CHAPTER IX I
BABBITT was fond of his friends, he loved the importance of being host and
shouting, "Certainly, you're going to have smore chicken--the idea!" and he
appreciated the genius of T. Cholmondeley Frink, but the vigor of the
cocktails was gone, and the more he ate the less joyful he felt. Then the
amity of the dinner was destroyed by the nagging of the Swansons.
In Floral Heights and the other prosperous sections of Zenith, especially in
the "young married set," there were many women who had nothing to do. Though
they had few servants, yet with gas stoves, electric ranges and dish-washers
and vacuum cleaners, and tiled kitchen walls, their houses were so convenient
that they had little housework, and much of their food came from bakeries and
delicatessens. They had but two, one, or no children; and despite the myth
that the Great War had made work respectable, their husbands objected to their
"wasting time and getting a lot of crank ideas" in unpaid social work, and
still more to their causing a rumor, by earning money, that they were not
adequately supported. They worked perhaps two hours a day, and the rest of the
time they ate chocolates, went to the motion-pictures, went window-shopping,
went in gossiping twos and threes to card-parties, read magazines, thought
timorously of the lovers who never appeared, and accumulated a splendid
restlessness which they got rid of by nagging their husbands. The husbands
nagged back.
Of these naggers the Swansons were perfect specimens.
Throughout the dinner Eddie Swanson had been complaining, publicly, about his
wife's new frock. It was, he submitted, too short, too low, too immodestly
thin, and much too expensive. He appealed to Babbitt:
"Honest, George, what do you think of that rag Louetta went and bought? Don't
you think it's the limit?"
"What's eating you, Eddie? I call it a swell little dress."
"Oh, it is, Mr. Swanson. It's a sweet frock," Mrs. Babbitt protested.
"There now, do you see, smarty! You're such an authority on clothes!" Louetta
raged, while the guests ruminated and peeped at her shoulders.
"That's all right now," said Swanson. "I'm authority enough so I know it was
a waste of money, and it makes me tired to see you not wearing out a whole
closetful of clothes you got already. I've expressed my idea about this
before, and you know good and well you didn't pay the least bit of attention.
I have to camp on your trail to get you to do anything--"
There was much more of it, and they all assisted, all but Babbitt. Everything
about him was dim except his stomach, and that was a bright scarlet
disturbance. "Had too much grub; oughtn't to eat this stuff," he
groaned--while he went on eating, while he gulped down a chill and glutinous
slice of the ice-cream brick, and cocoanut cake as oozy as shaving-cream. He
felt as though he had been stuffed with clay; his body was bursting, his
throat was bursting, his brain was hot mud; and only with agony did he
continue to smile and shout as became a host on Floral Heights.
He would, except for his guests, have fled outdoors and walked off the
intoxication of food, but in the haze which filled the room they sat forever,
talking, talking, while he agonized, "Darn fool to be eating all this--not
'nother mouthful," and discovered that he was again tasting the sickly welter
of melted ice cream on his plate. There was no magic in his friends; he was
not uplifted when Howard Littlefield produced from his treasure-house of
scholarship the information that the chemical symbol for raw rubber is C10H16,
which turns into isoprene, or 2C5H8. Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was
not merely bored but admitting that he was bored. It was ecstasy to escape
from the table, from the torture of a straight chair, and loll on the
davenport in the living-room.
The others, from their fitful unconvincing talk, their expressions of being
slowly and painfully smothered, seemed to be suffering from the toil of social
life and the horror of good food as much as himself. All of them accepted with
relief the suggestion of bridge.
Babbitt recovered from the feeling of being boiled. He won at bridge. He was
again able to endure Vergil Gunch's inexorable heartiness. But he pictured
loafing with Paul Riesling beside a lake in Maine. It was as overpowering and
imaginative as homesickness. He had never seen Maine, yet he beheld the
shrouded mountains, the tranquil lake of evening. "That boy Paul's worth all
these ballyhooing highbrows put together," he muttered; and, "I'd like to get
away from--everything."
