventions and understand each
other and become acquainted right away, like ships that pass in the
night?"

"I certainly do! I certainly do!"

He was no longer quiescent in his chair; he wandered about the room, he
dropped on the couch beside her. But as he awkwardly stretched his hand
toward her fragile, immaculate fingers, she said brightly, "Do give me
a cigarette. Would you think poor Tanis was dreadfully naughty if she
smoked?"

"Lord, no! I like it!"

He had often and weightily pondered flappers smoking in Zenith
restaurants, but he knew only one woman who smoked--Mrs. Sam Doppelbrau,
his flighty neighbor. He ceremoniously lighted Tanis's cigarette, looked
for a place to deposit the burnt match, and dropped it into his pocket.

"I'm sure you want a cigar, you poor man!" she crooned.

"Do you mind one?"

"Oh, no! I love the smell of a good cigar; so nice and--so nice and like
a man. You'll find an ash-tray in my bedroom, on the table beside the
bed, if you don't mind getting it."

He was embarrassed by her bedroom: the broad couch with a cover of
violet silk, mauve curtains striped with gold. Chinese Chippendale
bureau, and an amazing row of slippers, with ribbon-wound shoe-trees,
and primrose stockings lying across them. His manner of bringing the
ash-tray had just the right note of easy friendliness, he felt. "A boob
like Verg Gunch would try to get funny about seeing her bedroom, but
I take it casually." He was not casual afterward. The contentment of
companionship was gone, and he was restless with desire to touch her
hand. But whenever he turned toward her, the cigarette was in his way.
It was a shield between them. He waited till she should have finished,
but as he rejoiced at her quick crushing of its light on the ashtray she
said, "Don't you want to give me another cigarette?" and hopelessly he
saw the screen of pale smoke and her graceful tilted hand again between
them. He was not merely curious now to find out whether she would
let him hold her hand (all in the purest friendship, naturally), but
agonized with need of it.

On the surface appeared none of all this fretful drama. They were
talking cheerfully of motors, of trips to California, of Chum Frink.
Once he said delicately, "I do hate these guys--I hate these people that
invite themselves to meals, but I seem to have a feeling I'm going to
have supper with the lovely Mrs. Tanis Judique to-night. But I suppose
you probably have seven dates already."

"Well, I was thinking some of going to the movies. Yes, I really think I
ought to get out and get some fresh air."

She did not encourage him to stay, but never did she discourage him.
He considered, "I better take a sneak! She WILL let me stay--there IS
something doing--and I mustn't get mixed up with--I mustn't--I've got to
beat it." Then, "No. it's too late now."

Suddenly, at seven, brushing her cigarette away, brusquely taking her
hand:

"Tanis! Stop teasing me! You know we--Here we are, a couple of lonely
birds, and we're awful happy together. Anyway I am! Never been so
happy! Do let me stay! I'll gallop down to the delicatessen and buy some
stuff--cold chicken maybe--or cold turkey--and we can have a nice little
supper, and afterwards, if you want to chase me out, I'll be good and go
like a lamb."

"Well--yes--it would be nice," she said.

Nor did she withdraw her hand. He squeezed it, trembling, and blundered
toward his coat. At the delicatessen he bought preposterous stores of
food, chosen on the principle of expensiveness. From the drug store
across the street he telephoned to his wife, "Got to get a fellow to
sign a lease before he leaves town on the midnight. Won't be home till
late. Don't wait up for me. Kiss Tinka good-night." He expectantly
lumbered back to the flat.

"Oh, you bad thing, to buy so much food!" was her greeting, and her
voice was gay, her smile acceptant.

He helped her in the tiny white kitchen; he washed the lettuce, he
opened the olive bottle. She ordered him to set the table, and as he
trotted into the living-room, as he hunted through the buffet for knives
and forks, he felt utterly at home.

"Now the only other thing," he announced, "is what you're going to wear.
I can't decide whether you're to put on your swellest evening gown, or
let your hair down and put on short skirts and make-believe you're a
little girl."

"I'm going to dine just as I am, in this old chiffon rag, and if you
can't stand poor Tanis that way, you can go to the club for dinner!"

"Stand you!" He patted her shoulder. "Child, you're the brainiest and
the loveliest and finest woman I've ever met! Come now, Lady Wycombe,
if you'll take the Duke of Zenith's arm, we will proambulate in to the
magnolious feed!"

"Oh, you do say the funniest, nicest things!"

When they had finished the picnic supper he thrust his head out of the
window and reported, "It's turned awful chilly, and I think it's going
to rain. You don't want to go to the movies."

