taut crowd, and sudden and
overwhelming new testimony. Actually, the trial occupied less than
fifteen minutes, largely filled with the evidence of doctors that Zilla
would recover and that Paul must have been temporarily insane. Next day
Paul was sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary and taken
off--quite undramatically, not handcuffed, merely plodding in a tired
way beside a cheerful deputy sheriff--and after saying good-by to him
at the station Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a
world which, without Paul, was meaningless.
CHAPTER XXIII
I
HE was busy, from March to June. He kept himself from the bewilderment
of thinking. His wife and the neighbors were generous. Every evening he
played bridge or attended the movies, and the days were blank of face
and silent.
In June, Mrs. Babbitt and Tinka went East, to stay with relatives, and
Babbitt was free to do--he was not quite sure what.
All day long after their departure he thought of the emancipated house
in which he could, if he desired, go mad and curse the gods without
having to keep up a husbandly front. He considered, "I could have a
reg'lar party to-night; stay out till two and not do any explaining
afterwards. Cheers!" He telephoned to Vergil Gunch, to Eddie Swanson.
Both of them were engaged for the evening, and suddenly he was bored by
having to take so much trouble to be riotous.
He was silent at dinner, unusually kindly to Ted and Verona, hesitating
but not disapproving when Verona stated her opinion of Kenneth Escott's
opinion of Dr. John Jennison Drew's opinion of the opinions of the
evolutionists. Ted was working in a garage through the summer vacation,
and he related his daily triumphs: how he had found a cracked ball-race,
what he had said to the Old Grouch, what he had said to the foreman
about the future of wireless telephony.
Ted and Verona went to a dance after dinner. Even the maid was out.
Rarely had Babbitt been alone in the house for an entire evening. He was
restless. He vaguely wanted something more diverting than the newspaper
comic strips to read. He ambled up to Verona's room, sat on her maidenly
blue and white bed, humming and grunting in a solid-citizen manner as he
examined her books: Conrad's "Rescue," a volume strangely named "Figures
of Earth," poetry (quite irregular poetry, Babbitt thought) by Vachel
Lindsay, and essays by H. L. Mencken--highly improper essays, making fun
of the chu
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