Babbit (40 page)

  II

  Her card read "Mrs. Daniel Judique." Babbitt knew of
her as the widow of a wholesale paper-dealer. She must have been
forty or forty-two but he thought her younger when he saw her in
the office, that afternoon. She had come to inquire about renting
an apartment, and he took her away from the unskilled girl
accountant. He was nervously attracted by her smartness. She was a
slender woman, in a black Swiss frock dotted with white, a
cool-looking graceful frock. A broad black hat shaded her face. Her
eyes were lustrous, her soft chin of an agreeable plumpness, and
her cheeks an even rose. Babbitt wondered afterward if she was made
up, but no man living knew less of such arts.

  She sat revolving her violet parasol. Her voice was
appealing without being coy. "I wonder if you can help me?"

  "Be delighted."

  "I've looked everywhere and - I want a little flat,
just a bedroom, or perhaps two, and sitting-room and kitchenette
and bath, but I want one that really has some charm to it, not
these dingy places or these new ones with terrible gaudy
chandeliers. And I can't pay so dreadfully much. My name's Tanis
Judique."

  "I think maybe I've got just the thing for you.
Would you like to chase around and look at it now?"

  "Yes. I have a couple of hours."

  In the new Cavendish Apartments, Babbitt had a flat
which he had been holding for Sidney Finkelstein, but at the
thought of driving beside this agreeable woman he threw over his
friend Finkelstein, and with a note of gallantry he proclaimed,
"I'll let you see what I can do!"

  He dusted the seat of the car for her, and twice he
risked death in showing off his driving.

  "You do know how to handle a car!" she said.

  He liked her voice. There was, he thought, music in
it and a hint of culture, not a bouncing giggle like Louetta
Swanson's.

  He boasted, "You know, there's a lot of these
fellows that are so scared and drive so slow that they get in
everybody's way. The safest driver is a fellow that knows how to
handle his machine and yet isn't scared to speed up when it's
necessary, don't you think so?"

  "Oh, yes!"

  "I bet you drive like a wiz."

  "Oh, no - I mean - not really. Of course, we had a
car - I mean, before my husband passed on - and I used to make
believe drive it, but I don't think any woman ever learns to drive
like a man."

  "Well, now, there's some mighty good woman
drivers."

  "Oh, of course, these women that try to imitate men,
and play golf and everything, and ruin their complexions and spoil
their hands!"

  "That's so. I never did like these mannish
females."

  "I mean - of course, I admire them, dreadfully, and
I feel so weak and useless beside them."

  "Oh, rats now! I bet you play the piano like a
wiz."

  "Oh, no - I mean - not really."

  "Well, I'll bet you do!" He glanced at her smooth
hands, her diamond and ruby rings. She caught the glance, snuggled
her hands together with a kittenish curving of slim white fingers
which delighted him, and yearned:

  "I do love to play - I mean - I like to drum on the
piano, but I haven't had any real training. Mr. Judique used to say
I would 've been a good pianist if I'd had any training, but then,
I guess he was just flattering me."

  "I'll bet he wasn't! I'll bet you've got
temperament."

  "Oh - Do you like music, Mr Babbitt?"

  "You bet I do! Only I don't know 's I care so much
for all this classical stuff."

  "Oh, I do! I just love Chopin and all those."

  "Do you, honest? Well, of course, I go to lots of
these highbrow concerts, but I do like a good jazz orchestra, right
up on its toes, with the fellow that plays the bass fiddle spinning
it around and beating it up with the bow."

  "Oh, I know. I do love good dance music. I love to
dance, don't you, Mr. Babbitt?"

  "Sure, you bet. Not that I'm very darn good at it,
though."

  "Oh, I'm sure you are. You ought to let me teach
you. I can teach anybody to dance."

  "Would you give me a lesson some time?"

  "Indeed I would."

  "Better be careful, or I'll be taking you up on that
proposition. I'll be coming up to your flat and making you give me
that lesson."

  "Ye-es." She was not offended, but she was
non-committal. He warned himself, "Have some sense now, you chump!
Don't go making a fool of yourself again!" and with loftiness he
discoursed:

  "I wish I could dance like some of these young
fellows, but I'll tell you: I feel it's a man's place to take a
full, you might say, a creative share in the world's work and mold
conditions and have something to show for his life, don't you think
so?"