"Well--"

"I wish we had a fireplace! I wish it was raining like all get-out
to-night, and we were in a funny little old-fashioned cottage, and
the trees thrashing like everything outside, and a great big log fire
and--I'll tell you! Let's draw this couch up to the radiator, and
stretch our feet out, and pretend it's a wood-fire."

"Oh, I think that's pathetic! You big child!"

But they did draw up to the radiator, and propped their feet against
it--his clumsy black shoes, her patent-leather slippers. In the dimness
they talked of themselves; of how lonely she was, how bewildered he, and
how wonderful that they had found each other. As they fell silent the
room was stiller than a country lane. There was no sound from the street
save the whir of motor-tires, the rumble of a distant freight-train.
Self-contained was the room, warm, secure, insulated from the harassing
world.

He was absorbed by a rapture in which all fear and doubting were
smoothed away; and when he reached home, at dawn, the rapture had
mellowed to contentment serene and full of memories.





I

THE assurance of Tanis Judique's friendship fortified Babbitt's
self-approval. At the Athletic Club he became experimental. Though
Vergil Gunch was silent, the others at the Roughnecks' Table came to
accept Babbitt as having, for no visible reason, "turned crank." They
argued windily with him, and he was cocky, and enjoyed the spectacle
of his interesting martyrdom. He even praised Seneca Doane. Professor
Pumphrey said that was carrying a joke too far; but Babbitt argued, "No!
Fact! I tell you he's got one of the keenest intellects in the country.
Why, Lord Wycombe said that--"

"Oh, who the hell is Lord Wycombe? What you always lugging him in for?
You been touting him for the last six weeks!" protested Orville Jones.

"George ordered him from Sears-Roebuck. You can get those English
high-muckamucks by mail for two bucks apiece," suggested Sidney
Finkelstein.

"That's all right now! Lord Wycombe, he's one of the biggest intellects
in English political life. As I was saying: Of course I'm conservative
myself, but I appreciate a guy like Senny Doane because--"

Vergil Gunch interrupted harshly, "I wonder if you are so conservative?
I find I can manage to run my own business without any skunks and reds
like Doane in it!"

The grimness of Gunch's voice, the hardness of his jaw, disconcerted
Babbitt, but he recovered and went on till they looked bored, then
irritated, then as doubtful as Gunch.


II

He thought of Tanis always. With a stir he remembered her every aspect.
His arms yearned for her. "I've found her! I've dreamed of her all these
years and now I've found her!" he exulted. He met her at the movies
in the morning; he drove out to her flat in the late afternoon or on
evenings when he was believed to be at the Elks. He knew her financial
affairs and advised her about them, while she lamented her feminine
ignorance, and praised his masterfulness, and proved to know much more
about bonds than he did. They had remembrances, and laughter over old
times. Once they quarreled, and he raged that she was as "bossy" as
his wife and far more whining when he was inattentive. But that passed
safely.

Their high hour was a tramp on a ringing December afternoon, through
snow-drifted meadows down to the icy Chaloosa River. She was exotic
in an astrachan cap and a short beaver coat; she slid on the ice and
shouted, and he panted after her, rotund with laughter.... Myra Babbitt
never slid on the ice.

He was afraid that they would be seen together. In Zenith it is
impossible to lunch with a neighbor's wife without the fact being
known, before nightfall, in every house in your circle. But Tanis was
beautifully discreet. However appealingly she might turn to him when
they were alone, she was gravely detached when they were abroad, and he
hoped that she would be taken for a client. Orville Jones once saw them
emerging from a movie theater, and Babbitt bumbled, "Let me make you
'quainted with Mrs. Judique. Now here's a lady who knows the right
broker to come to, Orvy!" Mr. Jones, though he was a man censorious of
morals and of laundry machinery, seemed satisfied.

His predominant fear--not from any especial fondness for her but from
the habit of propriety--was that his wife would learn of the affair. He
was certain that she knew nothing specific about Tanis, but he was also
certain that she suspected something indefinite. For years she had been
bored by anything more affectionate than a farewell kiss, yet she was
hurt by any slackening in his irritable periodic interest, and now he
had no interest; rather, a revulsion. He was completely faithful--to
Tanis. He was distressed by the sight of his wife's slack plumpness, by
her puffs and billows of flesh, by the tattered petticoat which she was
always meaning and always forgetting to throw away. But he was aware
that she, so long attuned to him, caught all his repulsions. He
elaborately, heavily, jocularly tried to check them. He couldn't.

They had a tolerable Christmas. Kenneth Escott was there, admittedly
engaged to Verona. Mrs. Babbitt was tearful and called Kenneth her new
son. Babbitt was worried about Ted, because he had ceased complaining
of the State University and become suspiciously acquiescent. He wondered
what the boy was planning, and was too shy to ask. Himself, Babbitt
slipped away on Christmas afternoon to take his present, a silver
cigarette-box, to Tanis. When he returned Mrs. Babbitt asked, much too
innocently, "Did you go out for a little fresh air?"

