Before nine he set out for the house of Lawyer Maxwell. He was received without cordiality. "Well?" said Maxwell.
"I want to offer my services in the trial. I"ve got an idea. Why couldn"t I go on the stand and swear I was there, and she pulled the gun first and he wrestled with her and the gun went off accidentally?"
"And perjure yourself?"
"Huh? Yes, I suppose it would be perjury. Oh--Would it help?"
"But, my dear fellow! Perjury!"
"Oh, don"t be a fool! Excuse me, Maxwell; I didn"t mean to get your goat. I just mean: I"ve known and you"ve known many and many a case of perjury, just to annex some rotten little piece of real estate, and here where it"s a case of saving Paul from going to prison, I"d perjure myself black in the face."
"No. Aside from the ethics of the matter, I"m afraid it isn"t practicable. The prosecutor would tear your testimony to pieces. It"s known that only Riesling and his wife were there at the time."
"Then, look here! Let me go on the stand and swear--and this would be the G.o.d"s truth--that she pestered him till he kind of went crazy."
"No. Sorry. Riesling absolutely refuses to have any testimony reflecting on his wife. He insists on pleading guilty."
"Then let me get up and testify something--whatever you say. Let me do SOMETHING!"
"I"m sorry, Babbitt, but the best thing you can do--I hate to say it, but you could help us most by keeping strictly out of it."
Babbitt, revolving his hat like a defaulting poor tenant, winced so visibly that Maxwell condescended:
"I don"t like to hurt your feelings, but you see we both want to do our best for Riesling, and we mustn"t consider any other factor. The trouble with you, Babbitt, is that you"re one of these fellows who talk too readily. You like to hear your own voice. If there were anything for which I could put you in the witness-box, you"d get going and give the whole show away. Sorry. Now I must look over some papers--So sorry."
II
He spent most of the next morning nerving himself to face the garrulous world of the Athletic Club. They would talk about Paul; they would be lip-licking and rotten. But at the Roughnecks" Table they did not mention Paul. They spoke with zeal of the coming baseball season. He loved them as he never had before.
III
He had, doubtless from some story-book, pictured Paul"s trial as a long struggle, with bitter arguments, a taut crowd, and sudden and overwhelming new testimony. Actually, the trial occupied less than fifteen minutes, largely filled with the evidence of doctors that Zilla would recover and that Paul must have been temporarily insane. Next day Paul was sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary and taken off--quite undramatically, not handcuffed, merely plodding in a tired way beside a cheerful deputy sheriff--and after saying good-by to him at the station Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless.
CHAPTER XXIII
I
HE was busy, from March to June. He kept himself from the bewilderment of thinking. His wife and the neighbors were generous. Every evening he played bridge or attended the movies, and the days were blank of face and silent.
In June, Mrs. Babbitt and Tinka went East, to stay with relatives, and Babbitt was free to do--he was not quite sure what.
All day long after their departure he thought of the emanc.i.p.ated house in which he could, if he desired, go mad and curse the G.o.ds without having to keep up a husbandly front. He considered, "I could have a reg"lar party to-night; stay out till two and not do any explaining afterwards. Cheers!" He telephoned to Vergil Gunch, to Eddie Swanson.
Both of them were engaged for the evening, and suddenly he was bored by having to take so much trouble to be riotous.
He was silent at dinner, unusually kindly to Ted and Verona, hesitating but not disapproving when Verona stated her opinion of Kenneth Escott"s opinion of Dr. John Jennison Drew"s opinion of the opinions of the evolutionists. Ted was working in a garage through the summer vacation, and he related his daily triumphs: how he had found a cracked ball-race, what he had said to the Old Grouch, what he had said to the foreman about the future of wireless telephony.
Ted and Verona went to a dance after dinner. Even the maid was out.
Rarely had Babbitt been alone in the house for an entire evening. He was restless. He vaguely wanted something more diverting than the newspaper comic strips to read. He ambled up to Verona"s room, sat on her maidenly blue and white bed, humming and grunting in a solid-citizen manner as he examined her books: Conrad"s "Rescue," a volume strangely named "Figures of Earth," poetry (quite irregular poetry, Babbitt thought) by Vachel Lindsay, and essays by H. L. Mencken--highly improper essays, making fun of the church and all the decencies. He liked none of the books. In them he felt a spirit of rebellion against niceness and solid-citizenship.
