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Babbitt
Chapter XXXIII
I
He tried to explain to his wife, as they prepared for
bed, how objectionable was Sheldon Smeeth, but all her
answer was, He has such a beautiful voice so spiritual.
I dont think you ought to speak of him like that just
because you cant appreciate music! He saw her then as
a stranger; he stared bleakly at this plump and fussy
woman with the broad bare arms, and wondered how she
had ever come here.
In his chilly cot, turning from aching side to side, he
pondered of Tanis. Hed been a fool to lose her. He had
to have somebody he could really talk to. Hed oh,
hed BUST if he went on stewing about things by himself.
And Myra, useless to expect her to understand. Well, rats,
no use dodging the issue. Darn shame for two married
people to drift apart after all these years; darn rotten
shame; but nothing could bring them together now, as
long as he refused to let Zenith bully him into taking
orders and he was by golly not going to let anybody
bully him into anything, or wheedle him or coax him
either!
He woke at three, roused by a passing motor, and
struggled out of bed for a drink of water. As he passed
through the bedroom he heard his wife groan. His resentment
was night-blurred; he was solicitous in inquiring, Whats
the trouble, hon?
Ive got such a pain down here in my side oh, its
just it tears at me.
Bad indigestion? Shall I get you some bicarb?
Dont think that would help. I felt funny last evening
and yesterday, and then oh! it passed away and I got
to sleep and That auto woke me up.
Her voice was laboring like a ship in a storm. He was
alarmed.
I better call the doctor.
No, no! Itll go away. But maybe you might get me an
ice-bag.
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Sinclair Lewis
He stalked to the bathroom for the ice-bag, down to the
kitchen for ice. He felt dramatic in this late-night expedition,
but as he gouged the chunk of ice with the dagger-like
pick he was cool, steady, mature; and the old friendliness
was in his voice as he patted the ice-bag into place on her
groin, rumbling, There, there, thatll be better now. He
retired to bed, but he did not sleep. He heard her groan
again. Instantly he was up, soothing her, Still pretty bad,
honey?
Yes, it just gripes me, and I cant get to sleep.
Her voice was faint. He knew her dread of doctors
verdicts and he did not inform her, but he creaked downstairs, telephoned to Dr. Earl Patten, and waited, shivering,
trying with fuzzy eyes to read a magazine, till he heard the
doctors car.
The doctor was youngish and professionally breezy. He
came in as though it were sunny noontime. Well, George,
little trouble, eh? How is she now? he said busily as, with
tremendous and rather irritating cheerfulness, he tossed
his coat on a chair and warmed his hands at a radiator. He
took charge of the house. Babbitt felt ousted and unimportant
as he followed the doctor up to the bedroom, and it was
the doctor who chuckled, Oh, just little stomach-ache
when Verona peeped through her door, begging, What is
it, Dad, what is it?
To Mrs Babbitt the doctor said with amiable belligerence,
after his examination, Kind of a bad old pain, eh? Ill give
you something to make you sleep, and I think youll feel
better in the morning. Ill come in right after breakfast.
But to Babbitt, lying in wait in the lower hall, the doctor
sighed, I dont like the feeling there in her belly. Theres
some rigidity and some inflammation. Shes never had her
appendix out has she? Um. Well, no use worrying. Ill be
here first thing in the morning, and meantime shell get
some rest. Ive given her a hypo. Good night.
Then was Babbitt caught up in the black tempest.
Instantly all the indignations which had been dominating
him and the spiritual dramas through which he had
struggled became pallid and absurd before the ancient and
overwhelming realities, the standard and traditional realities,
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Babbitt
of sickness and menacing death, the long night, and the
thousand steadfast implications of married life. He crept
back to her. As she drowsed away in the tropic languor of
morphia, he sat on the edge of her bed, holding her hand,
and for the first time in many weeks her hand abode
trustfully in his.
He draped himself grotesquely in his toweling bathrobe
and a pink and white couch-cover, and sat lumpishly in a
wing-chair. The bedroom was uncanny in its half-light,
which turned the curtains to lurking robbers, the dressingtable to a turreted castle. It smelled of cosmetics, of linen,
of sleep. He napped and woke, napped and woke, a
hundred times. He heard her move and sigh in slumber;
he wondered if there wasnt some officious brisk thing he
could do for her, and before he could quite form the
thought he was asleep, racked and aching. The night was
infinite. When dawn came and the waiting seemed at an
end, he fell asleep, and was vexed to have been caught off
his guard, to have been aroused by Veronas entrance and
her agitated Oh, what is it, Dad?