"Yes, just lil drive," he mumbled.

After New Year's his wife proposed, "I heard from my sister to-day,
George. She isn't well. I think perhaps I ought to go stay with her for
a few weeks."

Now, Mrs. Babbitt was not accustomed to leave home during the winter
except on violently demanding occasions, and only the summer before, she
had been gone for weeks. Nor was Babbitt one of the detachable husbands
who take separations casually. He liked to have her there; she looked
after his clothes; she knew how his steak ought to be cooked; and her
clucking made him feel secure. But he could not drum up even a dutiful
"Oh, she doesn't really need you, does she?" While he tried to look
regretful, while he felt that his wife was watching him, he was filled
with exultant visions of Tanis.

"Do you think I'd better go?" she said sharply.

"You've got to decide, honey; I can't."

She turned away, sighing, and his forehead was damp.

Till she went, four days later, she was curiously still, he cumbrously
affectionate. Her train left at noon. As he saw it grow small beyond the
train-shed he longed to hurry to Tanis.

"No, by golly, I won't do that!" he vowed. "I won't go near her for a
week!"

But he was at her flat at four.


III

He who had once controlled or seemed to control his life in a progress
unimpassioned but diligent and sane was for that fortnight borne on a
current of desire and very bad whisky and all the complications of
new acquaintances, those furious new intimates who demand so much more
attention than old friends. Each morning he gloomily recognized his
idiocies of the evening before. With his head throbbing, his tongue and
lips stinging from cigarettes, he incredulously counted the number of
drinks he had taken, and groaned, "I got to quit!" He had ceased saying,
"I WILL quit!" for however resolute he might be at dawn, he could not,
for a single evening, check his drift.

He had met Tanis's friends; he had, with the ardent haste of the
Midnight People, who drink and dance and rattle and are ever afraid to
be silent, been adopted as a member of her group, which they called "The
Bunch." He first met them after a day when he had worked particularly
hard and when he hoped to be quiet with Tanis and slowly sip her
admiration.

From down the hall he could hear shrieks and the grind of a phonograph.
As Tanis opened the door he saw fantastic figures dancing in a haze of
cigarette smoke. The tables and chairs were against the wall.

"Oh, isn't this dandy!" she gabbled at him. "Carrie Nork had the
loveliest idea. She decided it was time for a party, and she 'phoned the
Bunch and told 'em to gather round. . . . George, this is Carrie."

"Carrie" was, in the less desirable aspects of both, at once matronly
and spinsterish. She was perhaps forty; her hair was an unconvincing
ash-blond; and if her chest was flat, her hips were ponderous. She
greeted Babbitt with a giggling "Welcome to our little midst! Tanis says
you're a real sport."

He was apparently expected to dance, to be boyish and gay with Carrie,
and he did his unforgiving best. He towed her about the room, bumping
into other couples, into the radiator, into chair-legs cunningly
ambushed. As he danced he surveyed the rest of the Bunch: A thin young
woman who looked capable, conceited, and sarcastic. Another woman whom
he could never quite remember. Three overdressed and slightly effeminate
young men--soda-fountain clerks, or at least born for that profession.
A man of his own age, immovable, self-satisfied, resentful of Babbitt's
presence.

When he had finished his dutiful dance Tanis took him aside and begged,
"Dear, wouldn't you like to do something for me? I'm all out of booze,
and the Bunch want to celebrate. Couldn't you just skip down to Healey
Hanson's and get some?"

"Sure," he said, trying not to sound sullen.

"I'll tell you: I'll get Minnie Sonntag to drive down with you." Tanis
was pointing to the thin, sarcastic young woman.

Miss Sonntag greeted him with an astringent "How d'you do, Mr. Babbitt.
Tanis tells me you're a very prominent man, and I'm honored by being
allowed to drive with you. Of course I'm not accustomed to associating
with society people like you, so I don't know how to act in such exalted
circles!"

Thus Miss Sonntag talked all the way down to Healey Hanson's. To her
jibes he wanted to reply "Oh, go to the devil!" but he never quite
nerved himself to that reasonable comment. He was resenting the
existence of the whole Bunch. He had heard Tanis speak of "darling
Carrie" and "Min Sonntag--she's so clever--you'll adore her," but
they had never been real to him. He had pictured Tanis as living in a
rose-tinted vacuum, waiting for him, free of all the complications of a
Floral Heights.

