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 furlined
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 broadmindedness
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!''