His wife was awake, her face sallow and lifeless in the
morning light, but now he did not compare her with
Tanis; she was not merely A Woman, to be contrasted with
other women, but his own self, and though he might
criticize her and nag her, it was only as he might criticize
and nag himself, interestedly, unpatronizingly, without the
expectation of changing or any real desire to change
the eternal essence.
With Verona he sounded fatherly again, and firm. He
consoled Tinka, who satisfactorily pointed the excitement
of the hour by wailing. He ordered early breakfast, and
wanted to look at the newspaper, and felt somehow heroic
and useful in not looking at it. But there were still
crawling and totally unheroic hours of waiting before
Dr Patten returned.
Dont see much change, said Patten. Ill be back
about eleven, and if you dont mind, I think Ill bring in
some other world-famous pill-pedler for consultation,
just to be on the safe side. Now George, theres nothing
you can do. Ill have Verona keep the ice-bag filled
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Sinclair Lewis
might as well leave that on, I guess and you, you
better beat it to the office instead of standing around
her looking as if you were the patient. The nerve of
husbands! Lot more neurotic than the women! They
always have to horn in and get all the credit for feeling
bad when their wives are ailing. Now have another nice
cup of coffee and git!
Under this derision Babbitt became more matter-of-fact.
He drove to the office, tried to dictate letters, tried to
telephone and, before the call was answered, forgot to
whom he was telephoning. At a quarter after ten he
returned home. As he left the down-town traffic and sped
up the car, his face was as grimly creased as the mask of
tragedy.
His wife greeted him with surprise. Why did you come
back, dear? I think I feel a little better. I told Verona to
skip off to her office. Was it wicked of me to go and get
sick?
He knew that she wanted petting, and she got it,
joyously. They were curiously happy when he heard
Dr Pattens car in front. He looked out of the window. He
was frightened. With Patten was an impatient man with
turbulent black hair and a hussar mustache Dr A. I. Dilling,
the surgeon. Babbitt sputtered with anxiety, tried to conceal
it, and hurried down to the door.
Dr Patten was profusely casual: Dont want to worry
you, old man, but I thought it might be a good stunt to
have Dr Dilling examine her. He gestured toward Dilling
as toward a master.
Dilling nodded in his curtest manner and strode upstairs Babbitt tramped the living-room in agony. Except for
his wifes confinements there had never been a major
operation in the family, and to him surgery was at once a
miracle and an abomination of fear. But when Dilling and
Patten came down again he knew that everything was all
right, and he wanted to laugh, for the two doctors were
exactly like the bearded physicians in a musical comedy,
both of them rubbing their hands and looking foolishly
sagacious.
Dr Dilling spoke:
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Babbitt
Im sorry, old man, but its acute appendicitis. We
ought to operate. Of course you must decide, but theres
no question as to what has to be done.
Babbitt did not get all the force of it. He mumbled,
Well I suppose we could get her ready in a couple odays.
Probably Ted ought to come down from the university, just
in case anything happened.
Dr Dilling growled, Nope. If you dont want peritonitis
to set in, well have to operate right away. I must advise
it strongly. If you say go ahead, Ill phone for the St.
Marys ambulance at once, and well have her on the table
in three-quarters of an hour.
I I Of course, I suppose you know what But great
God, man, I cant get her clothes ready and everything in
two seconds, you know! And in her state, so wrought-up
and weak
Just throw her hair-brush and comb and tooth-brush in
a bag; thats all shell need for a day or two, said Dr
Dilling, and went to the telephone.
Babbitt galloped desperately up-stairs. He sent the
frightened Tinka out of the room. He said gaily to his
wife, Well, old thing, the doc thinks maybe we better
have a little operation and get it over. Just take a few
minutes not half as serious as a confinement and youll
be all right in a jiffy.
She gripped his hand till the fingers ached. She said
patiently, like a cowed child, Im afraid to go into the
dark, all alone! Maturity was wiped from her eyes; they
were pleading and terrified. Will you stay with me?
Darling, you dont have to go to the office now, do you?
Could you just go down to the hospital with me? Could
you come see me this evening if everythings all right?
You wont have to go out this evening, will you?
He was on his knees by the bed. While she feebly
ruffled his hair, he sobbed, he kissed the lawn of her
sleeve, and swore, Old honey, I love you more than
anything in the world! Ive kind of been worried by business
and everything, but thats all over now, and Im back again.
