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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Babbitt
-
-Author: Sinclair Lewis
-
-Release Date: February 11, 2006 [EBook #1156]
-[Renovation release: July 1, 2022]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: originally by Charles Keller and David Widger. Renovated by
-             Chuck Greif and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading
-             Team.
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BABBITT ***
-
-
-
-
-
-                                BABBITT
-
-
-                                  BY
-                            SINCLAIR LEWIS
-                        AUTHOR OF “MAIN STREET”
-
-
-                                _HBMC_
-
-                               NEW YORK
-                      HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
-
-
-
-
-                          COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
-                   HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
-
-
-                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
-
-
-
-
-                                  _To
-                            EDITH WHARTON_
-
-
-
-
-                                BABBITT
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-
-I
-
-The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of
-steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver
-rods. They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly and
-beautifully office-buildings.
-
-The mist took pity on the fretted structures of earlier generations: the
-Post Office with its shingle-tortured mansard, the red brick minarets of
-hulking old houses, factories with stingy and sooted windows, wooden
-tenements colored like mud. The city was full of such grotesqueries, but
-the clean towers were thrusting them from the business center, and on
-the farther hills were shining new houses, homes--they seemed--for
-laughter and tranquillity.
-
-Over a concrete bridge fled a limousine of long sleek hood and noiseless
-engine. These people in evening clothes were returning from an all-night
-rehearsal of a Little Theater play, an artistic adventure considerably
-illuminated by champagne. Below the bridge curved a railroad, a maze of
-green and crimson lights. The New York Flyer boomed past, and twenty
-lines of polished steel leaped into the glare.
-
-In one of the skyscrapers the wires of the Associated Press were closing
-down. The telegraph operators wearily raised their celluloid eye-shades
-after a night of talking with Paris and Peking. Through the building
-crawled the scrubwomen, yawning, their old shoes slapping. The dawn mist
-spun away. Cues of men with lunch-boxes clumped toward the immensity of
-new factories, sheets of glass and hollow tile, glittering shops where
-five thousand men worked beneath one roof, pouring out the honest wares
-that would be sold up the Euphrates and across the veldt. The whistles
-rolled out in greeting a chorus cheerful as the April dawn; the song of
-labor in a city built--it seemed--for giants.
-
-
-II
-
-There was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man who was
-beginning to awaken on the sleeping-porch of a Dutch Colonial house in
-that residential district of Zenith known as Floral Heights.
-
-His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in
-April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes
-nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more
-than people could afford to pay.
-
-His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face was
-babyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on
-the slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed;
-his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon
-the khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous,
-extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appeared
-this sleeping-porch, which looked on one sizable elm, two respectable
-grass-plots, a cement driveway, and a corrugated iron garage. Yet
-Babbitt was again dreaming of the fairy child, a dream more romantic
-than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.
-
-For years the fairy child had come to him. Where others saw but Georgie
-Babbitt, she discerned gallant youth. She waited for him, in the
-darkness beyond mysterious groves. When at last he could slip away from
-the crowded house he darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends,
-sought to follow, but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and they
-crouched together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, so
-eager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would wait for
-him, that they would sail--
-
-Rumble and bang of the milk-truck.
-
-Babbitt moaned, turned over, struggled back toward his dream. He could
-see only her face now, beyond misty waters. The furnace-man slammed the
-basement door. A dog barked in the next yard. As Babbitt sank blissfully
-into a dim warm tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling, and the
-rolled-up _Advocate_ thumped the front door. Babbitt roused, his stomach
-constricted with alarm. As he relaxed, he was pierced by the familiar
-and irritating rattle of some one cranking a Ford: snap-ah-ah,
-snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a pious motorist, Babbitt cranked with
-the unseen driver, with him waited through taut hours for the roar of
-the starting engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and again
-began the infernal patient snap-ah-ah--a round, flat sound, a shivering
-cold-morning sound, a sound infuriating and inescapable. Not till the
-rising voice of the motor told him that the Ford was moving was he
-released from the panting tension. He glanced once at his favorite tree,
-elm twigs against the gold patina of sky, and fumbled for sleep as for a
-drug. He who had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatly
-interested in the possible and improbable adventures of each new day.
-
-He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at seven-twenty.
-
-
-III
-
-It was the best of nationally advertised and quantitatively produced
-alarm-clocks, with all modern attachments, including cathedral chime,
-intermittent alarm, and a phosphorescent dial. Babbitt was proud of
-being awakened by such a rich device. Socially it was almost as
-creditable as buying expensive cord tires.