Even Louetta Swanson did not rouse him.
Mrs. Swanson was pretty and pliant. Babbitt was not an analyst of women,
except as to their tastes in Furnished Houses to Rent. He divided them into
Real Ladies, Working Women, Old Cranks, and Fly Chickens. He mooned over their
charms but he was of opinion that all of them (save the women of his own
family) were "different" and "mysterious." Yet he had known by instinct that
Louetta Swanson could be approached. Her eyes and lips were moist. Her face
tapered from a broad forehead to a pointed chin, her mouth was thin but strong
and avid, and between her brows were two outcurving and passionate wrinkles.
She was thirty, perhaps, or younger. Gossip had never touched her, but every
man naturally and instantly rose to flirtatiousness when he spoke to her, and
every woman watched her with stilled blankness.
Between games, sitting on the davenport, Babbitt spoke to her with the
requisite gallantry, that sonorous Floral Heights gallantry which is not
flirtation but a terrified flight from it: "You're looking like a new
soda-fountain to night, Louetta."
"Am I?"
"Ole Eddie kind of on the rampage."
"Yes. I get so sick of it."
"Well, when you get tired of hubby, you can run off with Uncle George."
"If I ran away--Oh, well--"
"Anybody ever tell you your hands are awful pretty?"
She looked down at them, she pulled the lace of her sleeves over them, but
otherwise she did not heed him. She was lost in unexpressed imaginings.
Babbitt was too languid this evening to pursue his duty of being a captivating
(though strictly moral) male. He ambled back to the bridge-tables. He was not
much thrilled when Mrs. Frink, a small twittering woman, proposed that they
"try and do some spiritualism and table-tipping--you know Chum can make the
spirits come--honest, he just scares me!"
The ladies of the party had not emerged all evening, but now, as the sex given
to things of the spirit while the men warred against base things material,
they took command and cried, "Oh, let's!" In the dimness the men were rather
solemn and foolish, but the goodwives quivered and adored as they sat about
the table. They laughed, "Now, you be good or I'll tell!" when the men took
their hands in the circle.
Babbitt tingled with a slight return of interest in life as Louetta Swanson's
hand closed on his with quiet firmness.
All of them hunched over, intent. They startled as some one drew a strained
breath. In the dusty light from the hall they looked unreal, they felt
disembodied. Mrs. Gunch squeaked, and they jumped with unnatural jocularity,
but at Frink's hiss they sank into subdued awe. Suddenly, incredibly, they
heard a knocking. They stared at Frink's half-revealed hands and found them
lying still. They wriggled, and pretended not to be impressed.
Frink spoke with gravity: "Is some one there?" A thud. "Is one knock to be
the sign for 'yes'?" A thud. "And two for 'no'?" A thud.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, shall we ask the guide to put us into
communication with the spirit of some great one passed over?" Frink mumbled.
Mrs Orville Jones begged, "Oh, let's talk to Dante! We studied him at the
Reading Circle. You know who he was, Orvy."
"Certainly I know who he was! The Wop poet. Where do you think I was
raised?" from her insulted husband.
"Sure--the fellow that took the Cook's Tour to Hell. I've never waded through
his po'try, but we learned about him in the U.," said Babbitt.
"Page Mr. Dannnnnty!" intoned Eddie Swanson.
"You ought to get him easy, Mr. Frink, you and he being fellow-poets," said
Louetta Swanson.
"Fellow-poets, rats! Where d' you get that stuff?" protested Vergil Gunch.
"I suppose Dante showed a lot of speed for an old-timer--not that I've
actually read him, of course--but to come right down to hard facts, he
wouldn't stand one-two-three if he had to buckle down to practical literature
and turn out a poem for the newspaper-syndicate every day, like Chum does!"
"That's so," from Eddie Swanson. "Those old birds could take their time.