When they returned he had to endure the patronage of the young
soda-clerks. They were as damply friendly as Miss Sonntag was dryly
hostile. They called him "Old Georgie" and shouted, "Come on now, sport;
shake a leg" . . . boys in belted coats, pimply boys, as young as Ted
and as flabby as chorus-men, but powerful to dance and to mind the
phonograph and smoke cigarettes and patronize Tanis. He tried to be one
of them; he cried "Good work, Pete!" but his voice creaked.

Tanis apparently enjoyed the companionship of the dancing darlings; she
bridled to their bland flirtation and casually kissed them at the end
of each dance. Babbitt hated her, for the moment. He saw her as
middle-aged. He studied the wrinkles in the softness of her throat, the
slack flesh beneath her chin. The taut muscles of her youth were loose
and drooping. Between dances she sat in the largest chair, waving her
cigarette, summoning her callow admirers to come and talk to her. ("She
thinks she's a blooming queen!" growled Babbitt.) She chanted to Miss
Sonntag, "Isn't my little studio sweet?" ("Studio, rats! It's a plain
old-maid-and-chow-dog flat! Oh, God, I wish I was home! I wonder if I
can't make a getaway now?")

His vision grew blurred, however, as he applied himself to Healey
Hanson's raw but vigorous whisky. He blended with the Bunch. He began
to rejoice that Carrie Nork and Pete, the most nearly intelligent of the
nimble youths, seemed to like him; and it was enormously important to
win over the surly older man, who proved to be a railway clerk named
Fulton Bemis.

The conversation of the Bunch was exclamatory, high-colored, full of
references to people whom Babbitt did not know. Apparently they thought
very comfortably of themselves. They were the Bunch, wise and beautiful
and amusing; they were Bohemians and urbanites, accustomed to all the
luxuries of Zenith: dance-halls, movie-theaters, and roadhouses; and
in a cynical superiority to people who were "slow" or "tightwad" they
cackled:

"Oh, Pete, did I tell you what that dub of a cashier said when I came in
late yesterday? Oh, it was per-fect-ly priceless!"

"Oh, but wasn't T. D. stewed! Say, he was simply ossified! What did
Gladys say to him?"

"Think of the nerve of Bob Bickerstaff trying to get us to come to his
house! Say, the nerve of him! Can you beat it for nerve? Some nerve I
call it!"

"Did you notice how Dotty was dancing? Gee, wasn't she the limit!"

Babbitt was to be heard sonorously agreeing with the once-hated Miss
Minnie Sonntag that persons who let a night go by without dancing to
jazz music were crabs, pikers, and poor fish; and he roared "You bet!"
when Mrs. Carrie Nork gurgled, "Don't you love to sit on the floor? It's
so Bohemian!" He began to think extremely well of the Bunch. When he
mentioned his friends Sir Gerald Doak, Lord Wycombe, William Washington
Eathorne, and Chum Frink, he was proud of their condescending interest.
He got so thoroughly into the jocund spirit that he didn't much mind
seeing Tanis drooping against the shoulder of the youngest and milkiest
of the young men, and he himself desired to hold Carrie Nork's pulpy
hand, and dropped it only because Tanis looked angry.

When he went home, at two, he was fully a member of the Bunch, and
all the week thereafter he was bound by the exceedingly straitened
conventions, the exceedingly wearing demands, of their life of pleasure
and freedom. He had to go to their parties; he was involved in the
agitation when everybody telephoned to everybody else that she hadn't
meant what she'd said when she'd said that, and anyway, why was Pete
going around saying she'd said it?

Never was a Family more insistent on learning one another's movements
than were the Bunch. All of them volubly knew, or indignantly desired
to know, where all the others had been every minute of the week. Babbitt
found himself explaining to Carrie or Fulton Bemis just what he had
been doing that he should not have joined them till ten o'clock, and
apologizing for having gone to dinner with a business acquaintance.

Every member of the Bunch was expected to telephone to every other
member at least once a week. "Why haven't you called me up?" Babbitt
was asked accusingly, not only by Tanis and Carrie but presently by new
ancient friends, Jennie and Capitolina and Toots.

If for a moment he had seen Tanis as withering and sentimental, he lost
that impression at Carrie Nork's dance. Mrs. Nork had a large house and
a small husband. To her party came all of the Bunch, perhaps thirty-five
of them when they were completely mobilized. Babbitt, under the name
of "Old Georgie," was now a pioneer of the Bunch, since each month it
changed half its membership and he who could recall the prehistoric days
of a fortnight ago, before Mrs. Absolom, the food-demonstrator, had
gone to Indianapolis, and Mac had "got sore at" Minnie, was a venerable
leader and able to condescend to new Petes and Minnies and Gladyses.