Are you really? George, I was thinking, lying here,
maybe it would be a good thing if I just WENT. I was
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Sinclair Lewis
wondering if anybody really needed me. Or wanted me. I
was wondering what was the use of my living. Ive been
getting so stupid and ugly
Why, you old humbug! Fishing for compliments when
I ought to be packing your bag! Me, sure, Im young and
handsome and a regular village cut-up and He could
not go on. He sobbed again; and in muttered incoherencies
they found each other.
As he packed, his brain was curiously clear and swift.
Hed have no more wild evenings, he realized. He admitted
that he would regret them. A little grimly he perceived that
this had been his last despairing fling before the paralyzed
contentment of middle-age. Well, and he grinned impishly,
it was one doggone good party while it lasted! And
how much was the operation going to cost? I ought to
have fought that out with Dilling. But no, damn it, I dont
care how much it costs!
The motor ambulance was at the door. Even in his grief
the Babbitt who admired all technical excellences was
interested in the kindly skill with which the attendants slid
Mrs Babbitt upon a stretcher and carried her down-stairs.
The ambulance was a huge, suave, varnished, white thing.
Mrs Babbitt moaned, It frightens me. Its just like a hearse,
just like being put in a hearse. I want you to stay with me.
Ill be right up front with the driver, Babbitt promised.
No, I want you to stay inside with me. To the
attendants: Cant he be inside?
Sure, maam, you bet. Theres a fine little camp-stool in
there, the older attendant said, with professional pride.
He sat beside her in that traveling cabin with its cot, its
stool, its active little electric radiator, and its quite
unexplained calendar, displaying a girl eating cherries, and
the name of an enterprising grocer. But as he flung out his
hand in hopeless cheerfulness it touched the radiator, and
he squealed:
Ouch! Jesus!
Why, George Babbitt, I wont have you cursing and
swearing and blaspheming!
I know, awful sorry but Gosh all fish-hooks, look
how I burned my hand! Gee whiz, it hurts! It hurts like the
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Babbitt
mischief! Why, that damn radiator is hot as its hot as
its hotter n the hinges of Hades! Look! You can see the
mark!
So, as they drove up to St. Marys Hospital, with the
nurses already laying out the instruments for an operation
to save her life, it was she who consoled him and kissed
the place to make it well, and though he tried to be gruff
and mature, he yielded to her and was glad to be babied.
The ambulance whirled under the hooded carriageentrance of the hospital, and instantly he was reduced to
a zero in the nightmare succession of cork-floored halls,
endless doors open on old women sitting up in bed, an
elevator, the anesthetizing room, a young interne
contemptuous of husbands. He was permitted to kiss his
wife; he saw a thin dark nurse fit the cone over her mouth
and nose; he stiffened at a sweet and treacherous odor;
then he was driven out, and on a high stool in a
laboratory he sat dazed, longing to see her once again, to
insist that he had always loved her, had never for a
second loved anybody else or looked at anybody else. In
the laboratory he was conscious only of a decayed object
preserved in a bottle of yellowing alcohol. It made him
very sick, but he could not take his eyes from it. He was
more aware of it than of waiting. His mind floated in
abeyance, coming back always to that horrible bottle. To
escape it he opened the door to the right, hoping to find
a sane and business-like office. He realized that he was
looking into the operating-room; in one glance he took in
Dr. Dilling, strange in white gown and bandaged head,
bending over the steel table with its screws and wheels,
then nurses holding basins and cotton sponges, and a
swathed thing, just a lifeless chin and a mound of white
in the midst of which was a square of sallow flesh with
a gash a little bloody at the edges, protruding from the
gash a cluster of forceps like clinging parasites.
He shut the door with haste. It may be that his frightened
repentance of the night and morning had not eaten in, but
this dehumanizing interment of her who had been so
pathetically human shook him utterly, and as he crouched
again on the high stool in the laboratory he swore faith to
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Sinclair Lewis
his wife... to Zenith... to business efficiency... to the Boosters
Club... to every faith of the Clan of Good Fellows.
Then a nurse was soothing, All over! Perfect success!
Shell come out fine! Shell be out from under the anesthetic
soon, and you can see her.
He found her on a curious tilted bed, her face an
unwholesome yellow but her purple lips moving slightly.
Then only did he really believe that she was alive. She
was muttering. He bent, and heard her sighing, Hard get
real maple syrup for pancakes. He laughed inexhaustibly;
he beamed on the nurse and proudly confided, Think of
her talking about maple syrup! By golly, Im going to go
and order a hundred gallons of it, right from Vermont!