Judas Priest, I could write poetry myself if I had a whole year for it, and
just wrote about that old-fashioned junk like Dante wrote about."
Frink demanded, "Hush, now! I'll call him. . . O, Laughing Eyes, emerge forth
into the, uh, the ultimates and bring hither the spirit of Dante, that we
mortals may list to his words of wisdom."
"You forgot to give um the address: 1658 Brimstone Avenue, Fiery Heights,
Hell," Gunch chuckled, but the others felt that this was irreligious. And
besides--"probably it was just Chum making the knocks, but still, if there did
happen to be something to all this, be exciting to talk to an old fellow
belonging to--way back in early times--"
A thud. The spirit of Dante had come to the parlor of George F. Babbitt.
He was, it seemed, quite ready to answer their questions. He was "glad to be
with them, this evening."
Frink spelled out the messages by running through the alphabet till the spirit
interpreter knocked at the right letter.
Littlefield asked, in a learned tone, "Do you like it in the Paradiso,
Messire?"
"We are very happy on the higher plane, Signor. We are glad that you are
studying this great truth of spiritualism," Dante replied.
The circle moved with an awed creaking of stays and shirt-fronts.
"Suppose--suppose there were something to this?"
Babbitt had a different worry. "Suppose Chum Frink was really one of these
spiritualists! Chum had, for a literary fellow, always seemed to be a Regular
Guy; he belonged to the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church and went to the
Boosters' lunches and liked cigars and motors and racy stories. But suppose
that secretly--After all, you never could tell about these darn highbrows; and
to be an out-and-out spiritualist would be almost like being a socialist!"
No one could long be serious in the presence of Vergil Gunch. "Ask Dant' how
Jack Shakespeare and old Verg'--the guy they named after me--are gettin'
along, and don't they wish they could get into the movie game!" he blared, and
instantly all was mirth. Mrs. Jones shrieked, and Eddie Swanson desired to
know whether Dante didn't catch cold with nothing on but his wreath.
The pleased Dante made humble answer.
But Babbitt--the curst discontent was torturing him again, and heavily, in the
impersonal darkness, he pondered, "I don't--We're all so flip and think we're
so smart. There'd be--A fellow like Dante--I wish I'd read some of his
pieces. I don't suppose I ever will, now."
He had, without explanation, the impression of a slaggy cliff and on it, in
silhouette against menacing clouds, a lone and austere figure. He was dismayed
by a sudden contempt for his surest friends. He grasped Louetta Swanson's
hand, and found the comfort of human warmth. Habit came, a veteran warrior;
and he shook himself. "What the deuce is the matter with me, this evening?"
He patted Louetta's hand, to indicate that he hadn't meant anything improper
by squeezing it, and demanded of Frink, "Say, see if you can get old Dant' to
spiel us some of his poetry. Talk up to him. Tell him, 'Buena giorna, senor,
com sa va, wie geht's? Keskersaykersa a little pome, senor?'"
II
The lights were switched on; the women sat on the fronts of their chairs in
that determined suspense whereby a wife indicates that as soon as the present
speaker has finished, she is going to remark brightly to her husband, "Well,
dear, I think per-HAPS it's about time for us to be saying good-night." For
once Babbitt did not break out in blustering efforts to keep the party going.
He had--there was something he wished to think out--But the psychical research
had started them off again. ("Why didn't they go home! Why didn't they go
home!") Though he was impressed by the profundity of the statement, he was
only half-enthusiastic when Howard Littlefield lectured, "The United States is
the only nation in which the government is a Moral Ideal and not just a social
arrangement." ("True--true--weren't they EVER going home?") He was usually
delighted to have an "inside view" of the momentous world of motors but
to-night he scarcely listened to Eddie Swanson's revelation: "If you want to
go above the Javelin class, the Zeeco is a mighty good buy. Couple weeks ago,
and mind you, this was a fair, square test, they took a Zeeco stock
touring-car and they slid up the Tonawanda hill on high, and fellow told me--"
("Zeeco good boat but--Were they planning to stay all night?")