-
-He sulkily admitted now that there was no more escape, but he lay and
-detested the grind of the real-estate business, and disliked his family,
-and disliked himself for disliking them. The evening before, he had
-played poker at Vergil Gunch’s till midnight, and after such holidays he
-was irritable before breakfast. It may have been the tremendous
-home-brewed beer of the prohibition-era and the cigars to which that
-beer enticed him; it may have been resentment of return from this fine,
-bold man-world to a restricted region of wives and stenographers, and of
-suggestions not to smoke so much.
-
-From the bedroom beside the sleeping-porch, his wife’s detestably
-cheerful “Time to get up, Georgie boy,” and the itchy sound, the brisk
-and scratchy sound, of combing hairs out of a stiff brush.
-
-He grunted; he dragged his thick legs, in faded baby-blue pajamas, from
-under the khaki blanket; he sat on the edge of the cot, running his
-fingers through his wild hair, while his plump feet mechanically felt
-for his slippers. He looked regretfully at the blanket--forever a
-suggestion to him of freedom and heroism. He had bought it for a camping
-trip which had never come off. It symbolized gorgeous loafing, gorgeous
-cursing, virile flannel shirts.
-
-He creaked to his feet, groaning at the waves of pain which passed
-behind his eyeballs. Though he waited for their scorching recurrence, he
-looked blurrily out at the yard. It delighted him, as always; it was the
-neat yard of a successful business man of Zenith, that is, it was
-perfection, and made him also perfect. He regarded the corrugated iron
-garage. For the three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth time in a year he
-reflected, “No class to that tin shack. Have to build me a frame garage.
-But by golly it’s the only thing on the place that isn’t up-to-date!”
-While he stared he thought of a community garage for his acreage
-development, Glen Oriole. He stopped puffing and jiggling. His arms
-were akimbo. His petulant, sleep-swollen face was set in harder lines.
-He suddenly seemed capable, an official, a man to contrive, to direct,
-to get things done.
-
-On the vigor of his idea he was carried down the hard, clean,
-unused-looking hall into the bathroom.
-
-Though the house was not large it had, like all houses on Floral
-Heights, an altogether royal bathroom of porcelain and glazed tile and
-metal sleek as silver. The towel-rack was a rod of clear glass set in
-nickel. The tub was long enough for a Prussian Guard, and above the set
-bowl was a sensational exhibit of tooth-brush holder, shaving-brush
-holder, soap-dish, sponge-dish, and medicine-cabinet, so glittering and
-so ingenious that they resembled an electrical instrument-board. But the
-Babbitt whose god was Modern Appliances was not pleased. The air of the
-bathroom was thick with the smell of a heathen toothpaste. “Verona been
-at it again! ’Stead of sticking to Lilidol, like I’ve re-peat-ed-ly
-asked her, she’s gone and gotten some confounded stinkum stuff that
-makes you sick!”
-
-The bath-mat was wrinkled and the floor was wet. (His daughter Verona
-eccentrically took baths in the morning, now and then.) He slipped on
-the mat, and slid against the tub. He said “Damn!” Furiously he snatched
-up his tube of shaving-cream, furiously he lathered, with a belligerent
-slapping of the unctuous brush, furiously he raked his plump cheeks with
-a safety-razor. It pulled. The blade was dull. He said,
-“Damn--oh--oh--damn it!”
-
-He hunted through the medicine-cabinet for a packet of new razor-blades
-(reflecting, as invariably, “Be cheaper to buy one of these dinguses and
-strop your own blades,”) and when he discovered the packet, behind the
-round box of bicarbonate of soda, he thought ill of his wife for putting
-it there and very well of himself for not saying “Damn.” But he did say
-it, immediately afterward, when with wet and soap-slippery fingers he
-tried to remove the horrible little envelope and crisp clinging oiled
-paper from the new blade.
-
-Then there was the problem, oft-pondered, never solved, of what to do
-with the old blade, which might imperil the fingers of his young. As
-usual, he tossed it on top of the medicine-cabinet, with a mental note
-that some day he must remove the fifty or sixty other blades that were
-also temporarily piled up there. He finished his shaving in a growing
-testiness increased by his spinning headache and by the emptiness in his
-stomach. When he was done, his round face smooth and streamy and his
-eyes stinging from soapy water, he reached for a towel. The family
-towels were wet, wet and clammy and vile, all of them wet, he found, as
-he blindly snatched them--his own face-towel, his wife’s, Verona’s,
-Ted’s, Tinka’s, and the lone bath-towel with the huge welt of initial.
-Then George F. Babbitt did a dismaying thing. He wiped his face on the
-guest-towel! It was a pansy-embroidered trifle which always hung there
-to indicate that the Babbitts were in the best Floral Heights society.
