Babbit (36 page)

  And he waited for three hours.

  He was sitting fixed, chilled, when the doorknob
turned. Paul came in glowering.

  "Hello," Paul said. "Been waiting?"

  "Yuh, little while."

  "Well?"

  "Well what? Just thought I'd drop in to see how you
made out in Akron."

  "I did all right. What difference does it make?"

  "Why, gosh, Paul, what are you sore about?"

  "What are you butting into my affairs for?"

  "Why, Paul, that's no way to talk! I'm not butting
into nothing. I was so glad to see your ugly old phiz that I just
dropped in to say howdy."

  "Well, I'm not going to have anybody following me
around and trying to boss me. I've had all of that I'm going to
stand!"

  "Well, gosh, I'm not - "

  "I didn't like the way you looked at May Arnold, or
the snooty way you talked."

  "Well, all right then! If you think I'm a buttinsky,
then I'll just butt in! I don't know who your May Arnold is, but I
know doggone good and well that you and her weren't talking about
tar-roofing, no, nor about playing the violin, neither! If you
haven't got any moral consideration for yourself, you ought to have
some for your position in the community. The idea of your going
around places gawping into a female's eyes like a love-sick pup! I
can understand a fellow slipping once, but I don't propose to see a
fellow that's been as chummy with me as you have getting started on
the downward path and sneaking off from his wife, even as cranky a
one as Zilla, to go woman-chasing - "

  "Oh, you're a perfectly moral little husband!"

  "I am, by God! I've never looked at any woman except
Myra since I've been married - practically - and I never will! I
tell you there's nothing to immorality. It don't pay. Can't you
see, old man, it just makes Zilla still crankier?"

  Slight of resolution as he was of body, Paul threw
his snow-beaded overcoat on the floor and crouched on a flimsy cane
chair. "Oh, you're an old blowhard, and you know less about
morality than Tinka, but you're all right, Georgie. But you can't
understand that - I'm through. I can't go Zilla's hammering any
longer. She's made up her mind that I'm a devil, and - Reg'lar
Inquisition. Torture. She enjoys it. It's a game to see how sore
she can make me. And me, either it's find a little comfort, any
comfort, anywhere, or else do something a lot worse. Now this Mrs.
Arnold, she's not so young, but she's a fine woman and she
understands a fellow, and she's had her own troubles."

  "Yea! I suppose she's one of these hens whose
husband 'doesn't understand her'!"

  "I don't know. Maybe. He was killed in the war."

  Babbitt lumbered up, stood beside Paul patting his
shoulder, making soft apologetic noises.

  "Honest, George, she's a fine woman, and she's had
one hell of a time. We manage to jolly each other up a lot. We tell
each other we're the dandiest pair on earth. Maybe we don't believe
it, but it helps a lot to have somebody with whom you can be
perfectly simple, and not all this discussing - explaining - "

  "And that's as far as you go?"

  "It is not! Go on! Say it!"

  "Well, I don't - I can't say I like it, but - " With
a burst which left him feeling large and shining with generosity,
"it's none of my darn business! I'll do anything I can for you, if
there's anything I can do."

  "There might be. I judge from Zilla's letters that
've been forwarded from Akron that she's getting suspicious about
my staying away so long. She'd be perfectly capable of having me
shadowed, and of coming to Chicago and busting into a hotel
dining-room and bawling me out before everybody."

  "I'll take care of Zilla. I'll hand her a good
fairy-story when I get back to Zenith."

  "I don't know - I don't think you better try it.
You're a good fellow. but I don't know that diplomacy is your
strong point." Babbitt looked hurt, then irritated. "I mean with
women! With women, I mean. Course they got to go some to beat you
in business diplomacy, but I just mean with women. Zilla may do a
lot of rough talking, but she's pretty shrewd. She'd have the story
out of you in no time."

  "Well, all right, but - " Babbitt was still pathetic
at not being allowed to play Secret Agent. Paul soothed:

  "Course maybe you might tell her you'd been in Akron
and seen me there."

  "Why, sure, you bet! Don't I have to go look at that
candy-store property in Akron? Don't I? Ain't it a shame I have to
stop off there when I'm so anxious to get home? Ain't it a regular
shame? I'll say it is! I'll say it's a doggone shame!"

  "Fine. But for glory hallelujah's sake don't go
putting any fancy fixings on the story. When men lie they always
try to make it too artistic, and that's why women get suspicious.
And - Let's have a drink, Georgie. I've got some gin and a little
vermouth."

  The Paul who normally refused a second cocktail took
a second now, and a third. He became red-eyed and thick-tongued. He
was embarrassingly jocular and salacious.

  In the taxicab Babbitt incredulously found tears
crowding into his eyes.

  II

  He had not told Paul of his plan but he did stop at
Akron, between trains, for the one purpose of sending to Zilla a
postcard with "Had to come here for the day, ran into Paul." In
Zenith he called on her. If for public appearances Zilla was
over-coiffed, over-painted, and resolutely corseted, for private
misery she wore a filthy blue dressing-gown and torn stockings
thrust into streaky pink satin mules. Her face was sunken. She
seemed to have but half as much hair as Babbitt remembered, and
that half was stringy. She sat in a rocker amid a debris of
candy-boxes and cheap magazines, and she sounded dolorous when she
did not sound derisive. But Babbitt was exceedingly breezy:

  "Well, well, Zil, old dear, having a good loaf while
hubby's away? That's the ideal I'll bet a hat Myra never got up
till ten, while I was in Chicago. Say, could I borrow your thermos
- just dropped in to see if I could borrow your thermos bottle.
We're going to have a toboggan party - want to take some coffee
mit. Oh, did you get my card from Akron, saying I'd run into
Paul?"

