II
Ted was planning a party for his set in the Senior Class.
Babbitt meant to be helpful and jolly about it. From his
memory of high-school pleasures back in Catawba he suggested
the nicest games: Going to Boston, and charades with stew-pans
for helmets, and word-games in which you were an Adjective
or a Quality. When he was most enthusiastic he discovered
that they weren't paying attention; they were only
tolerating him. As for the party, it was as fixed and standardized
as a Union Club Hop. There was to be dancing in the
living-room, a noble collation in the dining-room, and in the
hall two tables of bridge for what Ted called "the poor old
dumb-bells that you can't get to dance hardly more 'n half the
time.''
Every breakfast was monopolized by conferences on the
affair. No one listened to Babbitt's bulletins about the February
weather or to his throat-clearing comments on the headlines.
He said furiously, "If I may be permitted to
interrupt
your engrossing private conversation— Juh hear
what I said?''
"Oh, don't be a spoiled baby! Ted and I have just as much
right to talk as you have!'' flared Mrs. Babbitt.
On the night of the party he was permitted to look on, when
he was not helping Matilda with the Vecchia ice cream and
the petits fours. He was deeply disquieted. Eight years ago,
when Verona had given a high-school party, the children had
been featureless gabies. Now they were men and women of
the world, very supercilious men and women; the boys condescended
to Babbitt, they wore evening-clothes, and with
hauteur they accepted cigarettes from silver cases. Babbitt
had heard stories of what the Athletic Club called "goings
on'' at young parties; of girls "parking'' their corsets in the
dressing-room, of "cuddling'' and "petting,'' and a presumable
increase in what was known as Immorality. To-night he believed
the stories. These children seemed bold to him, and
cold. The girls wore misty chiffon, coral velvet, or cloth of
gold, and around their dipping bobbed hair were shining
wreaths. He had it, upon urgent and secret inquiry, that no
corsets were known to be parked upstairs; but certainly these
eager bodies were not stiff with steel. Their stockings were
of lustrous silk, their slippers costly and unnatural, their lips
carmined and their eyebrows penciled. They danced cheek
to cheek with the boys, and Babbitt sickened with apprehension
and unconscious envy.
Worst of them all was Eunice Littlefield, and maddest of
all the boys was Ted. Eunice was a flying demon. She slid
the length of the room; her tender shoulders swayed; her feet
were deft as a weaver's shuttle; she laughed, and enticed Babbitt
to dance with her.
Then he discovered the annex to the party.
The boys and girls disappeared occasionally, and he remembered
rumors of their drinking together from hip-pocket
flasks. He tiptoed round the house, and in each of the dozen
cars waiting in the street he saw the points of light from
cigarettes, from each of them heard high giggles. He wanted
to denounce them but (standing in the snow, peering round
the dark corner) he did not dare. He tried to be tactful.
When he had returned to the front hall he coaxed the boys,
"Say, if any of you fellows are thirsty, there's some dandy
ginger ale.''
"Oh! Thanks!'' they condescended.
He sought his wife, in the pantry, and exploded, "I'd like
to go in there and throw some of those young pups out of the
house! They talk down to me like I was the butler! I'd
like to—''
"I know,'' she sighed; "only everybody says, all the mothers
tell me, unless you stand for them, if you get angry because
they go out to their cars to have a drink, they won't come to
your house any more, and we wouldn't want Ted left out of
things, would we?''
He announced that he would be enchanted to have Ted left
out of things, and hurried in to be polite, lest Ted be left out
of things.
But, he resolved, if he found that the boys were drinking,
he would—well, he'd "hand 'em something that would surprise
'em.'' While he was trying to be agreeable to large-shouldered
young bullies he was earnestly sniffing at them
Twice he caught the reek of prohibition-time whisky, but then,
it was only twice—
Dr. Howard Littlefield lumbered in.
He had come, in a mood of solemn parental patronage, to
look on. Ted and Eunice were dancing, moving together like
one body. Littlefield gasped. He called Eunice. There was
a whispered duologue, and Littlefield explained to Babbitt that
Eunice's mother had a headache and needed her. She went
off in tears. Babbitt looked after them furiously. "That
little devil! Getting Ted into trouble! And Littlefield, the
conceited old gas-bag, acting like it was Ted that was the
bad influence!''
Later he smelled whisky on Ted's breath.
After the civil farewell to the guests, the row was terrific,
a thorough Family Scene, like an avalanche, devastating and
without reticences. Babbitt thundered, Mrs. Babbitt wept,
Ted was unconvincingly defiant, and Verona in confusion as
to whose side she was taking.
For several months there was coolness between the Babbitts
and the Littlefields, each family sheltering their lamb from
the wolf-cub next door. Babbitt and Littlefield still spoke in
pontifical periods about motors and the senate, but they kept
bleakly away from mention of their families. Whenever
Eunice came to the house she discussed with pleasant intimacy
the fact that she had been forbidden to come to the house;
and Babbitt tried, with no success whatever, to be fatherly
and advisory with her.