-No one had ever used it. No guest had ever dared to. Guests secretively
-took a corner of the nearest regular towel.
-
-He was raging, “By golly, here they go and use up all the towels, every
-doggone one of ’em, and they use ’em and get ’em all wet and sopping,
-and never put out a dry one for me--of course, I’m the goat!--and then I
-want one and-- I’m the only person in the doggone house that’s got the
-slightest doggone bit of consideration for other people and
-thoughtfulness and consider there may be others that may want to use the
-doggone bathroom after me and consider--”
-
-He was pitching the chill abominations into the bath-tub, pleased by the
-vindictiveness of that desolate flapping sound; and in the midst his
-wife serenely trotted in, observed serenely, “Why Georgie dear, what are
-you doing? Are you going to wash out the towels? Why, you needn’t wash
-out the towels. Oh, Georgie, you didn’t go and use the guest-towel, did
-you?”
-
-It is not recorded that he was able to answer.
-
-For the first time in weeks he was sufficiently roused by his wife to
-look at her.
-
-
-IV
-
-Myra Babbitt--Mrs. George F. Babbitt--was definitely mature. She had
-creases from the corners of her mouth to the bottom of her chin, and her
-plump neck bagged. But the thing that marked her as having passed the
-line was that she no longer had reticences before her husband, and no
-longer worried about not having reticences. She was in a petticoat now,
-and corsets which bulged, and unaware of being seen in bulgy corsets.
-She had become so dully habituated to married life that in her full
-matronliness she was as sexless as an anemic nun. She was a good woman,
-a kind woman, a diligent woman, but no one, save perhaps Tinka her
-ten-year-old, was at all interested in her or entirely aware that she
-was alive.
-
-After a rather thorough discussion of all the domestic and social
-aspects of towels she apologized to Babbitt for his having an alcoholic
-headache; and he recovered enough to endure the search for a B.V.D.
-undershirt which had, he pointed out, malevolently been concealed among
-his clean pajamas.
-
-He was fairly amiable in the conference on the brown suit.
-
-“What do you think, Myra?” He pawed at the clothes hunched on a chair in
-their bedroom, while she moved about mysteriously adjusting and patting
-her petticoat and, to his jaundiced eye, never seeming to get on with
-her dressing. “How about it? Shall I wear the brown suit another day?”
-
-“Well, it looks awfully nice on you.”
-
-“I know, but gosh, it needs pressing.”
-
-“That’s so. Perhaps it does.”
-
-“It certainly could stand being pressed, all right.”
-
-“Yes, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt it to be pressed.”
-
-“But gee, the coat doesn’t need pressing. No sense in having the whole
-darn suit pressed, when the coat doesn’t need it.”
-
-“That’s so.”
-
-“But the pants certainly need it, all right. Look at them--look at those
-wrinkles--the pants certainly do need pressing.”
-
-“That’s so. Oh, Georgie, why couldn’t you wear the brown coat with the
-blue trousers we were wondering what we’d do with them?”
-
-“Good Lord! Did you ever in all my life know me to wear the coat of one
-suit and the pants of another? What do you think I am? A busted
-bookkeeper?”
-
-“Well, why don’t you put on the dark gray suit to-day, and stop in at
-the tailor and leave the brown trousers?”
-
-“Well, they certainly need-- Now where the devil is that gray suit? Oh,
-yes, here we are.”
-
-He was able to get through the other crises of dressing with comparative
-resoluteness and calm.
-
-His first adornment was the sleeveless dimity B.V.D. undershirt, in
-which he resembled a small boy humorlessly wearing a cheesecloth tabard
-at a civic pageant. He never put on B.V.D.’s without thanking the God of
-Progress that he didn’t wear tight, long, old-fashioned undergarments,
-like his father-in-law and partner, Henry Thompson. His second
-embellishment was combing and slicking back his hair. It gave him a
-tremendous forehead, arching up two inches beyond the former hair-line.
-But most wonder-working of all was the donning of his spectacles.
-
-There is character in spectacles--the pretentious tortoise-shell, the
-meek pince-nez of the school teacher, the twisted silver-framed glasses
-of the old villager. Babbitt’s spectacles had huge, circular, frameless
-lenses of the very best glass; the ear-pieces were thin bars of gold. In
-them he was the modern business man; one who gave orders to clerks and
-drove a car and played occasional golf and was scholarly in regard to
-Salesmanship. His head suddenly appeared not babyish but weighty, and
-you noted his heavy, blunt nose, his straight mouth and thick, long
-upper lip, his chin overfleshy but strong; with respect you beheld him
-put on the rest of his uniform as a Solid Citizen.
