CHAPTER XXIV

Our Mr. Wrenn

by Sinclair Lewis

CHAPTER XXIV, OUR MR. WRENN by Sinclair Lewis

I

HIS visit to Paul was as unreal as his night of fog and questioning. Unseeing
he went through prison corridors stinking of carbolic acid to a room lined
with pale yellow settees pierced in rosettes, like the shoe-store benches he
had known as a boy. The guard led in Paul. Above his uniform of linty gray,
Paul's face was pale and without expression. He moved timorously in response
to the guard's commands; he meekly pushed Babbitt's gifts of tobacco and
magazines across the table to the guard for examination. He had nothing to
say but "Oh, I'm getting used to it" and "I'm working in the tailor shop; the
stuff hurts my fingers."

Babbitt knew that in this place of death Paul was already dead. And as he
pondered on the train home something in his own self seemed to have died: a
loyal and vigorous faith in the goodness of the world, a fear of public
disfavor, a pride in success. He was glad that his wife was away. He admitted
it without justifying it. He did not care.


II

Her card read "Mrs. Daniel Judique." Babbitt knew of her as the widow of a
wholesale paper-dealer. She must have been forty or forty-two but he thought
her younger when he saw her in the office, that afternoon. She had come to
inquire about renting an apartment, and he took her away from the unskilled
girl accountant. He was nervously attracted by her smartness. She was a
slender woman, in a black Swiss frock dotted with white, a cool-looking
graceful frock. A broad black hat shaded her face. Her eyes were lustrous,
her soft chin of an agreeable plumpness, and her cheeks an even rose. Babbitt
wondered afterward if she was made up, but no man living knew less of such
arts.

She sat revolving her violet parasol. Her voice was appealing without being
coy. "I wonder if you can help me?"

"Be delighted."

"I've looked everywhere and--I want a little flat, just a bedroom, or perhaps
two, and sitting-room and kitchenette and bath, but I want one that really has
some charm to it, not these dingy places or these new ones with terrible gaudy
chandeliers. And I can't pay so dreadfully much. My name's Tanis Judique."

"I think maybe I've got just the thing for you. Would you like to chase
around and look at it now?"

"Yes. I have a couple of hours."

In the new Cavendish Apartments, Babbitt had a flat which he had been holding
for Sidney Finkelstein, but at the thought of driving beside this agreeable
woman he threw over his friend Finkelstein, and with a note of gallantry he
proclaimed, "I'll let you see what I can do!"

He dusted the seat of the car for her, and twice he risked death in showing
off his driving.

"You do know how to handle a car!" she said.

He liked her voice. There was, he thought, music in it and a hint of culture,
not a bouncing giggle like Louetta Swanson's.

He boasted, "You know, there's a lot of these fellows that are so scared and
drive so slow that they get in everybody's way. The safest driver is a fellow
that knows how to handle his machine and yet isn't scared to speed up when
it's necessary, don't you think so?"

"Oh, yes!"

"I bet you drive like a wiz."

"Oh, no--I mean--not really. Of course, we had a car--I mean, before my
husband passed on--and I used to make believe drive it, but I don't think any
woman ever learns to drive like a man."

"Well, now, there's some mighty good woman drivers."

"Oh, of course, these women that try to imitate men, and play golf and
everything, and ruin their complexions and spoil their hands!"

"That's so. I never did like these mannish females."

"I mean--of course, I admire them, dreadfully, and I feel so weak and useless
beside them."

"Oh, rats now! I bet you play the piano like a wiz."

"Oh, no--I mean--not really."

"Well, I'll bet you do!" He glanced at her smooth hands, her diamond and ruby
rings. She caught the glance, snuggled her hands together with a kittenish
curving of slim white fingers which delighted him, and yearned:

"I do love to play--I mean--I like to drum on the piano, but I haven't had any
real training. Mr. Judique used to say I would 've been a good pianist if I'd
had any training, but then, I guess he was just flattering me."

"I'll bet he wasn't! I'll bet you've got temperament."

