Afterward Babbitt was not angry. He was afraid. He did not go to the next lunch of the Boosters’ Club but hid in a cheap restaurant, and, while he munched a ham-and-egg sandwich and sipped coffee from a cup on the arm of his chair, he worried.
Four days later, when the Bunch were having one of their best parties, Babbitt drove them to the skating-rink which had been laid out on the Chaloosa River. After a thaw the streets had frozen in smooth ice. Down those wide endless streets the wind rattled between the rows of wooden houses, and the whole Bellevue district seemed a frontier town. Even with skid chains on all four wheels, Babbitt was afraid of sliding, and when he came to the long slide of a hill he crawled down, both brakes on. Slewing round a corner came a less cautious car. It skidded, it almost raked them with its rear fenders. In relief at their escape the Bunch—Tanis, Minnie Sonntag, Pete, Fulton Bemis—shouted “Oh, baby,” and waved their hands to the agitated other driver. Then Babbitt saw Professor Pumphrey laboriously crawling up hill, afoot, Staring owlishly at the revelers. He was sure that Pumphrey recognized him and saw Tanis kiss him as she crowed, “You’re such a good driver!”
At lunch next day he probed Pumphrey with “Out last night with my brother and some friends of his. Gosh, what driving! Slippery ’s glass. Thought I saw you hiking up the Bellevue Avenue Hill.”
“No, I wasn’t—I didn’t see you,” said Pumphrey, hastily, rather guiltily.
Perhaps two days afterward Babbitt took Tanis to lunch at the Hotel Thornleigh. She who had seemed well content to wait for him at her flat had begun to hint with melancholy smiles that he must think but little of her if he never introduced her to his friends, if he was unwilling to be seen with her except at the movies. He thought of taking her to the “ladies’ annex” of the Athletic Club, but that was too dangerous. He would have to introduce her and, oh, people might misunderstand and—He compromised on the Thornleigh.
She was unusually smart, all in black: small black tricorne hat, short black caracul coat, loose and swinging, and austere high-necked black velvet frock at a time when most street costumes were like evening gowns. Perhaps she was too smart. Everyone in the gold and oak restaurant of the Thornleigh was staring at her as Babbitt followed her to a table. He uneasily hoped that the headwaiter would give them a discreet place behind a pillar, but they were stationed on the center aisle. Tanis seemed not to notice her admirers; she smiled at Babbitt with a lavish “Oh, isn’t this nice! What a peppy-looking orchestra!” Babbitt had difficulty in being lavish in return, for two tables away he saw Virgil Gunch. All through the meal Gunch watched them, while Babbitt watched himself being watched and lugubriously tried to keep from spoiling Tanis’s gaiety. “I felt like a spree today,” she rippled. “I love the Thornleigh, don’t you? It’s so live and yet so—so refined.”
He made talk about the Thornleigh, the service, the food, the people he recognized in the restaurant, all but Virgil Gunch. There did not seem to be anything else to talk of. He smiled conscientiously at her fluttering jests; he agreed with her that Minnie Sonntag was “so hard to get along with,” and young Pete “such a silly lazy kid, really just no good at all.” But he himself had nothing to say. He considered telling her his worries about Gunch, but—“oh, gosh, it was too much work to go into the whole thing and explain about Verg and everything.”
He was relieved when he put Tanis on a trolley; he was cheerful in the familiar simplicities of his office.
At four o’clock Virgil Gunch called on him.
Babbitt was agitated, but Gunch began in a friendly way:
“How’s the boy? Say, some of us are getting up a scheme we’d kind of like to have you come in on.”
“Fine, Verg. Shoot.”
“You know during the war we had the Undesirable Element, the Reds and walking delegates and just the plain common grouches, dead to rights, and so did we for quite a while after the war, but folks forget about the danger and that gives these cranks a chance to begin working underground again, especially a lot of these parlor socialists. Well, it’s up to the folks that do a little sound thinking to make a conscious effort to keep bucking these fellows. Some guy back East has organized a society called the Good Citizens’ League for just that purpose. Of course the Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion and so on do a fine work in keeping the decent people in the saddle, but they’re devoted to so many other causes that they can’t attend to this one problem properly. But the Good Citizens’ League, the G.C.L., they stick right to it. Oh, the G.C.L. has to have some other ostensible purposes—frinstance here in Zenith I think it ought to support the park-extension project and the City Planning Committee—and then, too, it should have a social aspect, being made up of the best people—have dances and so on, especially as one of the best ways it can put the kibosh on cranks is to apply this social boycott business to folks big enough so you can’t reach ’em otherwise. Then if that don’t work, the G.C.L. can finally send a little delegation around to inform folks that get too flip that they got to conform to decent standards and quit shooting off their mouths so free. Don’t it sound like the organization could do a great work? We’ve already got some of the strongest men in town, and of course we want you in. How about it?”
Babbitt was uncomfortable. He felt a compulsion back to all the standards he had so vaguely yet so desperately been
