CHAPTER XXXIII

by Sinclair Lewis

　　CHAPTER XXXIIIIHE tried to explain to his wife, as they prepared for bed, howobjectionable was Sheldon Smeeth, but all her answer was, "He has sucha beautiful voice--so spiritual. I don't think you ought to speak of himlike that just because you can't appreciate music!" He saw her then as astranger; he stared bleakly at this plump and fussy woman with the broadbare arms, and wondered how she had ever come here.In his chilly cot, turning from aching side to side, he pondered ofTanis. "He'd been a fool to lose her. He had to have somebody he couldreally talk to. He'd--oh, he'd BUST if he went on stewing about thingsby himself. And Myra, useless to expect her to understand. Well, rats,no use dodging the issue. Darn shame for two married people to driftapart after all these years; darn rotten shame; but nothing could bringthem together now, as long as he refused to let Zenith bully him intotaking orders--and he was by golly not going to let anybody bully himinto anything, or wheedle him or coax him either!"He woke at three, roused by a passing motor, and struggled out of bedfor a drink of water. As he passed through the bedroom he heard his wifegroan. His resentment was night-blurred; he was solicitous in inquiring,"What's the trouble, hon?""I've got--such a pain down here in my side--oh, it's just--it tears atme.""Bad indigestion? Shall I get you some bicarb?""Don't think--that would help. I felt funny last evening and yesterday,and then--ohThat auto woke meup."Her voice was laboring like a ship in a storm. He was alarmed."I better call the doctor.""No, no! It'll go away. But maybe you might get me an ice-bag."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 thechunk 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 intoplace on her groin, rumbling, "There, there, that'll 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 can't get to sleep."Her voice was faint. He knew her dread of doctors' verdicts and hedid not inform her, but he creaked down-stairs, telephoned to Dr.Earl Patten, and waited, shivering, trying with fuzzy eyes to read amagazine, till he heard the doctor's car.The doctor was youngish and professionally breezy. He came in as thoughit were sunny noontime. "Well, George, little trouble, eh? How isshe now?" he said busily as, with tremendous and rather irritatingcheerfulness, he tossed his coat on a chair and warmed his hands ata radiator. He took charge of the house. Babbitt felt ousted andunimportant as he followed the doctor up to the bedroom, and it was thedoctor who chuckled, "Oh, just little stomach-ache" when Verona peepedthrough her door, begging, "What is it, Dad, what is it?"To Mrs. Babbitt the doctor said with amiable belligerence, after hisexamination, "Kind of a bad old pain, eh? I'll give you something tomake you sleep, and I think you'll feel better in the morning. I'll comein right after breakfast." But to Babbitt, lying in wait in the lowerhall, the doctor sighed, "I don't like the feeling there in her belly.There's some rigidity and some inflammation. She's never had herappendix out has she? Um. Well, no use worrying. I'll be here firstthing in the morning, and meantime she'll get some rest. I've given hera hypo. Good night."Then was Babbitt caught up in the black tempest.Instantly all the indignations which had been dominating him and thespiritual dramas through which he had struggled became pallid andabsurd before the ancient and overwhelming realities, the standard andtraditional realities, of sickness and menacing death, the long night,and the thousand steadfast implications of married life. He crept backto her. As she drowsed away in the tropic languor of morphia, he sat onthe edge of her bed, holding her hand, and for the first time in manyweeks her hand abode trustfully in his.He draped himself grotesquely in his toweling bathrobe and a pink andwhite couch-cover, and sat lumpishly in a wing-chair. The bedroom wasuncanny in its half-light, which turned the curtains to lurking robbers,the dressing-table to a turreted castle. It smelled of cosmetics, oflinen, of sleep. He napped and woke, napped and woke, a hundred times.He heard her move and sigh in slumber; he wondered if there wasn't someofficious brisk thing he could do for her, and before he could quiteform the thought he was asleep, racked and aching. The night wasinfinite. When dawn came and the waiting seemed at an end, he fellasleep, and was vexed to have been caught off his guard, to have beenaroused by Verona's 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 mightcriticize her and nag her, it was only as he might criticize and naghimself, interestedly, unpatronizingly, without the expectation ofchanging--or any real desire to change--the eternal essence.With Verona he sounded fatherly again, and firm. He consoled Tinka, whosatisfactorily pointed the excitement of the hour by wailing. He orderedearly breakfast, and wanted to look at the newspaper, and felt somehowheroic and useful in not looking at it. But there were still crawlingand totally unheroic hours of waiting before Dr. Patten returned."Don't see much change," said Patten. "I'll be back about eleven, andif you don't mind, I think I'll bring in some other world-famouspill-pedler for consultation, just to be on the safe side. NowGeorge, there's nothing you can do. I'll have Verona keep the