"Oh--Do you like music, Mr Babbitt?"

"You bet I do! Only I don't know 's I care so much for all this classical
stuff."

"Oh, I do! I just love Chopin and all those."

"Do you, honest? Well, of course, I go to lots of these highbrow concerts,
but I do like a good jazz orchestra, right up on its toes, with the fellow
that plays the bass fiddle spinning it around and beating it up with the bow."

"Oh, I know. I do love good dance music. I love to dance, don't you, Mr.
Babbitt?"

"Sure, you bet. Not that I'm very darn good at it, though."

"Oh, I'm sure you are. You ought to let me teach you. I can teach anybody to
dance."

"Would you give me a lesson some time?"

"Indeed I would."

"Better be careful, or I'll be taking you up on that proposition. I'll be
coming up to your flat and making you give me that lesson."

"Ye-es." She was not offended, but she was non-committal. He warned himself,
"Have some sense now, you chump! Don't go making a fool of yourself again!"
and with loftiness he discoursed:

"I wish I could dance like some of these young fellows, but I'll tell you: I
feel it's a man's place to take a full, you might say, a creative share in the
world's work and mold conditions and have something to show for his life,
don't you think so?"

"Oh, I do!"

"And so I have to sacrifice some of the things I might like to tackle, though
I do, by golly, play about as good a game of golf as the next fellow!"

"Oh, I'm sure you do.... Are you married?"

"Uh--yes.... And, uh, of course official duties I'm the vice-president of the
Boosters' Club, and I'm running one of the committees of the State Association
of Real Estate Boards, and that means a lot of work and responsibility--and
practically no gratitude for it."

"Oh, I know! Public men never do get proper credit."

They looked at each other with a high degree of mutual respect, and at the
Cavendish Apartments he helped her out in a courtly manner, waved his hand at
the house as though he were presenting it to her, and ponderously ordered the
elevator boy to "hustle and get the keys." She stood close to him in the
elevator, and he was stirred but cautious.

It was a pretty flat, of white woodwork and soft blue walls. Mrs. Judique
gushed with pleasure as she agreed to take it, and as they walked down the
hall to the elevator she touched his sleeve, caroling, "Oh, I'm so glad I went
to you! It's such a privilege to meet a man who really Understands. Oh! The
flats SOME people have showed me!"

He had a sharp instinctive belief that he could put his arm around her, but he
rebuked himself and with excessive politeness he saw her to the car, drove her
home. All the way back to his office he raged:

"Glad I had some sense for once.... Curse it, I wish I'd tried. She's a
darling! A corker! A reg'lar charmer! Lovely eyes and darling lips and that
trim waist--never get sloppy, like some women.... No, no, no! She's a real
cultured lady. One of the brightest little women I've met these many moons.
Understands about Public Topics and--But, darn it, why didn't I try? . . .
Tanis!"


III

He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that he was turning toward
youth, as youth. The girl who especially disturbed him--though he had never
spoken to her--was the last manicure girl on the right in the Pompeian Barber
Shop. She was small, swift, black-haired, smiling. She was nineteen,
perhaps, or twenty. She wore thin salmon-colored blouses which exhibited her
shoulders and her black-ribboned camisoles.

He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim. As always, he felt
disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber Shop. Then,
for the first time, he overthrew his sense of guilt. "Doggone it, I don't have
to go here if I don't want to! I don't own the Reeves Building! These barbers
got nothing on me! I'll doggone well get my hair cut where I doggone well want
to! Don't want to hear anything more about it! I'm through standing by
people--unless I want to. It doesn't get you anywhere. I'm through!"

The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh, largest
and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith. Curving marble steps with a rail
of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the barber shop. The
interior was of black and white and crimson tiles, with a sensational ceiling
of burnished gold, and a fountain in which a massive nymph forever emptied a
scarlet cornucopia. Forty barbers and nine manicure girls worked desperately,
and at the door six colored porters lurked to greet the customers, to care
reverently for their hats and collars, to lead them to a place of waiting
where, on a carpet like a tropic isle in the stretch of white stone floor,
were a dozen leather chairs and a table heaped with magazines.

