บทที่ บทที่ 31 · Chapter XXXI

I

When he was away from her, while he kicked about the garage and swept

the snow off the running-board and examined a cracked hose-connection,

he repented, he was alarmed and astonished that he could have flared out

at his wife, and thought fondly how much more lasting she was than the

flighty Bunch. He went in to mumble that he was “sorry, didn’t mean to

be grouchy,” and to inquire as to her interest in movies. But in the

darkness of the movie theater he brooded that he’d “gone and tied

himself up to Myra all over again.” He had some satisfaction in taking

it out on Tanis Judique. “Hang Tanis anyway! Why’d she gone and got him

into these mix-ups and made him all jumpy and nervous and cranky? Too

many complications! Cut ’em out!”

He wanted peace. For ten days he did not see Tanis nor telephone to her,

and instantly she put upon him the compulsion which he hated. When he

had stayed away from her for five days, hourly taking pride in his

resoluteness and hourly picturing how greatly Tanis must miss him, Miss

McGoun reported, “Mrs. Judique on the ’phone. Like t’ speak t’ you ’bout

some repairs.”

Tanis was quick and quiet:

“Mr. Babbitt? Oh, George, this is Tanis. I haven’t seen you for

weeks--days, anyway. You aren’t sick, are you?”

“No, just been terribly rushed. I, uh, I think there’ll be a big revival

of building this year. Got to, uh, got to work hard.”

“Of course, my man! I want you to. You know I’m terribly ambitious for

you; much more than I am for myself. I just don’t want you to forget

poor Tanis. Will you call me up soon?”

“Sure! Sure! You bet!”

“Please do. I sha’n’t call you again.”

He meditated, “Poor kid!... But gosh, she oughtn’t to ’phone me at the

office.... She’s a wonder--sympathy--‘ambitious for me.’... But gosh, I

won’t be made and compelled to call her up till I get ready. Darn these

women, the way they make demands! It’ll be one long old time before I

see her!... But gosh, I’d like to see her to-night--sweet little

thing.... Oh, cut that, son! Now you’ve broken away, be wise!”

She did not telephone again, nor he, but after five more days she wrote

to him:

Have I offended you? You must know, dear, I didn’t mean to. I’m so

lonely and I need somebody to cheer me up. Why didn’t you come to

the nice party we had at Carrie’s last evening I remember she

invited you. Can’t you come around here to-morrow Thur evening? I

shall be alone and hope to see you.

His reflections were numerous:

“Doggone it, why can’t she let me alone? Why can’t women ever learn a

fellow hates to be bulldozed? And they always take advantage of you by

yelling how lonely they are.

“Now that isn’t nice of you, young fella. She’s a fine, square, straight

girl, and she does get lonely. She writes a swell hand. Nice-looking

stationery. Plain. Refined. I guess I’ll have to go see her. Well, thank

God, I got till to-morrow night free of her, anyway.

“She’s nice but-- Hang it, I won’t be _made_ to do things! I’m not

married to her. No, nor by golly going to be!

“Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her.”

II

Thursday, the to-morrow of Tanis’s note, was full of emotional crises.

At the Roughnecks’ Table at the club, Verg Gunch talked of the Good

Citizens’ League and (it seemed to Babbitt) deliberately left him out of

the invitations to join. Old Mat Penniman, the general utility man at

Babbitt’s office, had Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his

oldest boy was “no good,” his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with

his brother-in-law. Conrad Lyte also had Troubles, and since Lyte was

one of his best clients, Babbitt had to listen to them. Mr. Lyte, it

appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and the

garage had overcharged him. When Babbitt came home, everybody had

Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the

impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave; and Tinka desired to

denounce her teacher.

“Oh, quit fussing!” Babbitt fussed. “You never hear me whining about my

Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office-- Why, to-day I

found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched

my finger in my desk, and Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever.”

He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape

to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, “Got to go out. Be back by

eleven, should think.”

“Oh! You’re going out again?”

“Again! What do you mean ‘again’! Haven’t hardly been out of the house

for a week!”

“Are you--are you going to the Elks?”

“Nope. Got to see some people.”

Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt,

though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into

the hall, jerked on his ulster and fur-lined gloves, and went out to

start the car.

He was relieved to find Tanis cheerful, unreproachful, and brilliant in

a frock of brown net over gold tissue. “You poor man, having to come out

on a night like this! It’s terribly cold. Don’t you think a small

highball would be nice?”

“Now, by golly, there’s a woman with savvy! I think we could more or

less stand a highball if it wasn’t too long a one--not over a foot

tall!”

He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot the compulsion of her

demands, he stretched in a large chair and felt that he had beautifully

come home. He was suddenly loquacious; he told her what a noble and

misunderstood man he was, and how superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and

the other men of their acquaintance; and she, bending forward, chin in

charming hand, brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to ask,

“Well, honey, how’s things with _you_,” she took his duty-question

seriously, and he discovered that she too had Troubles:

“Oh, all right but-- I did get so angry with Carrie. She told Minnie that

I told her that Minnie was an awful tightwad, and Minnie told me Carrie

had told her, and of course I told her I hadn’t said anything of the

kind, and then Carrie found Minnie had told me, and she was simply

furious because Minnie had told me, and of course I was just boiling

because Carrie had told her I’d told her, and then we all met up at

Fulton’s--his wife is away--thank heavens!--oh, there’s the dandiest

floor in his house to dance on--and we were all of us simply furious at

each other and-- Oh, I do hate that kind of a mix-up, don’t you? I

mean--it’s so lacking in refinement, but-- And Mother wants to come and

stay with me for a whole month, and of course I do love her, I suppose I

do, but honestly, she’ll cramp my style something dreadful--she never

can learn not to comment, and she always wants to know where I’m going

when I go out evenings, and if I lie to her she always spies around and

ferrets around and finds out where I’ve been, and then she looks like

Patience on a Monument till I could just scream. And oh, I _must_ tell

you-- You know I _never_ talk about myself; I just hate people who do,

don’t you? But-- I feel so stupid to-night, and I know I must be boring

you with all this but-- What would you do about Mother?”