ice-bagfilled--might as well leave that on, I guess--and you, you better beatit to the office instead of standing around her looking as if you werethe 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 whentheir wives are ailing. Now have another nice cup of coffee and git!"Under this derision Babbitt became more matter-of-fact. He drove to theoffice, tried to dictate letters, tried to telephone and, before thecall was answered, forgot to whom he was telephoning. At a quarter afterten he returned home. As he left the down-town traffic and sped up thecar, his face was as grimly creased as the mask of tragedy.His wife greeted him with surprise. "Why did you come back, dear? Ithink 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 werecuriously happy when he heard Dr. Patten's car in front. He looked outof the window. He was frightened. With Patten was an impatient manwith turbulent black hair and a hussar mustache--Dr. A. I. Dilling,the surgeon. Babbitt sputtered with anxiety, tried to conceal it, andhurried down to the door.Dr. Patten was profusely casual: "Don't want to worry you, old man, butI thought it might be a good stunt to have Dr. Dilling examine her." Hegestured toward Dilling as toward a master.Dilling nodded in his curtest manner and strode up-stairs Babbitttramped the living-room in agony. Except for his wife's confinementsthere had never been a major operation in the family, and to him surgerywas at once a miracle and an abomination of fear. But when Dilling andPatten came down again he knew that everything was all right, and hewanted to laugh, for the two doctors were exactly like the beardedphysicians in a musical comedy, both of them rubbing their hands andlooking foolishly sagacious.Dr. Dilling spoke:"I'm sorry, old man, but it's acute appendicitis. We ought to operate.Of course you must decide, but there's no question as to what has to bedone."Babbitt did not get all the force of it. He mumbled, "Well I suppose wecould get her ready in a couple o' days. Probably Ted ought to come downfrom the university, just in case anything happened."Dr. Dilling growled, "Nope. If you don't want peritonitis to set in,we'll have to operate right away. I must advise it strongly. If you saygo ahead, I'll 'phone for the St. Mary's ambulance at once, and we'llhave her on the table in three-quarters of an hour.""I--I Of course, I suppose you know what--But great God, man, I can'tget her clothes ready and everything in two seconds, you know! And inher state, so wrought-up and weak--""Just throw her hair-brush and comb and tooth-brush in a bag; that'sall she'll need for a day or two," said Dr. Dilling, and went to thetelephone.Babbitt galloped desperately up-stairs. He sent the frightened Tinka outof the room. He said gaily to his wife, "Well, old thing, the doc thinksmaybe we better have a little operation and get it over. Just take a fewminutes--not half as serious as a confinement--and you'll be all rightin a jiffy."She gripped his hand till the fingers ached. She said patiently, like acowed child, "I'm afraid--to go into the dark, all alone!" Maturity waswiped from her eyes; they were pleading and terrified. "Will you staywith me? Darling, you don't have to go to the office now, do you? Couldyou just go down to the hospital with me? Could you come see me thisevening--if everything's all right? You won't have to go out thisevening, will you?"He was on his knees by the bed. While she feebly ruffled his hair, hesobbed, he kissed the lawn of her sleeve, and swore, "Old honey, Ilove you more than anything in the world! I've kind of been worried bybusiness and everything, but that's all over now, and I'm back again.""Are you really? George, I was thinking, lying here, maybe it would be agood thing if I just WENT. I was wondering if anybody really needed me.Or wanted me. I was wondering what was the use of my living. I've beengetting so stupid and ugly--""Why, you old humbug! Fishing for compliments when I ought to be packingyour bag! Me, sure, I'm young and handsome and a regular villagecut-up and--" He could not go on. He sobbed again; and in mutteredincoherencies they found each other.As he packed, his brain was curiously clear and swift. He'd have no morewild evenings, he realized. He admitted that he would regret them. Alittle grimly he perceived that this had been his last despairing flingbefore the paralyzed contentment of middle-age. Well, and he grinnedimpishly, "it was one doggone good party while it lasted!" And--how muchwas the operation going to cost? "I ought to have fought that out withDilling. But no, damn it, I don't care how much it costs!"The motor ambulance was at the door. Even in his grief the Babbitt whoadmired all technical excellences was interested in the kindly skillwith which the attendants slid Mrs. Babbitt upon a stretcher and carriedher down-stairs. The ambulance was a huge, suave, varnished, whitething. Mrs. Babbitt moaned, "It frightens me. It's just like a hearse,just like being put in a hearse. I want you to stay with me.""I'll be right up front with the driver," Babbitt promised."No, I want you to stay inside with me." To the attendants: "Can't he beinside?""Sure, ma'am, you bet. There's a fine little camp-stool in there," theolder attendant said, with professional pride.He sat beside her in that traveling cabin with its cot, its stool, itsactive little electric