Babbitt's porter was an obsequious gray-haired negro who did him an honor
highly esteemed in the land of Zenith--greeted him by name. Yet Babbitt was
unhappy. His bright particular manicure girl was engaged. She was doing the
nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him. Babbitt hated him. He
thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful system of the Pompeian was
inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted into a chair.

About him was luxury, rich and delicate. One votary was having a violet-ray
facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo. Boys wheeled about miraculous
electrical massage-machines. The barbers snatched steaming towels from a
machine like a howitzer of polished nickel and disdainfully flung them away
after a second's use. On the vast marble shelf facing the chairs were hundreds
of tonics, amber and ruby and emerald. It was flattering to Babbitt to have
two personal slaves at once--the barber and the bootblack. He would have been
completely happy if he could also have had the manicure girl. The barber
snipped at his hair and asked his opinion of the Havre de Grace races, the
baseball season, and Mayor Prout. The young negro bootblack hummed "The Camp
Meeting Blues" and polished in rhythm to his tune, drawing the shiny shoe-rag
so taut at each stroke that it snapped like a banjo string. The barber was an
excellent salesman. He made Babbitt feel rich and important by his manner of
inquiring, "What is your favorite tonic, sir? Have you time to-day, sir, for
a facial massage? Your scalp is a little tight; shall I give you a scalp
massage?"

Babbitt's best thrill was in the shampoo. The barber made his hair creamy
with thick soap, then (as Babbitt bent over the bowl, muffled in towels)
drenched it with hot water which prickled along his scalp, and at last ran the
water ice-cold. At the shock, the sudden burning cold on his skull, Babbitt's
heart thumped, his chest heaved, and his spine was an electric wire. It was a
sensation which broke the monotony of life. He looked grandly about the shop
as he sat up. The barber obsequiously rubbed his wet hair and bound it in a
towel as in a turban, so that Babbitt resembled a plump pink calif on an
ingenious and adjustable throne. The barber begged (in the manner of one who
was a good fellow yet was overwhelmed by the splendors of the calif), "How
about a little Eldorado Oil Rub, sir? Very beneficial to the scalp, sir.
Didn't I give you one the last time?"

He hadn't, but Babbitt agreed, "Well, all right."

With quaking eagerness he saw that his manicure girl was free.

"I don't know, I guess I'll have a manicure after all," he droned, and
excitedly watched her coming, dark-haired, smiling, tender, little. The
manicuring would have to be finished at her table, and he would be able to
talk to her without the barber listening. He waited contentedly, not trying to
peep at her, while she filed his nails and the barber shaved him and smeared
on his burning cheeks all the interesting mixtures which the pleasant minds of
barbers have devised through the revolving ages. When the barber was done and
he sat opposite the girl at her table, he admired the marble slab of it,
admired the sunken set bowl with its tiny silver taps, and admired himself for
being able to frequent so costly a place. When she withdrew his wet hand from
the bowl, it was so sensitive from the warm soapy water that he was abnormally
aware of the clasp of her firm little paw. He delighted in the pinkness and
glossiness of her nails. Her hands seemed to him more adorable than Mrs.
Judique's thin fingers, and more elegant. He had a certain ecstasy in the
pain when she gnawed at the cuticle of his nails with a sharp knife. He
struggled not to look at the outline of her young bosom and her shoulders, the
more apparent under a film of pink chiffon. He was conscious of her as an
exquisite thing, and when he tried to impress his personality on her he spoke
as awkwardly as a country boy at his first party:

"Well, kinda hot to be working to-day."

"Oh, yes, it is hot. You cut your own nails, last time, didn't you!"

"Ye-es, guess I must 've."

"You always ought to go to a manicure."

