IV
"Ted's a good boy,'' he said to Mrs. Babbitt.
"Oh, he is!''
"Who's these girls he's going to pick up? Are they nice
decent girls?''
"I don't know. Oh dear, Ted never tells me anything any
more. I don't understand what's come over the children of
this generation. I used to have to tell Papa and Mama everything,
but seems like the children to-day have just slipped away
from all control.''
"I hope they're decent girls. Course Ted's no longer a kid,
and I wouldn't want him to, uh, get mixed up and everything.''
"George: I wonder if you oughtn't to take him aside and
tell him about—Things!'' She blushed and lowered her eyes.
"Well, I don't know. Way I figure it, Myra, no sense
suggesting a lot of Things to a boy's mind. Think up enough
devilment by himself. But I wonder— It's kind of a hard
question. Wonder what Littlefield thinks about it?''
"Course Papa agrees with you. He says all this—Instruction—
is— He says 'tisn't decent.''
"Oh, he does, does he! Well, let me tell you that whatever
Henry T. Thompson thinks—about morals, I mean, though
course you can't beat the old duffer—''
"Why, what a way to talk of Papa!''
"—simply can't beat him at getting in on the ground floor
of a deal, but let me tell you whenever he springs any ideas
about higher things and education, then I know I think just
the opposite. You may not regard me as any great brain-shark,
but believe me, I'm a regular college president, compared
with Henry T.! Yes sir, by golly, I'm going to take Ted
aside and tell him why I lead a strictly moral life.''
"Oh, will you? When?''
"When? When? What's the use of trying to pin me down
to When and Why and Where and How and When? That's
the trouble with women, that's why they don't make high-class
executives; they haven't any sense of diplomacy. When the
proper opportunity and occasion arises so it just comes in natural,
why then I'll have a friendly little talk with him and—
and— Was that Tinka hollering up-stairs? She ought to been
asleep, long ago.''
He prowled through the living-room, and stood in the sun-parlor,
that glass-walled room of wicker chairs and swinging
couch in which they loafed on Sunday afternoons. Outside
only the lights of Doppelbrau's house and the dim presence
of Babbitt's favorite elm broke the softness of April night.
"Good visit with the boy. Getting over feeling cranky,
way I did this morning. And restless. Though, by golly, I will
have a few days alone with Paul in Maine! . . . That devil
Zilla! . . . But . . . Ted's all right. Whole family all right.
And good business. Not many fellows make four hundred and
fifty bucks, practically half of a thousand dollars easy as I
did to-day! Maybe when we all get to rowing it's just as much
my fault as it is theirs. Oughtn't to get grouchy like I do.
But— Wish I'd been a pioneer, same as my grand-dad. But
then, wouldn't have a house like this. I— Oh, gosh,
I
don't
know!''
He thought moodily of Paul Riesling, of their youth together,
of the girls they had known.
When Babbitt had graduated from the State University,
twenty-four years ago, he had intended to be a lawyer. He
had been a ponderous debater in college; he felt that he was an
orator; he saw himself becoming governor of the state. While
he read law he worked as a real-estate salesman. He saved
money, lived in a boarding-house, supped on poached egg on
hash. The lively Paul Riesling (who was certainly going off
to Europe to study violin, next month or next year) was his
refuge till Paul was bespelled by Zilla Colbeck, who laughed
and danced and drew men after her plump and gaily wagging
finger.
Babbitt's evenings were barren then, and he found comfort
only in Paul's second cousin, Myra Thompson, a sleek and gentle
girl who showed her capacity by agreeing with the ardent
young Babbitt that of course he was going to be governor some
day. Where Zilla mocked him as a country boy, Myra said
indignantly that he was ever so much solider than the young
dandies who had been born in the great city of Zenith—an
ancient settlement in 1897, one hundred and five years old,
with two hundred thousand population, the queen and wonder
of all the state and, to the Catawba boy, George Babbitt, so
vast and thunderous and luxurious that he was flattered to
know a girl ennobled by birth in Zenith.
Of love there was no talk between them. He knew that if he
was to study law he could not marry for years; and Myra
was distinctly a Nice Girl—one didn't kiss her, one didn't
"think about her that way at all'' unless one was going to
marry her. But she was a dependable companion. She was
always ready to go skating, walking; always content to hear
his discourses on the great things he was going to do, the
distressed poor whom he would defend against the Unjust Rich,
the speeches he would make at Banquets, the inexactitudes
of popular thought which he would correct.
One evening when he was weary and soft-minded, he saw
that she had been weeping. She had been left out of a party
given by Zilla. Somehow her head was on his shoulder and he
was kissing away the tears—and she raised her head to say
trustingly, "Now that we're engaged, shall we be married soon
or shall we wait?''
Engaged? It was his first hint of it. His affection for this
brown tender woman thing went cold and fearful, but he
could not hurt her, could not abuse her trust. He mumbled
something about waiting, and escaped. He walked for an hour,
trying to find a way of telling her that it was a mistake. Often,
in the month after, he got near to telling her, but it was pleasant
to have a girl in his arms, and less and less could he insult
her by blurting that he didn't love her. He himself had no
doubt. The evening before his marriage was an agony, and
the morning wild with the desire to flee.
She made him what is known as a Good Wife. She was
loyal, industrious, and at rare times merry. She passed from
a feeble disgust at their closer relations into what promised to
be ardent affection, but it drooped into bored routine. Yet
she existed only for him and for the children, and she was as
sorry, as worried as himself, when he gave up the law and
trudged on in a rut of listing real estate.
"Poor kid, she hasn't had much better time than I have,''
Babbitt reflected, standing in the dark sun-parlor. "But— I
wish I could 've had a whirl at law and politics. Seen what
I could do. Well— Maybe I've made more money as it is.''
He returned to the living-room but before he settled down
he smoothed his wife's hair, and she glanced up, happy and
somewhat surprised.