These authors--and he supposed they were famous ones, too--did not seem to care about telling a good story which would enable a fellow to forget his troubles. He sighed. He noted a book, "The Three Black Pennies,"
by Joseph Hergesheimer. Ah, that was something like it! It would be an adventure story, maybe about counterfeiting--detectives sneaking up on the old house at night. He tucked the book under his arm, he clumped down-stairs and solemnly began to read, under the piano-lamp:
"A twilight like blue dust sifted into the shallow fold of the thickly wooded hills. It was early October, but a crisping frost had already stamped the maple trees with gold, the Spanish oaks were hung with patches of wine red, the sumach was brilliant in the darkening underbrush. A pattern of wild geese, flying low and unconcerned above the hills, wavered against the serene ashen evening. Howat Penny, standing in the comparative clearing of a road, decided that the shifting regular flight would not come close enough for a shot.... He had no intention of hunting the geese. With the drooping of day his keenness had evaporated; an habitual indifference strengthened, permeating him...."
There it was again: discontent with the good common ways. Babbitt laid down the book and listened to the stillness. The inner doors of the house were open. He heard from the kitchen the steady drip of the refrigerator, a rhythm demanding and disquieting. He roamed to the window. The summer evening was foggy and, seen through the wire screen, the street lamps were crosses of pale fire. The whole world was abnormal. While he brooded, Verona and Ted came in and went up to bed. Silence thickened in the sleeping house. He put on his hat, his respectable derby, lighted a cigar, and walked up and down before the house, a portly, worthy, unimaginative figure, humming "Silver Threads among the Gold." He casually considered, "Might call up Paul." Then he remembered. He saw Paul in a jailbird"s uniform, but while he agonized he didn"t believe the tale. It was part of the unreality of this fog-enchanted evening.
If she were here Myra would be hinting, "Isn"t it late, Georgie?" He tramped in forlorn and unwanted freedom. Fog hid the house now. The world was uncreated, a chaos without turmoil or desire.
Through the mist came a man at so feverish a pace that he seemed to dance with fury as he entered the orb of glow from a street-lamp. At each step he brandished his stick and brought it down with a crash. His gla.s.ses on their broad pretentious ribbon banged against his stomach.
Babbitt incredulously saw that it was Chum Frink.
Frink stopped, focused his vision, and spoke with gravity:
"There"s another fool. George Babbitt. Lives for renting howshes--houses. Know who I am? I"m traitor to poetry. I"m drunk. I"m talking too much. I don"t care. Know what I could "ve been? I could "ve been a Gene Field or a James Whitcomb Riley. Maybe a Stevenson.
I could "ve. Whimsies. "Magination. Lissen. Lissen to this. Just made it up:
Glittering summery meadowy noise Of beetles and b.u.ms and respectable boys.
Hear that? Whimzh--whimsy. I made that up. I don"t know what it means!
Beginning good verse. Chile"s Garden Verses. And whadi write? Tripe!
Cheer-up poems. All tripe! Could have written--Too late!"
He darted on with an alarming plunge, seeming always to pitch forward yet never quite falling. Babbitt would have been no more astonished and no less had a ghost skipped out of the fog carrying his head.
He accepted Frink with vast apathy; he grunted, "Poor b.o.o.b!" and straightway forgot him.
He plodded into the house, deliberately went to the refrigerator and rifled it. When Mrs. Babbitt was at home, this was one of the major household crimes. He stood before the covered laundry tubs, eating a chicken leg and half a saucer of raspberry jelly, and grumbling over a clammy cold boiled potato. He was thinking. It was coming to him that perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practised it was futile; that heaven as portrayed by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew was neither probable nor very interesting; that he hadn"t much pleasure out of making money; that it was of doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children who would rear children. What was it all about? What did he want?
He blundered into the living-room, lay on the davenport, hands behind his head.
What did he want? Wealth? Social position? Travel? Servants? Yes, but only incidentally.
"I give it up," he sighed.
But he did know that he wanted the presence of Paul Riesling; and from that he stumbled into the admission that he wanted the fairy girl--in the flesh. If there had been a woman whom he loved, he would have fled to her, humbled his forehead on her knees.
He thought of his stenographer, Miss McGoun. He thought of the prettiest of the manicure girls at the Hotel Thornleigh barber shop. As he fell asleep on the davenport he felt that he had found something in life, and that he had made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal.
II
He had forgotten, next morning, that he was a conscious rebel, but he was irritable in the office and at the eleven o"clock drive of telephone calls and visitors he did something he had often desired and never dared: he left the office without excuses to those stave-drivers his employees, and went to the movies. He enjoyed the right to be alone. He came out with a vicious determination to do what he pleased.
As he approached the Roughnecks" Table at the club, everybody laughed.
"Well, here"s the millionaire!" said Sidney Finkelstein.