บทที่ บทที่ 29 · Chapter XXIX

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 things 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.