I
No apartment-house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented
in condensation than the Revelstoke Arms, in which
Paul and Zilla Riesling had a flat. By sliding the beds into
low closets the bedrooms were converted into living-rooms.
The kitchens were cupboards each containing an electric range,
a copper sink, a glass refrigerator, and, very intermittently, a
Balkan maid. Everything about the Arms was excessively
modern, and everything was compressed—except the garages.
The Babbitts were calling on the Rieslings at the Arms. It
was a speculative venture to call on the Rieslings; interesting
and sometimes disconcerting. Zilla was an active, strident,
full-blown, high-bosomed blonde. When she condescended to
be good-humored she was nervously amusing. Her comments
on people were saltily satiric and penetrative of accepted
hypocrisies. "That's so!'' you said, and looked sheepish. She
danced wildly, and called on the world to be merry, but in the
midst of it she would turn indignant. She was always becoming
indignant. Life was a plot against her and she exposed
it furiously.
She was affable to-night. She merely hinted that Orville
Jones wore a toupé, that Mrs. T. Cholmondeley Frink's singing
resembled a Ford going into high, and that the Hon. Otis
Deeble, mayor of Zenith and candidate for Congress, was a
flatulent fool (which was quite true). The Babbitts and
Rieslings sat doubtfully on stone-hard brocade chairs in the
small living-room of the flat, with its mantel unprovided with
a fireplace, and its strip of heavy gilt fabric upon a glaring
new player-piano, till Mrs. Riesling shrieked, "Come on! Let's
put some pep in it! Get out your fiddle, Paul, and I'll try
to make Georgie dance decently.''
The Babbitts were in earnest. They were plotting for the
escape to Maine. But when Mrs. Babbitt hinted with plump
smilingness, "Does Paul get as tired after the winter's work
as Georgie does?'' then Zilla remembered an injury; and when
Zilla Riesling remembered an injury the world stopped till
something had been done about it.
"Does he get tired? No, he doesn't get tired, he just goes
crazy, that's all! You think Paul is so reasonable, oh, yes, and
he loves to make out he's a little lamb, but he's stubborn as
a mule. Oh, if you had to live with him—! You'd find out
how sweet he is! He just pretends to be meek so he can have
his own way. And me, I get the credit for being a terrible old
crank, but if I didn't blow up once in a while and get something
started, we'd die of dry-rot. He never wants to go any
place and— Why, last evening, just because the car was out
of order—and that was his fault, too, because he ought to have
taken it to the service-station and had the battery looked at—
and he didn't want to go down to the movies on the trolley.
But we went, and then there was one of those impudent conductors,
and Paul wouldn't do a thing.
"I was standing on the platform waiting for the people to
let me into the car, and this beast, this conductor, hollered at
me, `Come on, you, move up!' Why, I've never had anybody
speak to me that way in all my life! I was so astonished I
just turned to him and said—I thought there must be some
mistake, and so I said to him, perfectly pleasant, `Were you
speaking to me?' and he went on and bellowed at me, `Yes,
I was! You're keeping the whole car from starting!' he said,
and then I saw he was one of these dirty ill-bred hogs that
kindness is wasted on, and so I stopped and looked right at
him, and I said, `I—beg—your—pardon, I am not doing anything
of the kind,' I said, `it's the people ahead of me, who
won't move up,' I said, `and furthermore, let me tell you, young
man, that you're a low-down, foul-mouthed, impertinent skunk,'
I said, `and you're no gentleman! I certainly intend to report
you, and we'll see,' I said, `whether a lady is to be insulted by
any drunken bum that chooses to put on a ragged uniform, and
I'd thank you,' I said, `to keep your filthy abuse to yourself.'
And then I waited for Paul to show he was half a man and
come to my defense, and he just stood there and pretended he
hadn't heard a word, and so I said to him, `Well,' I said—''
"Oh, cut it, cut it, Zill!'' Paul groaned. "We all know I'm
a mollycoddle, and you're a tender bud, and let's let it go at
that.''
"Let it go?'' Zilla's face was wrinkled like the Medusa, her
voice was a dagger of corroded brass. She was full of the joy
of righteousness and bad temper. She was a crusader and,
like every crusader, she exulted in the opportunity to be vicious
in the name of virtue. "Let it go? If people knew how many
things I've let go—''
"Oh, quit being such a bully.''
"Yes, a fine figure you'd cut if I didn't bully you! You'd
lie abed till noon and play your idiotic fiddle till midnight!
You're born lazy, and you're born shiftless, and you're born
cowardly, Paul Riesling—''
"Oh, now, don't say that, Zilla; you don't mean a word of
it!'' protested Mrs. Babbitt.
"I will say that, and I mean every single last word of it!''
"Oh, now, Zilla, the idea!'' Mrs. Babbitt was maternal
and fussy. She was no older than Zilla, but she seemed so—
at first. She was placid and puffy and mature, where Zilla,
at forty-five, was so bleached and tight-corseted that you knew
only that she was older than she looked. "The idea of talking
to poor Paul like that!''