II
She was out of the hospital in seventeen days. He went
to see her each afternoon, and in their long talks they
drifted back to intimacy. Once he hinted something of his
relations to Tanis and the Bunch, and she was inflated by
the view that a Wicked Woman had captivated her poor
George.
If once he had doubted his neighbors and the supreme
charm of the Good Fellows, he was convinced now. You
didnt, he noted, see Seneca Doane coming around with
any flowers or dropping in to chat with the Missus, but
Mrs Howard Littlefield brought to the hospital her priceless
wine jelly (flavored with real wine); Orville Jones spent
hours in picking out the kind of novels Mrs Babbitt liked
nice love stories about New York millionaries and
Wyoming cowpunchers; Louetta Swanson knitted a pink
bed-jacket; Sidney Finkelstein and his merry brown-eyed
flapper of a wife selected the prettiest nightgown in all
the stock of Parcher and Stein.
All his friends ceased whispering about him, suspecting
him. At the Athletic Club they asked after her daily. Club
members whose names he did not know stopped him to
inquire, Hows your good lady getting on? Babbitt felt
that he was swinging from bleak uplands down into the
rich warm air of a valley pleasant with cottages.
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Babbitt
One noon Vergil Gunch suggested, You planning to be
at the hospital about six? The wife and I thought wed
drop in. They did drop in. Gunch was so humorous that
Mrs Babbitt said he must stop making her laugh because
honestly it was hurting her incision. As they passed down
the hall Gunch demanded amiably, George, old scout,
you were soreheaded about something, here a while back.
I dont know why, and its none of my business. But you
seem to be feeling all hunky-dory again, and why dont
you come join us in the Good Citizens League, old man?
We have some corking times together, and we need your
advice.
Then did Babbitt, almost tearful with joy at being
coaxed instead of bullied, at being permitted to stop
fighting, at being able to desert without injuring his
opinion of himself, cease utterly to be a domestic revolutionist.
He patted Gunchs shoulder, and next day he became a
member of the Good Citizens League.
Within two weeks no one in the League was more
violent regarding the wickedness of Seneca Doane, the
crimes of labor unions, the perils of immigration, and the
delights of golf, morality, and bank-accounts than was
George F. Babbitt.
Chapter XXXIV
I
The Good Citizens League had spread through the
country, but nowhere was it so effective and well esteemed
as in cities of the type of Zenith, commercial cities of a few
hundred thousand inhabitants, most of which though not
all lay inland, against a background of cornfields and
mines and of small towns which depended upon them for
mortgage-loans, table-manners, art, social philosophy and
millinery.
To the League belonged most of the prosperous citizens
of Zenith. They were not all of the kind who called
themselves Regular Guys. Besides these hearty fellows,
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Sinclair Lewis
these salesmen of prosperity, there were the aristocrats,
that is, the men who were richer or had been rich for
more generations: the presidents of banks and of factories,
the land-owners, the corporation lawyers, the fashionable
doctors, and the few young-old men who worked not at
all but, reluctantly remaining in Zenith, collected lusterware and first editions as though they were back in Paris.
All of them agreed that the working-classes must be kept
in their place; and all of them perceived that American
Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did
demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting,
morals, and vocabulary.
In this they were like the ruling-class of any other
country, particularly of Great Britain, but they differed in
being more vigorous and in actually trying to produce the
accepted standards which all classes, everywhere, desire,
but usually despair of realizing.
The longest struggle of the Good Citizens League was
against the Open Shop which was secretly a struggle
against all union labor. Accompanying it was an
Americanization Movement, with evening classes in English
and history and economics, and daily articles in the
newspapers, so that newly arrived foreigners might learn
that the true-blue and one hundred per cent. American
way of settling labor-troubles was for workmen to trust
and love their employers.
The League was more than generous in approving other
organizations which agreed with its aims. It helped the
Y.M.C.A. to raise a two-hundred-thousand-dollar fund for a
new building. Babbitt, Vergil Gunch, Sidney Finkelstein,
and even Charles McKelvey told the spectators at movie
theaters how great an influence for manly Christianity the
good old Y. had been in their own lives; and the hoar
and mighty Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the AdvocateTimes, was photographed clasping the hand of Sheldon
Smeeth of the Y.M.C.A. It is true that afterward, when
Smeeth lisped, You must come to one of our prayermeetings, the ferocious Colonel bellowed, What the hell
would I do that for? Ive got a bar of my own, but this did
not appear in the public prints.
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