III
He who had once controlled or seemed to control his life
in a progress unimpassioned but diligent and sane was for
that fortnight borne on a current of desire and very bad
whisky and all the complications of new acquaintances, those
furious new intimates who demand so much more attention
than old friends. Each morning he gloomily recognized his
idiocies of the evening before. With his head throbbing, his
tongue and lips stinging from cigarettes, he incredulously
counted the number of drinks he had taken, and groaned, "I
got to quit!'' He had ceased saying, "I willquit!'' for however
resolute he might be at dawn, he could not, for a single
evening, check his drift.
He had met Tanis's friends; he had, with the ardent haste
of the Midnight People, who drink and dance and rattle and
are ever afraid to be silent, been adopted as a member of her
group, which they called "The Bunch.'' He first met them
after a day when he had worked particularly hard and when
he hoped to be quiet with Tanis and slowly sip her admiration.
From down the hall he could hear shrieks and the grind of
a phonograph. As Tanis opened the door he saw fantastic
figures dancing in a haze of cigarette smoke. The tables and
chairs were against the wall.
"Oh, isn't this dandy!'' she gabbled at him. "Carrie Nork
had the loveliest idea. She decided it was time for a party,
and she 'phoned the Bunch and told 'em to gather round.
. . . George, this is Carrie.''
"Carrie'' was, in the less desirable aspects of both, at once
matronly and spinsterish. She was perhaps forty; her hair
was an unconvincing ash-blond; and if her chest was flat,
her hips were ponderous. She greeted Babbitt with a giggling
"Welcome to our little midst! Tanis says you're a real sport.''
He was apparently expected to dance, to be boyish and
gay with Carrie, and he did his unforgiving best. He towed
her about the room, bumping into other couples, into the
radiator, into chair-legs cunningly ambushed. As he danced
he surveyed the rest of the Bunch: A thin young woman who
looked capable, conceited, and sarcastic. Another woman
whom he could never quite remember. Three overdressed
and slightly effeminate young men—soda-fountain clerks, or
at least born for that profession. A man of his own age,
immovable, self-satisfied, resentful of Babbitt's presence.
When he had finished his dutiful dance Tanis took him
aside and begged, "Dear, wouldn't you like to do something
for me? I'm all out of booze, and the Bunch want to celebrate.
Couldn't you just skip down to Healey Hanson's and
get some?''
"Sure,'' he said, trying not to sound sullen.
"I'll tell you: I'll get Minnie Sonntag to drive down with
you.'' Tanis was pointing to the thin, sarcastic young
woman.
Miss Sonntag greeted him with an astringent "How d'you
do, Mr. Babbitt. Tanis tells me you're a very prominent man,
and I'm honored by being allowed to drive with you. Of
course I'm not accustomed to associating with society people
like you, so I don't know how to act in such exalted circles!''
Thus Miss Sonntag talked all the way down to Healey Hanson's.
To her jibes he wanted to reply "Oh, go to the devil!''
but he never quite nerved himself to that reasonable comment.
He was resenting the existence of the whole Bunch.
He had heard Tanis speak of "darling Carrie'' and "Min
Sonntag—she's so clever—you'll adore her,'' but they had
never been real to him. He had pictured Tanis as living in
a rose-tinted vacuum, waiting for him, free of all the complications
of a Floral Heights.
When they returned he had to endure the patronage of the
young soda-clerks. They were as damply friendly as Miss
Sonntag was dryly hostile. They called him "Old Georgie''
and shouted, "Come on now, sport; shake a leg'' . . . boys
in belted coats, pimply boys, as young as Ted and as flabby
as chorus-men, but powerful to dance and to mind the phonograph
and smoke cigarettes and patronize Tanis. He tried to
be one of them; he cried "Good work, Pete!'' but his voice
creaked.
Tanis apparently enjoyed the companionship of the dancing
darlings; she bridled to their bland flirtation and casually
kissed them at the end of each dance. Babbitt hated her, for
the moment. He saw her as middle-aged. He studied the
wrinkles in the softness of her throat, the slack flesh beneath
her chin. The taut muscles of her youth were loose and drooping.
Between dances she sat in the largest chair, waving her
cigarette, summoning her callow admirers to come and talk
to her. ("She thinks she's a blooming queen!'' growled Babbitt.)