At Carrie's, Tanis did not have to work at being hostess. She was
dignified and sure, a clear fine figure in the black chiffon frock he
had always loved; and in the wider spaces of that ugly house Babbitt was
able to sit quietly with her. He repented of his first revulsion, mooned
at her feet, and happily drove her home. Next day he bought a violent
yellow tie, to make himself young for her. He knew, a little sadly, that
he could not make himself beautiful; he beheld himself as heavy, hinting
of fatness, but he danced, he dressed, he chattered, to be as young as
she was . . . as young as she seemed to be.


IV

As all converts, whether to a religion, love, or gardening, find as by
magic that though hitherto these hobbies have not seemed to exist, now
the whole world is filled with their fury, so, once he was converted
to dissipation, Babbitt discovered agreeable opportunities for it
everywhere.

He had a new view of his sporting neighbor, Sam Doppelbrau. The
Doppelbraus were respectable people, industrious people, prosperous
people, whose ideal of happiness was an eternal cabaret. Their life was
dominated by suburban bacchanalia of alcohol, nicotine, gasoline, and
kisses. They and their set worked capably all the week, and all week
looked forward to Saturday night, when they would, as they expressed
it, "throw a party;" and the thrown party grew noisier and noisier up to
Sunday dawn, and usually included an extremely rapid motor expedition to
nowhere in particular.

One evening when Tanis was at the theater, Babbitt found himself being
lively with the Doppelbraus, pledging friendship with men whom he
had for years privily denounced to Mrs. Babbitt as a "rotten bunch of
tin-horns that I wouldn't go out with, not if they were the last people
on earth." That evening he had sulkily come home and poked about in
front of the house, chipping off the walk the ice-clots, like fossil
footprints, made by the steps of passers-by during the recent snow.
Howard Littlefield came up snuffling.

"Still a widower, George?"

"Yump. Cold again to-night."

"What do you hear from the wife?"

"She's feeling fine, but her sister is still pretty sick."

"Say, better come in and have dinner with us to-night, George."

"Oh--oh, thanks. Have to go out."

Suddenly he could not endure Littlefield's recitals of the more
interesting statistics about totally uninteresting problems. He scraped
at the walk and grunted.

Sam Doppelbrau appeared.

"Evenin', Babbitt. Working hard?"

"Yuh, lil exercise."

"Cold enough for you to-night?"

"Well, just about."

"Still a widower?"

"Uh-huh."

"Say, Babbitt, while she's away--I know you don't care much for
booze-fights, but the Missus and I'd be awfully glad if you could come
in some night. Think you could stand a good cocktail for once?"

"Stand it? Young fella, I bet old Uncle George can mix the best cocktail
in these United States!"

"Hurray! That's the way to talk! Look here: There's some folks coming
to the house to-night, Louetta Swanson and some other live ones, and I'm
going to open up a bottle of pre-war gin, and maybe we'll dance a while.
Why don't you drop in and jazz it up a little, just for a change?"

"Well--What time they coming?"

He was at Sam Doppelbrau's at nine. It was the third time he had entered
the house. By ten he was calling Mr. Doppelbrau "Sam, old hoss."

At eleven they all drove out to the Old Farm Inn. Babbitt sat in the
back of Doppelbrau's car with Louetta Swanson. Once he had timorously
tried to make love to her. Now he did not try; he merely made love; and
Louetta dropped her head on his shoulder, told him what a nagger Eddie
was, and accepted Babbitt as a decent and well-trained libertine.

With the assistance of Tanis's Bunch, the Doppelbraus, and other
companions in forgetfulness, there was not an evening for two weeks when
he did not return home late and shaky. With his other faculties blurred
he yet had the motorist's gift of being able to drive when he could
scarce walk; of slowing down at corners and allowing for approaching
cars. He came wambling into the house. If Verona and Kenneth Escott were
about, he got past them with a hasty greeting, horribly aware of their
level young glances, and hid himself up-stairs. He found when he came
into the warm house that he was hazier than he had believed. His head
whirled. He dared not lie down. He tried to soak out the alcohol in a
hot bath. For the moment his head was clearer but when he moved about
the bathroom his calculations of distance were wrong, so that he dragged
down the towels, and knocked over the soap-dish with a clatter which, he
feared, would betray him to the children. Chilly in his dressing-gown he
tried to read the evening paper. He could follow every word; he seemed
to take in the sense of things; but a minute afterward he could not have
told what he had been reading. When he went to bed his brain flew in
circles, and he hastily sat up, struggling for self-control. At last
he was able to lie still, feeling only a little sick and dizzy--and
enormously ashamed. To hide his "condition" from his own children!
To have danced and shouted with people whom he despised! To have
said foolish things, sung idiotic songs, tried to kiss silly girls!
Incredulously he remembered that he had by his roaring familiarity with
them laid himself open to the patronizing of youths whom he would have
kicked out of his office; that by dancing too ardently he had exposed
himself to rebukes from the rattiest of withering women. As it came
relentlessly back to him he snarled, "I hate myself! God how I hate
myself!" But, he raged, "I'm through! No more! Had enough, plenty!"