  "Oh, I do!"

  "And so I have to sacrifice some of the things I
might like to tackle, though I do, by golly, play about as good a
game of golf as the next fellow!"

  "Oh, I'm sure you do.... Are you married?"

  "Uh - yes.... And, uh, of course official duties I'm
the vice-president of the Boosters' Club, and I'm running one of
the committees of the State Association of Real Estate Boards, and
that means a lot of work and responsibility - and practically no
gratitude for it."

  "Oh, I know! Public men never do get proper
credit."

  They looked at each other with a high degree of
mutual respect, and at the Cavendish Apartments he helped her out
in a courtly manner, waved his hand at the house as though he were
presenting it to her, and ponderously ordered the elevator boy to
"hustle and get the keys." She stood close to him in the elevator,
and he was stirred but cautious.

  It was a pretty flat, of white woodwork and soft
blue walls. Mrs. Judique gushed with pleasure as she agreed to take
it, and as they walked down the hall to the elevator she touched
his sleeve, caroling, "Oh, I'm so glad I went to you! It's such a
privilege to meet a man who really Understands. Oh! The flats SOME
people have showed me!"

  He had a sharp instinctive belief that he could put
his arm around her, but he rebuked himself and with excessive
politeness he saw her to the car, drove her home. All the way back
to his office he raged:

  "Glad I had some sense for once.... Curse it, I wish
I'd tried. She's a darling! A corker! A reg'lar charmer! Lovely
eyes and darling lips and that trim waist - never get sloppy, like
some women.... No, no, no! She's a real cultured lady. One of the
brightest little women I've met these many moons. Understands about
Public Topics and - But, darn it, why didn't I try? . . .
Tanis!"

  III

  He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that
he was turning toward youth, as youth. The girl who especially
disturbed him - though he had never spoken to her - was the last
manicure girl on the right in the Pompeian Barber Shop. She was
small, swift, black-haired, smiling. She was nineteen, perhaps, or
twenty. She wore thin salmon-colored blouses which exhibited her
shoulders and her black-ribboned camisoles.

  He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly
hair-trim. As always, he felt disloyal at deserting his neighbor,
the Reeves Building Barber Shop. Then, for the first time, he
overthrew his sense of guilt. "Doggone it, I don't have to go here
if I don't want to! I don't own the Reeves Building! These barbers
got nothing on me! I'll doggone well get my hair cut where I
doggone well want to! Don't want to hear anything more about it!
I'm through standing by people - unless I want to. It doesn't get
you anywhere. I'm through!"

  The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the
Hotel Thornleigh, largest and most dynamically modern hotel in
Zenith. Curving marble steps with a rail of polished brass led from
the hotel-lobby down to the barber shop. The interior was of black
and white and crimson tiles, with a sensational ceiling of
burnished gold, and a fountain in which a massive nymph forever
emptied a scarlet cornucopia. Forty barbers and nine manicure girls
worked desperately, and at the door six colored porters lurked to
greet the customers, to care reverently for their hats and collars,
to lead them to a place of waiting where, on a carpet like a tropic
isle in the stretch of white stone floor, were a dozen leather
chairs and a table heaped with magazines.

  Babbitt's porter was an obsequious gray-haired negro
who did him an honor highly esteemed in the land of Zenith -
greeted him by name. Yet Babbitt was unhappy. His bright particular
manicure girl was engaged. She was doing the nails of an
overdressed man and giggling with him. Babbitt hated him. He
thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful system of the Pompeian
was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted into a chair.

