บทที่ บทที่ 30 · Chapter XXX

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 naïve 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.