He was even surer about it the morning after, when he was trying to be
grave and paternal with his daughters at breakfast. At noontime he was
less sure. He did not deny that he had been a fool; he saw it almost
as clearly as at midnight; but anything, he struggled, was better than
going back to a life of barren heartiness. At four he wanted a drink. He
kept a whisky flask in his desk now, and after two minutes of battle he
had his drink. Three drinks later he began to see the Bunch as tender
and amusing friends, and by six he was with them . . . and the tale was
to be told all over.

Each morning his head ached a little less. A bad head for drinks had
been his safeguard, but the safeguard was crumbling. Presently he
could be drunk at dawn, yet not feel particularly wretched in his
conscience--or in his stomach--when he awoke at eight. No regret, no
desire to escape the toil of keeping up with the arduous merriment of
the Bunch, was so great as his feeling of social inferiority when he
failed to keep up. To be the "livest" of them was as much his ambition
now as it had been to excel at making money, at playing golf, at
motor-driving, at oratory, at climbing to the McKelvey set. But
occasionally he failed.

He found that Pete and the other young men considered the Bunch too
austerely polite and the Carrie who merely kissed behind doors too
embarrassingly monogamic. As Babbitt sneaked from Floral Heights down
to the Bunch, so the young gallants sneaked from the proprieties of the
Bunch off to "times" with bouncing young women whom they picked up
in department stores and at hotel coatrooms. Once Babbitt tried to
accompany them. There was a motor car, a bottle of whisky, and for him
a grubby shrieking cash-girl from Parcher and Stein's. He sat beside her
and worried. He was apparently expected to "jolly her along," but when
she sang out, "Hey, leggo, quit crushing me cootie-garage," he did not
quite know how to go on. They sat in the back room of a saloon, and
Babbitt had a headache, was confused by their new slang, looked at them
benevolently, wanted to go home, and had a drink--a good many drinks.

Two evenings after, Fulton Bemis, the surly older man of the Bunch, took
Babbitt aside and grunted, "Look here, it's none of my business, and God
knows I always lap up my share of the hootch, but don't you think you
better watch yourself? You're one of these enthusiastic chumps that
always overdo things. D' you realize you're throwing in the booze as
fast as you can, and you eat one cigarette right after another? Better
cut it out for a while."

Babbitt tearfully said that good old Fult was a prince, and yes, he
certainly would cut it out, and thereafter he lighted a cigarette and
took a drink and had a terrific quarrel with Tanis when she caught him
being affectionate with Carrie Nork.

Next morning he hated himself that he should have sunk into a position
where a fifteenth-rater like Fulton Bemis could rebuke him. He perceived
that, since he was making love to every woman possible, Tanis was no
longer his one pure star, and he wondered whether she had ever been
anything more to him than A Woman. And if Bemis had spoken to him, were
other people talking about him? He suspiciously watched the men at the
Athletic Club that noon. It seemed to him that they were uneasy. They
had been talking about him then? He was angry. He became belligerent.
He not only defended Seneca Doane but even made fun of the Y. M. C. A.
Vergil Gunch was rather brief in his answers.

Afterward Babbitt was not angry. He was afraid. He did not go to the
next lunch of the Boosters' Club but hid in a cheap restaurant, and,
while he munched a ham-and-egg sandwich and sipped coffee from a cup on
the arm of his chair, he worried.

Four days later, when the Bunch were having one of their best parties,
Babbitt drove them to the skating-rink which had been laid out on the
Chaloosa River. After a thaw the streets had frozen in smooth ice. Down
those wide endless streets the wind rattled between the rows of wooden
houses, and the whole Bellevue district seemed a frontier town. Even
with skid chains on all four wheels, Babbitt was afraid of sliding, and
when he came to the long slide of a hill he crawled down, both brakes
on. Slewing round a corner came a less cautious car. It skidded, it
almost raked them with its rear fenders. In relief at their escape the
Bunch--Tanis, Minnie Sonntag, Pete, Fulton Bemis--shouted "Oh, baby,"
and waved their hands to the agitated other driver. Then Babbitt saw
Professor Pumphrey laboriously crawling up hill, afoot, Staring owlishly
at the revelers. He was sure that Pumphrey recognized him and saw Tanis
kiss him as she crowed, "You're such a good driver!"