  About him was luxury, rich and delicate. One votary
was having a violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo.
Boys wheeled about miraculous electrical massage-machines. The
barbers snatched steaming towels from a machine like a howitzer of
polished nickel and disdainfully flung them away after a second's
use. On the vast marble shelf facing the chairs were hundreds of
tonics, amber and ruby and emerald. It was flattering to Babbitt to
have two personal slaves at once - the barber and the bootblack. He
would have been completely happy if he could also have had the
manicure girl. The barber snipped at his hair and asked his opinion
of the Havre de Grace races, the baseball season, and Mayor Prout.
The young negro bootblack hummed "The Camp Meeting Blues" and
polished in rhythm to his tune, drawing the shiny shoe-rag so taut
at each stroke that it snapped like a banjo string. The barber was
an excellent salesman. He made Babbitt feel rich and important by
his manner of inquiring, "What is your favorite tonic, sir? Have
you time to-day, sir, for a facial massage? Your scalp is a little
tight; shall I give you a scalp massage?"

  Babbitt's best thrill was in the shampoo. The barber
made his hair creamy with thick soap, then (as Babbitt bent over
the bowl, muffled in towels) drenched it with hot water which
prickled along his scalp, and at last ran the water ice-cold. At
the shock, the sudden burning cold on his skull, Babbitt's heart
thumped, his chest heaved, and his spine was an electric wire. It
was a sensation which broke the monotony of life. He looked grandly
about the shop as he sat up. The barber obsequiously rubbed his wet
hair and bound it in a towel as in a turban, so that Babbitt
resembled a plump pink calif on an ingenious and adjustable throne.
The barber begged (in the manner of one who was a good fellow yet
was overwhelmed by the splendors of the calif), "How about a little
Eldorado Oil Rub, sir? Very beneficial to the scalp, sir. Didn't I
give you one the last time?"

  He hadn't, but Babbitt agreed, "Well, all
right."

  With quaking eagerness he saw that his manicure girl
was free.

  "I don't know, I guess I'll have a manicure after
all," he droned, and excitedly watched her coming, dark-haired,
smiling, tender, little. The manicuring would have to be finished
at her table, and he would be able to talk to her without the
barber listening. He waited contentedly, not trying to peep at her,
while she filed his nails and the barber shaved him and smeared on
his burning cheeks all the interesting mixtures which the pleasant
minds of barbers have devised through the revolving ages. When the
barber was done and he sat opposite the girl at her table, he
admired the marble slab of it, admired the sunken set bowl with its
tiny silver taps, and admired himself for being able to frequent so
costly a place. When she withdrew his wet hand from the bowl, it
was so sensitive from the warm soapy water that he was abnormally
aware of the clasp of her firm little paw. He delighted in the
pinkness and glossiness of her nails. Her hands seemed to him more
adorable than Mrs. Judique's thin fingers, and more elegant. He had
a certain ecstasy in the pain when she gnawed at the cuticle of his
nails with a sharp knife. He struggled not to look at the outline
of her young bosom and her shoulders, the more apparent under a
film of pink chiffon. He was conscious of her as an exquisite
thing, and when he tried to impress his personality on her he spoke
as awkwardly as a country boy at his first party:

  "Well, kinda hot to be working to-day."

  "Oh, yes, it is hot. You cut your own nails, last
time, didn't you!"

  "Ye-es, guess I must 've."

  "You always ought to go to a manicure."

  "Yes, maybe that's so. I - "

  "There's nothing looks so nice as nails that are
looked after good. I always think that's the best way to spot a
real gent. There was an auto salesman in here yesterday that
claimed you could always tell a fellow's class by the car he drove,
but I says to him, 'Don't be silly,' I says; 'the wisenheimers grab
a look at a fellow's nails when they want to tell if he's a
tin-horn or a real gent!"'

  "Yes, maybe there's something to that. Course, that
is - with a pretty kiddy like you, a man can't help coming to get
his mitts done."

  "Yeh, I may be a kid, but I'm a wise bird, and I
know nice folks when I see um - I can read character at a glance -
and I'd never talk so frank with a fellow if I couldn't see he was
a nice fellow."

  She smiled. Her eyes seemed to him as gentle as
April pools. With great seriousness he informed himself that "there
were some roughnecks who would think that just because a girl was a
manicure girl and maybe not awful well educated, she was no good,
but as for him, he was a democrat, and understood people," and he
stood by the assertion that this was a fine girl, a good girl - but
not too uncomfortably good. He inquired in a voice quick with
sympathy:

  "I suppose you have a lot of fellows who try to get
fresh with you."