  "Yes. What was he doing?"

  "How do you mean?" He unbuttoned his overcoat, sat
tentatively on the arm of a chair.

  "You know how I mean!" She slapped the pages of a
magazine with an irritable clatter. "I suppose he was trying to
make love to some hotel waitress or manicure girl or somebody."

  "Hang it, you're always letting on that Paul goes
round chasing skirts. He doesn't, in the first place, and if he
did, it would prob'ly be because you keep hinting at him and
dinging at him so much. I hadn't meant to, Zilla, but since Paul is
away, in Akron - "

  "He really is in Akron? I know he has some horrible
woman that he writes to in Chicago."

  "Didn't I tell you I saw him in Akron? What 're you
trying to do? Make me out a liar?"

  "No, but I just - I get so worried."

  "Now, there you are! That's what gets me! Here you
love Paul, and yet you plague him and cuss him out as if you hated
him. I simply can't understand why it is that the more some folks
love people, the harder they try to make 'em miserable."

  "You love Ted and Rone - I suppose - and yet you nag
them."

  "Oh. Well. That. That's different. Besides, I don't
nag 'em. Not what you'd call nagging. But zize saying: Now, here's
Paul, the nicest, most sensitive critter on God's green earth. You
ought to be ashamed of yourself the way you pan him. Why, you talk
to him like a washerwoman. I'm surprised you can act so doggone
common, Zilla!"

  She brooded over her linked fingers. "Oh, I know. I
do go and get mean sometimes, and I'm sorry afterwards. But, oh,
Georgie, Paul is so aggravating! Honestly, I've tried awfully hard,
these last few years, to be nice to him, but just because I used to
be spiteful - or I seemed so; I wasn't, really, but I used to speak
up and say anything that came into my head - and so he made up his
mind that everything was my fault. Everything can't always be my
fault, can it? And now if I get to fussing, he just turns silent,
oh, so dreadfully silent, and he won't look at me - he just ignores
me. He simply isn't human! And he deliberately keeps it up till I
bust out and say a lot of things I don't mean. So silent - Oh, you
righteous men! How wicked you are! How rotten wicked!"

  They thrashed things over and over for half an hour.
At the end, weeping drably, Zilla promised to restrain herself.

  Paul returned four days later, and the Babbitts and
Rieslings went festively to the movies and had chop suey at a
Chinese restaurant. As they walked to the restaurant through a
street of tailor shops and barber shops, the two wives in front,
chattering about cooks, Babbitt murmured to Paul, "Zil seems a lot
nicer now."

  "Yes, she has been, except once or twice. But it's
too late now. I just - I'm not going to discuss it, but I'm afraid
of her. There's nothing left. I don't ever want to see her. Some
day I'm going to break away from her. Somehow."

  
T
HE International
Organization of Boosters' Clubs has be come a world-force for
optimism, manly pleasantry, and good business. Chapters are to be
found now in thirty countries. Nine hundred and twenty of the
thousand chapters, however, are in the United States.

  None of these is more ardent than the Zenith
Boosters' Club.

  The second March lunch of the Zenith Boosters was
the most important of the year, as it was to be followed by the
annual election of officers. There was agitation abroad. The lunch
was held in the ballroom of the O'Hearn House. As each of the four
hundred Boosters entered he took from a wall-board a huge celluloid
button announcing his name, his nick name, and his business. There
was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow Booster by anything
but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbitt jovially checked his
hat the air was radiant with shouts of "Hello, Chet!" and "How're
you, Shorty!" and "Top o' the mornin', Mac!"

  They sat at friendly tables for eight, choosing
places by lot. Babbitt was with Albert Boos the merchant tailor,
Hector Seybolt of the Little Sweetheart Condensed Milk Company,
Emil Wengert the jeweler, Professor Pumphrey of the Riteway
Business College, Dr. Walter Gorbutt, Roy Teegarten the
photographer, and Ben Berkey the photo-engraver. One of the merits
of the Boosters' Club was that only two persons from each
department of business were permitted to join, so that you at once
encountered the Ideals of other occupations, and realized the
metaphysical oneness of all occupations - plumbing and
portait-painting, medicine and the manufacture of chewing-gum.

  Babbitt's table was particularly happy to-day,
because Professor Pumphrey had just had a birthday, and was
therefore open to teasing.

  "Let's pump Pump about how old he is!" said Emil
Wengert.

  "No, let's paddle him with a dancing-pump!" said Ben
Berkey.

  But it was Babbitt who had the applause, with "Don't
talk about pumps to that guy! The only pump he knows is a bottle!
Honest, they tell me he's starting a class in home-brewing at the
ole college!"

  At each place was the Boosters' Club booklet,
listing the members. Though the object of the club was
good-fellowship, yet they never lost sight of the importance of
doing a little more business. After each name was the member's
occupation. There were scores of advertisements in the booklet, and
on one page the admonition: "There's no rule that you have to trade
with your Fellow Boosters, but get wise, boy - what's the use of
letting all this good money get outside of our happy fambly?" And
at each place, to-day, there was a present; a card printed in
artistic red and black:

SERVICE AND BOOSTERISM