At lunch next day he probed Pumphrey with "Out last night with my
brother and some friends of his. Gosh, what driving! Slippery 's glass.
Thought I saw you hiking up the Bellevue Avenue Hill."

"No, I wasn't--I didn't see you," said Pumphrey, hastily, rather
guiltily.

Perhaps two days afterward Babbitt took Tanis to lunch at the Hotel
Thornleigh. She who had seemed well content to wait for him at her flat
had begun to hint with melancholy smiles that he must think but little
of her if he never introduced her to his friends, if he was unwilling to
be seen with her except at the movies. He thought of taking her to the
"ladies' annex" of the Athletic Club, but that was too dangerous. He
would have to introduce her and, oh, people might misunderstand and--He
compromised on the Thornleigh.

She was unusually smart, all in black: small black tricorne hat, short
black caracul coat, loose and swinging, and austere high-necked black
velvet frock at a time when most street costumes were like evening
gowns. Perhaps she was too smart. Every one in the gold and oak
restaurant of the Thornleigh was staring at her as Babbitt followed her
to a table. He uneasily hoped that the head-waiter would give them a
discreet place behind a pillar, but they were stationed on the center
aisle. Tanis seemed not to notice her admirers; she smiled at Babbitt
with a lavish "Oh, isn't this nice! What a peppy-looking orchestra!"
Babbitt had difficulty in being lavish in return, for two tables away he
saw Vergil Gunch. All through the meal Gunch watched them, while Babbitt
watched himself being watched and lugubriously tried to keep from
spoiling Tanis's gaiety. "I felt like a spree to-day," she rippled. "I
love the Thornleigh, don't you? It's so live and yet so--so refined."

He made talk about the Thornleigh, the service, the food, the people he
recognized in the restaurant, all but Vergil Gunch. There did not
seem to be anything else to talk of. He smiled conscientiously at her
fluttering jests; he agreed with her that Minnie Sonntag was "so hard to
get along with," and young Pete "such a silly lazy kid, really just no
good at all." But he himself had nothing to say. He considered telling
her his worries about Gunch, but--"oh, gosh, it was too much work to go
into the whole thing and explain about Verg and everything."

He was relieved when he put Tanis on a trolley; he was cheerful in the
familiar simplicities of his office.

At four o'clock Vergil Gunch called on him.

Babbitt was agitated, but Gunch began in a friendly way:

"How's the boy? Say, some of us are getting up a scheme we'd kind of
like to have you come in on."

"Fine, Verg. Shoot."

"You know during the war we had the Undesirable Element, the Reds and
walking delegates and just the plain common grouches, dead to rights,
and so did we for quite a while after the war, but folks forget about
the danger and that gives these cranks a chance to begin working
underground again, especially a lot of these parlor socialists. Well,
it's up to the folks that do a little sound thinking to make a conscious
effort to keep bucking these fellows. Some guy back East has organized
a society called the Good Citizens' League for just that purpose. Of
course the Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion and so on do
a fine work in keeping the decent people in the saddle, but they're
devoted to so many other causes that they can't attend to this one
problem properly. But the Good Citizens' League, the G. C. L., they
stick right to it. Oh, the G. C. L. has to have some other ostensible
purposes--frinstance here in Zenith I think it ought to support the
park-extension project and the City Planning Committee--and then, too,
it should have a social aspect, being made up of the best people--have
dances and so on, especially as one of the best ways it can put the
kibosh on cranks is to apply this social boycott business to folks big
enough so you can't reach 'em otherwise. Then if that don't work, the G.
C. L. can finally send a little delegation around to inform folks that
get too flip that they got to conform to decent standards and quit
shooting off their mouths so free. Don't it sound like the organization
could do a great work? We've already got some of the strongest men in
town, and of course we want you in. How about it?"

Babbitt was uncomfortable. He felt a compulsion back to all the
standards he had so vaguely yet so desperately been fleeing. He fumbled:

"I suppose you'd especially light on fellows like Seneca Doane and try
to make 'em--"

"You bet your sweet life we would! Look here, old Georgie: I've never
for one moment believed you meant it when you've defended Doane, and the
strikers and so on, at the Club. I knew you were simply kidding those
poor galoots like Sid Finkelstein.... At least I certainly hope you were
kidding!"

"Oh, well--sure--Course you might say--" Babbitt was conscious of how
feeble he sounded, conscious of Gunch's mature and relentless eye.
"Gosh, you know where I stand! I'm no labor agitator! I'm a business
man, first, last, and all the time! But--but honestly, I don't think
Doane means so badly, and you got to remember he's an old friend of
mine."

"George, when it comes right down to a struggle between decency and the
security of our homes on the one hand, and red ruin and those lazy
dogs plotting for free beer on the other, you got to give up even old
friendships. 'He that is not with me is against me.'"