"Poor Paul is right! We'd both be poor, we'd be in the
poorhouse, if I didn't jazz him up!''
"Why, now, Zilla, Georgie and I were just saying how hard
Paul's been working all year, and we were thinking it would
be lovely if the Boys could run off by themselves. I've been
coaxing George to go up to Maine ahead of the rest of us,
and get the tired out of his system before we come, and I
think it would be lovely if Paul could manage to get away and
join him.''
At this exposure of his plot to escape, Paul was startled out
of impassivity. He rubbed his fingers. His hands twitched.
Zilla bayed, "Yes! You're lucky! You can let George go,
and not have to watch him. Fat old Georgie! Never peeps
at another woman! Hasn't got the spunk!''
"The hell I haven't!'' Babbitt was fervently defending his
priceless immorality when Paul interrupted him—and Paul
looked dangerous. He rose quickly; he said gently to Zilla:
"I suppose you imply I have a lot of sweethearts.''
"Yes, I do!''
"Well, then, my dear, since you ask for it— There hasn't
been a time in the last ten years when I haven't found some
nice little girl to comfort me, and as long as you continue your
amiability I shall probably continue to deceive you. It isn't
hard. You're so stupid.''
Zilla gibbered; she howled; words could not be distinguished
in her slaver of abuse.
Then the bland George F. Babbitt was transformed. If
Paul was dangerous, if Zilla was a snake-locked fury, if the
neat emotions suitable to the Revelstoke Arms had been slashed
into raw hatreds, it was Babbitt who was the most formidable.
He leaped up. He seemed very large. He seized Zilla's shoulder.
The cautions of the broker were wiped from his face, and
his voice was cruel:
"I've had enough of all this damn nonsense! I've known
you for twenty-five years, Zil, and I never knew you to miss a
chance to take your disappointments out on Paul. You're not
wicked. You're worse. You're a fool. And let me tell you
that Paul is the finest boy God ever made. Every decent
person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of being a
woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of.
Who the hell are you that a person like Paul should have to
ask your
permission to go with me? You act like
you were a
combination of Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool, can't
you see how people snicker at you, and sneer at you?''
Zilla was sobbing, "I've never—I've never—nobody ever
talked to me like this in all my life!''
"No, but that's the way they talk behind your back! Always!
They say you're a scolding old woman. Old, by God!''
That cowardly attack broke her. Her eyes were blank. She
wept. But Babbitt glared stolidly. He felt that he was the
all-powerful official in charge; that Paul and Mrs. Babbitt
looked on him with awe; that he alone could handle this case.
Zilla writhed. She begged, "Oh, they don't!''
"They certainly do!''
"I've been a bad woman! I'm terribly sorry! I'll kill myself!
I'll do anything. Oh, I'll— What do you want?''
She abased herself completely. Also, she enjoyed it. To
the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a
thorough, melodramatic, egoistic humility.
"I want you to let Paul beat it off to Maine with me,'' Babbitt
demanded.
"How can I help his going? You've just said I was an idiot
and nobody paid any attention to me.''
"Oh, you can help it, all right, all right! What you got to
do is to cut out hinting that the minute he gets out of your
sight, he'll go chasing after some petticoat. Matter fact, that's
the way you start the boy off wrong. You ought to have more
sense—''
"Oh, I will, honestly, I will, George. I know I was bad.
Oh, forgive me, all of you, forgive me—''
She enjoyed it.
So did Babbitt. He condemned magnificently and forgave
piously, and as he went parading out with his wife he was
grandly explanatory to her:
"Kind of a shame to bully Zilla, but course it was the only
way to handle her. Gosh, I certainly did have her crawling!''
She said calmly, "Yes. You were horrid. You were showing
off. You were having a lovely time thinking what a great
fine person you were!''
"Well, by golly! Can you beat it! Of course I might of
expected you to not stand by me! I might of expected you'd
stick up for your own sex!''
"Yes. Poor Zilla, she's so unhappy. She takes it out on
Paul. She hasn't a single thing to do, in that little flat. And
she broods too much. And she used to be so pretty and gay,
and she resents losing it. And you were just as nasty and mean
as you could be. I'm not a bit proud of you—or of Paul,
boasting about his horrid love-affairs!''
He was sulkily silent; he maintained his bad temper at a
high level of outraged nobility all the four blocks home. At
the door he left her, in self-approving haughtiness, and tramped
the lawn.
With a shock it was revealed to him: "Gosh, I wonder if
she was right—if she was partly right?'' Overwork must have
flayed him to abnormal sensitiveness; it was one of the few
times in his life when he had queried his eternal excellence;
and he perceived the summer night, smelled the wet grass.
Then: "I don't care! I've pulled it off. We're going to have
our spree. And for Paul, I'd do anything.''