She chanted to Miss Sonntag, "Isn't my little studio
sweet?'' ("Studio, rats! It's a plain old-maid-and-chow-dog
flat! Oh, God, I wish I was home! I wonder if I can't make
a getaway now?'')
His vision grew blurred, however, as he applied himself to
Healey Hanson's raw but vigorous whisky. He blended with
the Bunch. He began to rejoice that Carrie Nork and Pete,
the most nearly intelligent of the nimble youths, seemed to
like him; and it was enormously important to win over the
surly older man, who proved to be a railway clerk named
Fulton Bemis.
The conversation of the Bunch was exclamatory, high-colored,
full of references to people whom Babbitt did not
know. Apparently they thought very comfortably of themselves.
They were the Bunch, wise and beautiful and amusing;
they were Bohemians and urbanites, accustomed to all the
luxuries of Zenith: dance-halls, movie-theaters, and road-houses;
and in a cynical superiority to people who were "slow''
or "tightwad'' they cackled:
"Oh, Pete, did I tell you what that dub of a cashier said
when I came in late yesterday? Oh, it was per-fect-ly priceless!''
"Oh, but wasn't T. D. stewed! Say, he was simply ossified!
What did Gladys say to him?''
"Think of the nerve of Bob Bickerstaff trying to get us to
come to his house! Say, the nerve of him! Can you beat it
for nerve? Some nerve I call it!''
"Did you notice how Dotty was dancing? Gee, wasn't
she the limit!''
Babbitt was to be heard sonorously agreeing with the once-hated
Miss Minnie Sonntag that persons who let a night go
by without dancing to jazz music were crabs, pikers, and poor
fish; and he roared "You bet!'' when Mrs. Carrie Nork gurgled,
"Don't you love to sit on the floor? It's so Bohemian!''
He began to think extremely well of the Bunch. When he
mentioned his friends Sir Gerald Doak, Lord Wycombe, William
Washington Eathorne, and Chum Frink, he was proud
of their condescending interest. He got so thoroughly into the
jocund spirit that he didn't much mind seeing Tanis drooping
against the shoulder of the youngest and milkiest of the young
men, and he himself desired to hold Carrie Nork's pulpy hand,
and dropped it only because Tanis looked angry.
When he went home, at two, he was fully a member of the
Bunch, and all the week thereafter he was bound by the exceedingly
straitened conventions, the exceedingly wearing demands,
of their life of pleasure and freedom. He had to go
to their parties; he was involved in the agitation when everybody
telephoned to everybody else that she hadn't meant
what she'd said when she'd said that, and anyway, why was
Pete going around saying she'd said it?
Never was a Family more insistent on learning one another's
movements than were the Bunch. All of them volubly knew,
or indignantly desired to know, where all the others had been
every minute of the week. Babbitt found himself explaining
to Carrie or Fulton Bemis just what he had been doing that
he should not have joined them till ten o'clock, and apologizing
for having gone to dinner with a business acquaintance.
Every member of the Bunch was expected to telephone to
every other member at least once a week. "Why haven't you
called me up?'' Babbitt was asked accusingly, not only by
Tanis and Carrie but presently by new ancient friends, Jennie
and Capitolina and Toots.
If for a moment he had seen Tanis as withering and sentimental,
he lost that impression at Carrie Nork's dance. Mrs.
Nork had a large house and a small husband. To her party
came all of the Bunch, perhaps thirty-five of them when they
were completely mobilized. Babbitt, under the name of "Old
Georgie,'' was now a pioneer of the Bunch, since each month
it changed half its membership and he who could recall the
prehistoric days of a fortnight ago, before Mrs. Absolom, the
food-demonstrator, had gone to Indianapolis, and Mac had
"got sore at'' Minnie, was a venerable leader and able to condescend
to new Petes and Minnies and Gladyses.
At Carrie's, Tanis did not have to work at being hostess.
She was dignified and sure, a clear fine figure in the black
chiffon frock he had always loved; and in the wider spaces
of that ugly house Babbitt was able to sit quietly with her.
He repented of his first revulsion, mooned at her feet, and
happily drove her home. Next day he bought a violent yellow
tie, to make himself young for her. He knew, a little sadly,
that he could not make himself beautiful; he beheld himself
as heavy, hinting of fatness, but he danced, he dressed, he
chattered, to be as young as she was . . . as young as she
seemed to be.