"Ye-es, I suppose--"

"How about it? Going to join us in the Good Citizens' League?"

"I'll have to think it over, Verg."

"All right, just as you say." Babbitt was relieved to be let off so
easily, but Gunch went on: "George, I don't know what's come over you;
none of us do; and we've talked a lot about you. For a while we figured
out you'd been upset by what happened to poor Riesling, and we forgave
you for any fool thing you said, but that's old stuff now, George, and
we can't make out what's got into you. Personally, I've always defended
you, but I must say it's getting too much for me. All the boys at the
Athletic Club and the Boosters' are sore, the way you go on deliberately
touting Doane and his bunch of hell-hounds, and talking about being
liberal--which means being wishy-washy--and even saying this preacher
guy Ingram isn't a professional free-love artist. And then the way you
been carrying on personally! Joe Pumphrey says he saw you out the other
night with a gang of totties, all stewed to the gills, and here to-day
coming right into the Thornleigh with a--well, she may be all right and
a perfect lady, but she certainly did look like a pretty gay skirt for
a fellow with his wife out of town to be taking to lunch. Didn't look
well. What the devil has come over you, George?"

"Strikes me there's a lot of fellows that know more about my personal
business than I do myself!"

"Now don't go getting sore at me because I come out flatfooted like a
friend and say what I think instead of tattling behind your back, the
way a whole lot of 'em do. I tell you George, you got a position in the
community, and the community expects you to live up to it. And--Better
think over joining the Good Citizens' League. See you about it later."

He was gone.

That evening Babbitt dined alone. He saw all the Clan of Good Fellows
peering through the restaurant window, spying on him. Fear sat beside
him, and he told himself that to-night he would not go to Tanis's flat;
and he did not go . . . till late.





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.





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!"

 A series of strikes upsets the efficient commercialism of Zenith. Violence erupts as the threat of a general strike seems certain, so the National Guard steps in. Babbitt, formerly a staunch critic of labor unions, is disturbed to hear that some of the workers complain that their wages do not even pay for enough food. Reverend Drew delivers a sermon criticizing the strikers. Babbitt shocks Chum Frink by calling Drew's sermon complete "rot." Babbitt further disturbs his friends by complaining of the National Guard's heavy-handed tactics with the strikers. The strike is quickly squelched, but Babbitt's friends become cooler and more reserved with him. When Tanis calls about a leak in her apartment, Babbitt hurries to personally inspect it. One thing leads to another, and Babbitt ends up staying with her until dawn, smoking, talking, and drinking tea. Babbitt calls Myra to report that business will keep him out until late. While he continues to see Tanis secretly, Babbitt becomes more vocal with his friends with his new liberal opinions, inciting their disapproval and distrust. He fears that Myra is suspicious of his affair because he has become negligent with her. Fortuitously, Myra's sister falls ill, so she leaves Zenith for a few weeks. Babbitt becomes caught up with Tanis' bohemian friends. A round of parties and outings begins to consume his time, and he begins to drink quite heavily. He wakes up with hangovers. Several times he resolves to put an end to the rebellious excess of his new life, but every day he finds himself in the company of Tanis and her friends. Whereas he once disdained the Doppelbraus as rowdy, alcoholic bohemians, he is delighted to attend one of their parties, at which he flirts with Louetta with more success than before. When Pumphrey sees Babbitt driving drunk with Tanis and her friends, Babbitt begins to fear that he is damaging his reputation. After Gunch sees Babbitt having lunch with Tanis in public, he calls on Babbitt to ask him to join a new organization, the Good Citizens League. He states that he has never thought Babbitt's new liberal opinions were actually serious. Babbitt merely replies that he will consider joining the League. Afraid that he has gone too far in his rebellion, Babbitt resolves, and fails, to stay away from Tanis that night. When Myra returns to Zenith, Babbitt makes an attempt to act like a good husband, but he fails to resist Tanis' draw. Myra protests his habit of going out in the evenings, but Babbitt responds with irritable complaints about the boring routine of his life. She retorts that she has been discontent, as well, and makes him promise to attend a lecture of the American New Thought League. Myra enjoys the lecture, but Babbitt finds it incomprehensible and uninspiring. This leads to a bitter argument that widens the gulf between them. As Babbitt ponders Myra's virtues, he feels extremely guilty for his cruel treatment of her. He avoids Tanis for several days, but she phones him and writes him a letter. When Babbitt visits her, he is happy to see her at first. However, he suddenly realizes that she is not young and beautiful but a middle- aged woman trying to act much younger than she is. Feeling guilty and foolish, Babbitt breaks off their relationship.

