All along the highway into Zenith, under the low and gentle moon, motors were parked and dim figures were clasped in revery.
He held out hungry hands to Ida, and when she patted them he was grateful.
There was no sense of struggle and transition; he kissed her and simply she responded to his kiss, they two behind the stolid back of the chauffeur.
Her hat fell off, and she broke from his embrace to reach for it.
“Oh, let it be!” he implored.
“Huh?
My hat?
Not a chance!”
He waited till she had pinned it on, then his arm sank about her.
She drew away from it, and said with maternal soothing,
“Now, don’t be a silly boy!
Mustn’t make Ittle Mama scold!
Just sit back, dearie, and see what a swell night it is.
If you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll kiss you when we say nighty-night.
Now give me a cigarette.”
He was solicitous about lighting her cigarette and inquiring as to her comfort.
Then he sat as far from her as possible.
He was cold with failure.
No one could have told Babbitt that he was a fool with more vigor, precision, and intelligence than he himself displayed.
He reflected that from the standpoint of the Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew he was a wicked man, and from the standpoint of Miss Ida Putiak, an old bore who had to be endured as the penalty attached to eating a large dinner.
“Dearie, you aren’t going to go and get peevish, are you?”
She spoke pertly.
He wanted to spank her.
He brooded,
“I don’t have to take anything off this gutter-pup!
Darn immigrant!
Well, let’s get it over as quick as we can, and sneak home and kick ourselves for the rest of the night.”
He snorted,
“Huh?
Me peevish?
Why, you baby, why should I be peevish?
Now, listen, Ida; listen to Uncle George.
I want to put you wise about this scrapping with your head-barber all the time.
I’ve had a lot of experience with employees, and let me tell you it doesn’t pay to antagonize—”
At the drab wooden house in which she lived he said good-night briefly and amiably, but as the taxicab drove off he was praying
“Oh, my God!”
CHAPTER XXV I
HE awoke to stretch cheerfully as he listened to the sparrows, then to remember that everything was wrong; that he was determined to go astray, and not in the least enjoying the process.
Why, he wondered, should he be in rebellion?
What was it all about?
“Why not be sensible; stop all this idiotic running around, and enjoy himself with his family, his business, the fellows at the club?”
What was he getting out of rebellion?
Misery and shame—the shame of being treated as an offensive small boy by a ragamuffin like Ida Putiak!
And yet—Always he came back to “And yet.”
Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.
Only, he assured himself, he was “through with this chasing after girls.”
By noontime he was not so sure even of that.
If in Miss McGoun, Louetta Swanson, and Ida he had failed to find the lady kind and lovely, it did not prove that she did not exist.
He was hunted by the ancient thought that somewhere must exist the not impossible she who would understand him, value him, and make him happy. II
Mrs. Babbitt returned in August.