They really were going, with a flutter of "We did have the best time!"
Most aggressively friendly of all was Babbitt, yet as he burbled he was
reflecting, "I got through it, but for a while there I didn't hardly think I'd
last out." He prepared to taste that most delicate pleasure of the host:
making fun of his guests in the relaxation of midnight. As the door closed he
yawned voluptuously, chest out, shoulders wriggling, and turned cynically to
his wife.
She was beaming. "Oh, it was nice, wasn't it! I know they enjoyed every
minute of it. Don't you think so?"
He couldn't do it. He couldn't mock. It would have been like sneering at a
happy child. He lied ponderously: "You bet! Best party this year, by a long
shot."
"Wasn't the dinner good! And honestly I thought the fried chicken was
delicious!"
"You bet! Fried to the Queen's taste. Best fried chicken I've tasted for a
coon's age."
"Didn't Matilda fry it beautifully! And don't you think the soup was simply
delicious?"
"It certainly was! It was corking! Best soup I've tasted since Heck was a
pup!" But his voice was seeping away. They stood in the hall, under the
electric light in its square box-like shade of red glass bound with nickel.
She stared at him.
"Why, George, you don't sound--you sound as if you hadn't really enjoyed it."
"Sure I did! Course I did!"
"George! What is it?"
"Oh, I'm kind of tired, I guess. Been pounding pretty hard at the office.
Need to get away and rest up a little."
"Well, we're going to Maine in just a few weeks now, dear." "Yuh--" Then he
was pouring it out nakedly, robbed of reticence. "Myra: I think it'd be a
good thing for me to get up there early."
"But you have this man you have to meet in New York about business."
"What man? Oh, sure. Him. Oh, that's all off. But I want to hit Maine
early--get in a little fishing, catch me a big trout, by golly!" A nervous,
artificial laugh.
"Well, why don't we do it? Verona and Matilda can run the house between them,
and you and I can go any time, if you think we can afford it."
"But that's--I've been feeling so jumpy lately, I thought maybe it might be a
good thing if I kind of got off by myself and sweat it out of me."
"George! Don't you WANT me to go along?" She was too wretchedly in earnest
to be tragic, or gloriously insulted, or anything save dumpy and defenseless
and flushed to the red steaminess of a boiled beet.
"Of course I do! I just meant--" Remembering that Paul Riesling had predicted
this, he was as desperate as she. "I mean, sometimes it's a good thing for an
old grouch like me to go off and get it out of his system." He tried to sound
paternal. "Then when you and the kids arrive--I figured maybe I might skip up
to Maine just a few days ahead of you--I'd be ready for a real bat, see how I
mean?" He coaxed her with large booming sounds, with affable smiles, like a
popular preacher blessing an Easter congregation, like a humorous lecturer
completing his stint of eloquence, like all perpetrators of masculine wiles.
She stared at him, the joy of festival drained from her face. "Do I bother you
when we go on vacations? Don't I add anything to your fun?"
He broke. Suddenly, dreadfully, he was hysterical, he was a yelping baby.
"Yes, yes, yes! Hell, yes! But can't you understand I'm shot to pieces? I'm
all in! I got to take care of myself! I tell you, I got to--I'm sick of
everything and everybody! I got to--"
It was she who was mature and protective now. "Why, of course! You shall run
off by yourself! Why don't you get Paul to go along, and you boys just fish
and have a good time?" She patted his shoulder--reaching up to it--while he
shook with palsied helplessness, and in that moment was not merely by habit
fond of her but clung to her strength.
She cried cheerily, "Now up-stairs you go, and pop into bed. We'll fix it all
up. I'll see to the doors. Now skip!"
For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake,
shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom,
and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as
freedom.
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