CHAPTER XXX

Babbitt

by Sinclair Lewis

CHAPTER XXX, BABBITT by Sinclair Lewis

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 naive 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.