"Yes, maybe that's so. I--"

"There's nothing looks so nice as nails that are looked after good. I always
think that's the best way to spot a real gent. There was an auto salesman in
here yesterday that claimed you could always tell a fellow's class by the car
he drove, but I says to him, 'Don't be silly,' I says; 'the wisenheimers grab
a look at a fellow's nails when they want to tell if he's a tin-horn or a real
gent!"'

"Yes, maybe there's something to that. Course, that is--with a pretty kiddy
like you, a man can't help coming to get his mitts done."

"Yeh, I may be a kid, but I'm a wise bird, and I know nice folks when I see
um--I can read character at a glance--and I'd never talk so frank with a
fellow if I couldn't see he was a nice fellow."

She smiled. Her eyes seemed to him as gentle as April pools. With great
seriousness he informed himself that "there were some roughnecks who would
think that just because a girl was a manicure girl and maybe not awful well
educated, she was no good, but as for him, he was a democrat, and understood
people," and he stood by the assertion that this was a fine girl, a good
girl--but not too uncomfortably good. He inquired in a voice quick with
sympathy:

"I suppose you have a lot of fellows who try to get fresh with you."

"Say, gee, do I! Say, listen, there's some of these cigar-store sports that
think because a girl's working in a barber shop, they can get away with
anything. The things they saaaaaay! But, believe me, I know how to hop those
birds! I just give um the north and south and ask um, 'Say, who do you think
you're talking to?' and they fade away like love's young nightmare and oh,
don't you want a box of nail-paste? It will keep the nails as shiny as when
first manicured, harmless to apply and lasts for days."

"Sure, I'll try some. Say--Say, it's funny; I've been coming here ever since
the shop opened and--" With arch surprise. "--I don't believe I know your
name!"

"Don't you? My, that's funny! I don't know yours!"

"Now you quit kidding me! What's the nice little name?"

"Oh, it ain't so darn nice. I guess it's kind of kike. But my folks ain't
kikes. My papa's papa was a nobleman in Poland, and there was a gentleman in
here one day, he was kind of a count or something--"

"Kind of a no-account, I guess you mean!"

"Who's telling this, smarty? And he said he knew my papa's papa's folks in
Poland and they had a dandy big house. Right on a lake!" Doubtfully, "Maybe
you don't believe it?"

"Sure. No. Really. Sure I do. Why not? Don't think I'm kidding you, honey,
but every time I've noticed you I've said to myself, 'That kid has Blue Blood
in her veins!'"

"Did you, honest?"

"Honest I did. Well, well, come on--now we're friends--what's the darling
little name?"

"Ida Putiak. It ain't so much-a-much of a name. I always say to Ma, I say,
'Ma, why didn't you name me Doloress or something with some class to it?'"

"Well, now, I think it's a scrumptious name. Ida!"

"I bet I know your name!"

"Well, now, not necessarily. Of course--Oh, it isn't so specially well
known."

"Aren't you Mr. Sondheim that travels for the Krackajack Kitchen Kutlery Ko.?"

"I am not! I'm Mr. Babbitt, the real-estate broker!"

"Oh, excuse me! Oh, of course. You mean here in Zenith."

"Yep." With the briskness of one whose feelings have been hurt.

"Oh, sure. I've read your ads. They're swell."

"Um, well--You might have read about my speeches."

"Course I have! I don't get much time to read but--I guess you think I'm an
awfully silly little nit!"

"I think you're a little darling!"

"Well--There's one nice thing about this job. It gives a girl a chance to
meet some awfully nice gentlemen and improve her mind with conversation, and
you get so you can read a guy's character at the first glance."

"Look here, Ida; please don't think I'm getting fresh--" He was hotly
reflecting that it would be humiliating to be rejected by this child, and
dangerous to be accepted. If he took her to dinner, if he were seen by
censorious friends--But he went on ardently: "Don't think I'm getting fresh
if I suggest it would be nice for us to go out and have a little dinner
together some evening."

"I don't know as I ought to but--My gentleman-friend's always wanting to take
me out. But maybe I could to-night."