He gave her facile masculine advice. She was to put off her mother’s

stay. She was to tell Carrie to go to the deuce. For these valuable

revelations she thanked him, and they ambled into the familiar gossip of

the Bunch. Of what a sentimental fool was Carrie. Of what a lazy brat

was Pete. Of how nice Fulton Bemis could be--“course lots of people

think he’s a regular old grouch when they meet him because he doesn’t

give ’em the glad hand the first crack out of the box, but when they get

to know him, he’s a corker.”

But as they had gone conscientiously through each of these analyses

before, the conversation staggered. Babbitt tried to be intellectual and

deal with General Topics. He said some thoroughly sound things about

Disarmament, and broad-mindedness and liberalism; but it seemed to him

that General Topics interested Tanis only when she could apply them to

Pete, Carrie, or themselves. He was distressingly conscious of their

silence. He tried to stir her into chattering again, but silence rose

like a gray presence and hovered between them.

“I, uh--” he labored. “It strikes me--it strikes me that unemployment is

lessening.”

“Maybe Pete will get a decent job, then.”

Silence.

Desperately he essayed, “What’s the trouble, old honey? You seem kind of

quiet to-night.”

“Am I? Oh, I’m not. But--do you really care whether I am or not?”

“Care? Sure! Course I do!”

“Do you really?” She swooped on him, sat on the arm of his chair.

He hated the emotional drain of having to appear fond of her. He

stroked her hand, smiled up at her dutifully, and sank back.

“George, I wonder if you really like me at all?”

“Course I do, silly.”

“Do you really, precious? Do you care a bit?”

“Why certainly! You don’t suppose I’d be here if I didn’t!”

“Now see here, young man, I won’t have you speaking to me in that huffy

way!”

“I didn’t mean to sound huffy. I just--” In injured and rather childish

tones: “Gosh almighty, it makes me tired the way everybody says I sound

huffy when I just talk natural! Do they expect me to sing it or

something?”

“Who do you mean by ‘everybody’? How many other ladies have you been

consoling?”

“Look here now, I won’t have this hinting!”

Humbly: “I know, dear. I was only teasing. I know it didn’t mean to talk

huffy--it was just tired. Forgive bad Tanis. But say you love me, say

it!”

“I love you.... Course I do.”

“Yes, you do!” cynically. “Oh, darling, I don’t mean to be rude but-- I

get so lonely. I feel so useless. Nobody needs me, nothing I can do for

anybody. And you know, dear, I’m so active-- I could be if there was

something to do. And I _am_ young, aren’t I! I’m not an old thing! I’m

not old and stupid, am I?”

He had to assure her. She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased

under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness. He was

impatient. He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world.

Through her delicate and caressing fingers she may have caught something

of his shrugging distaste. She left him--he was for the moment buoyantly

relieved--she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking

beseechingly up at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the

flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and

jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now as

middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own

thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how the

soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her

eyes, at the base of her wrists. A patch of her throat had a minute

roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old! She was younger in

years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him

with rolling great eyes--as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making

love to him.

He fretted inwardly, “I’m through with this asinine fooling around. I’m

going to cut her out. She’s a darn decent nice woman, and I don’t want

to hurt her, but it’ll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good

clean surgical operation.”

He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By every rule of

self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself, that it was her

fault.

“I suppose maybe I’m kind of out of sorts to-night, but honest, honey,

when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and

figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited

till I came back. Can’t you see, dear, when you _made_ me come, I--being

about an average bull-headed chump--my tendency was to resist? Listen,

dear, I’m going now--”

“Not for a while, precious! No!”

“Yep. Right now. And then sometime we’ll see about the future.”

“What do you mean, dear, ‘about the future’? Have I done something I

oughtn’t to? Oh, I’m so dreadfully sorry!”

He resolutely put his hands behind him. “Not a thing, God bless you, not

a thing. You’re as good as they make ’em. But it’s just-- Good Lord, do

you realize I’ve got things to do in the world? I’ve got a business to

attend to and, you might not believe it, but I’ve got a wife and kids

that I’m awful fond of!” Then only during the murder he was committing

was he able to feel nobly virtuous. “I want us to be friends but, gosh,

I can’t go on this way feeling I _got_ to come up here every so often--”

“Oh, darling, darling, and I’ve always told you, so carefully, that you

were absolutely free. I just wanted you to come around when you were

tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you could enjoy our parties--”

She was so reasonable, she was so gently right! It took him an hour to

make his escape, with nothing settled and everything horribly settled.

In a barren freedom of icy Northern wind he sighed, “Thank God that’s

over! Poor Tanis, poor darling decent Tanis! But it is over. Absolute!

I’m free!”