CHAPTER XXIXI
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, rot 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.
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