IV

There was no reason, he assured himself, why he shouldn't have a quiet dinner
with a poor girl who would benefit by association with an educated and mature
person like himself. But, lest some one see them and not understand, he would
take her to Biddlemeier's Inn, on the outskirts of the city. They would have a
pleasant drive, this hot lonely evening, and he might hold her hand--no, he
wouldn't even do that. Ida was complaisant; her bare shoulders showed it only
too clearly; but he'd be hanged if he'd make love to her merely because she
expected it.

Then his car broke down; something had happened to the ignition. And he HAD to
have the car this evening! Furiously he tested the spark-plugs, stared at the
commutator. His angriest glower did not seem to stir the sulky car, and in
disgrace it was hauled off to a garage. With a renewed thrill he thought of a
taxicab. There was something at once wealthy and interestingly wicked about a
taxicab.

But when he met her, on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Thornleigh, she
said, "A taxi? Why, I thought you owned a car!"

"I do. Of course I do! But it's out of commission to-night."

"Oh," she remarked, as one who had heard that tale before.

All the way out to Biddlemeier's Inn he tried to talk as an old friend, but he
could not pierce the wall of her words. With interminable indignation she
narrated her retorts to "that fresh head-barber" and the drastic things she
would do to him if he persisted in saying that she was "better at gassing than
at hoof-paring."

At Biddlemeier's Inn they were unable to get anything to drink. The
head-waiter refused to understand who George F. Babbitt was. They sat steaming
before a vast mixed grill, and made conversation about baseball. When he
tried to hold Ida's hand she said with bright friendliness, "Careful! That
fresh waiter is rubbering." But they came out into a treacherous summer night,
the air lazy and a little moon above transfigured maples.

"Let's drive some other place, where we can get a drink and dance!" he
demanded.

"Sure, some other night. But I promised Ma I'd be home early to-night."

"Rats! It's too nice to go home."

"I'd just love to, but Ma would give me fits."

He was trembling. She was everything that was young and exquisite. He put his
arm about her. She snuggled against his shoulder, unafraid, and he was
triumphant. Then she ran down the steps of the Inn, singing, "Come on,
Georgie, we'll have a nice drive and get cool."

It was a night of lovers. All along the highway into Zenith, under the low
and gentle moon, motors were parked and dim figures were clasped in revery. He
held out hungry hands to Ida, and when she patted them he was grateful. There
was no sense of struggle and transition; he kissed her and simply she
responded to his kiss, they two behind the stolid back of the chauffeur.

Her hat fell off, and she broke from his embrace to reach for it.

"Oh, let it be!" he implored.

"Huh? My hat? Not a chance!"

He waited till she had pinned it on, then his arm sank about her. She drew
away from it, and said with maternal soothing, "Now, don't be a silly boy!
Mustn't make Ittle Mama scold! Just sit back, dearie, and see what a swell
night it is. If you're a good boy, maybe I'll kiss you when we say
nighty-night. Now give me a cigarette."

He was solicitous about lighting her cigarette and inquiring as to her
comfort. Then he sat as far from her as possible. He was cold with failure.
No one could have told Babbitt that he was a fool with more vigor, precision,
and intelligence than he himself displayed. He reflected that from the
standpoint of the Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew he was a wicked man, and from
the standpoint of Miss Ida Putiak, an old bore who had to be endured as the
penalty attached to eating a large dinner.

"Dearie, you aren't going to go and get peevish, are you?"

She spoke pertly. He wanted to spank her. He brooded, "I don't have to take
anything off this gutter-pup! Darn immigrant! Well, let's get it over as quick
as we can, and sneak home and kick ourselves for the rest of the night."

He snorted, "Huh? Me peevish? Why, you baby, why should I be peevish? Now,
listen, Ida; listen to Uncle George. I want to put you wise about this
scrapping with your head-barber all the time. I've had a lot of experience
with employees, and let me tell you it doesn't pay to antagonize--"

At the drab wooden house in which she lived he said good-night briefly and
amiably, but as the taxicab drove off he was praying "Oh, my God!"