radiator, and its quite unexplained calendar,displaying a girl eating cherries, and the name of an enterprisinggrocer. But as he flung out his hand in hopeless cheerfulness it touchedthe radiator, and he squealed:"Ouch! Jesus!""Why, George Babbitt, I won't have you cursing and swearing andblaspheming!""I know, awful sorry but--Gosh all fish-hooks, look how I burned myhand! Gee whiz, it hurts! It hurts like the mischief! Why, that damnradiator is hot as--it's hot as--it's hotter 'n the hinges of Hades!Look! You can see the mark!"So, as they drove up to St. Mary's Hospital, with the nurses alreadylaying out the instruments for an operation to save her life, it wasshe who consoled him and kissed the place to make it well, and thoughhe tried to be gruff and mature, he yielded to her and was glad to bebabied.The ambulance whirled under the hooded carriage-entrance of thehospital, and instantly he was reduced to a zero in the nightmaresuccession of cork-floored halls, endless doors open on old womensitting up in bed, an elevator, the anesthetizing room, a young internecontemptuous of husbands. He was permitted to kiss his wife; he saw athin dark nurse fit the cone over her mouth and nose; he stiffened at asweet and treacherous odor; then he was driven out, and on a high stoolin a laboratory he sat dazed, longing to see her once again, to insistthat he had always loved her, had never for a second loved anybody elseor looked at anybody else. In the laboratory he was conscious only of adecayed object preserved in a bottle of yellowing alcohol. It made himvery sick, but he could not take his eyes from it. He was more aware ofit than of waiting. His mind floated in abeyance, coming back alwaysto 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 waslooking into the operating-room; in one glance he took in Dr. Dilling,strange in white gown and bandaged head, bending over the steel tablewith its screws and wheels, then nurses holding basins and cottonsponges, and a swathed thing, just a lifeless chin and a mound of whitein the midst of which was a square of sallow flesh with a gash a littlebloody at the edges, protruding from the gash a cluster of forceps likeclinging parasites.He shut the door with haste. It may be that his frightened repentance ofthe night and morning had not eaten in, but this dehumanizing intermentof her who had been so pathetically human shook him utterly, and as hecrouched again on the high stool in the laboratory he swore faith to hiswife . . . 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! She'll come outfine! She'll be out from under the anesthetic soon, and you can seeher."He found her on a curious tilted bed, her face an unwholesome yellow buther purple lips moving slightly. Then only did he really believe thatshe was alive. She was muttering. He bent, and heard her sighing, "Hardget real maple syrup for pancakes." He laughed inexhaustibly; he beamedon the nurse and proudly confided, "Think of her talking about maplesyrup! By golly, I'm going to go and order a hundred gallons of it,right from Vermont!"IIShe was out of the hospital in seventeen days. He went to see her eachafternoon, and in their long talks they drifted back to intimacy. Oncehe hinted something of his relations to Tanis and the Bunch, and she wasinflated 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 GoodFellows, he was convinced now. You didn't, he noted, "see Seneca Doanecoming around with any flowers or dropping in to chat with the Missus,"but Mrs. Howard Littlefield brought to the hospital her priceless winejelly (flavored with real wine); Orville Jones spent hours in pickingout the kind of novels Mrs. Babbitt liked--nice love stories about NewYork millionaries and Wyoming cowpunchers; Louetta Swanson knitted apink bed-jacket; Sidney Finkelstein and his merry brown-eyed flapper ofa wife selected the prettiest nightgown in all the stock of Parcher andStein.All his friends ceased whispering about him, suspecting him. At theAthletic Club they asked after her daily. Club members whose names hedid not know stopped him to inquire, "How's your good lady getting on?"Babbitt felt that he was swinging from bleak uplands down into the richwarm air of a valley pleasant with cottages.One noon Vergil Gunch suggested, "You planning to be at the hospitalabout six? The wife and I thought we'd drop in." They did drop in. Gunchwas so humorous that Mrs. Babbitt said he must "stop making her laughbecause honestly it was hurting her incision." As they passed down thehall Gunch demanded amiably, "George, old scout, you were soreheadedabout something, here a while back. I don't know why, and it's none ofmy business. But you seem to be feeling all hunky-dory again, and whydon't you come join us in the Good Citizens' League, old man? We havesome corking times together, and we need your advice."Then did Babbitt, almost tearful with joy at being coaxed instead ofbullied, at being permitted to stop fighting, at being able to desertwithout injuring his opinion of himself, cease utterly to be a domesticrevolutionist. He patted Gunch's shoulder, and next day he became amember of the Good Citizens' League.Within two weeks no one in the League was more violent regarding thewickedness of Seneca Doane, the crimes of labor unions, the perils ofimmigration, and the delights of golf, morality, and bank-accounts thanwas George F. Babbitt.