-
-The gray suit was well cut, well made, and completely undistinguished.
-It was a standard suit. White piping on the V of the vest added a flavor
-of law and learning. His shoes were black laced boots, good boots,
-honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots. The
-only frivolity was in his purple knitted scarf. With considerable
-comment on the matter to Mrs. Babbitt (who, acrobatically fastening the
-back of her blouse to her skirt with a safety-pin, did not hear a word
-he said), he chose between the purple scarf and a tapestry effect with
-stringless brown harps among blown palms, and into it he thrust a
-snake-head pin with opal eyes.
-
-A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the
-contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were
-of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party. They
-included a fountain pen and a silver pencil (always lacking a supply of
-new leads) which belonged in the righthand upper vest pocket. Without
-them he would have felt naked. On his watch-chain were a gold penknife,
-silver cigar-cutter, seven keys (the use of two of which he had
-forgotten), and incidentally a good watch. Depending from the chain was
-a large, yellowish elk’s-tooth--proclamation of his membership in the
-Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks. Most significant of all was his
-loose-leaf pocket note-book, that modern and efficient note-book which
-contained the addresses of people whom he had forgotten, prudent
-memoranda of postal money-orders which had reached their destinations
-months ago, stamps which had lost their mucilage, clippings of verses by
-T. Cholmondeley Frink and of the newspaper editorials from which Babbitt
-got his opinions and his polysyllables, notes to be sure and do things
-which he did not intend to do, and one curious inscription--D.S.S.D.M.Y.P.D.F.
-
-But he had no cigarette-case. No one had ever happened to give him one,
-so he hadn’t the habit, and people who carried cigarette-cases he
-regarded as effeminate.
-
-Last, he stuck in his lapel the Boosters’ Club button. With the
-conciseness of great art the button displayed two words:
-“Boosters--Pep!” It made Babbitt feel loyal and important. It associated
-him with Good Fellows, with men who were nice and human, and important
-in business circles. It was his V.C., his Legion of Honor ribbon, his
-Phi Beta Kappa key.
-
-With the subtleties of dressing ran other complex worries. “I feel kind
-of punk this morning,” he said. “I think I had too much dinner last
-evening. You oughtn’t to serve those heavy banana fritters.”
-
-“But you asked me to have some.”
-
-“I know, but-- I tell you, when a fellow gets past forty he has to look
-after his digestion. There’s a lot of fellows that don’t take proper
-care of themselves. I tell you at forty a man’s a fool or his doctor-- I
-mean, his own doctor. Folks don’t give enough attention to this matter
-of dieting. Now I think-- Course a man ought to have a good meal after
-the day’s work, but it would be a good thing for both of us if we took
-lighter lunches.”
-
-“But Georgie, here at home I always do have a light lunch.”
-
-“Mean to imply I make a hog of myself, eating down-town? Yes, sure!
-You’d have a swell time if you had to eat the truck that new steward
-hands out to us at the Athletic Club! But I certainly do feel out of
-sorts, this morning. Funny, got a pain down here on the left side--but
-no, that wouldn’t be appendicitis, would it? Last night, when I was
-driving over to Verg Gunch’s, I felt a pain in my stomach, too. Right
-here it was--kind of a sharp shooting pain. I-- Where’d that dime go to?
-Why don’t you serve more prunes at breakfast? Of course I eat an apple
-every evening--an apple a day keeps the doctor away--but still, you
-ought to have more prunes, and not all these fancy doodads.”
-
-“The last time I had prunes you didn’t eat them.”
-
-“Well, I didn’t feel like eating ’em, I suppose. Matter of fact, I think
-I did eat some of ’em. Anyway-- I tell you it’s mighty important to-- I
-was saying to Verg Gunch, just last evening, most people don’t take
-sufficient care of their diges--”
-
-“Shall we have the Gunches for our dinner, next week?”
-
-“Why sure; you bet.”
-
-“Now see here, George: I want you to put on your nice dinner-jacket that
-evening.”
-
-“Rats! The rest of ’em won’t want to dress.”
-
-“Of course they will. You remember when you didn’t dress for the
-Littlefields’ supper-party, and all the rest did, and how embarrassed
-you were.”
-
-“Embarrassed, hell! I wasn’t embarrassed. Everybody knows I can put on
-as expensive a Tux. as anybody else, and I should worry if I don’t
-happen to have it on sometimes. All a darn nuisance, anyway. All right
-for a woman, that stays around the house all the time, but when a
-fellow’s worked like the dickens all day, he doesn’t want to go and
-hustle his head off getting into the soup-and-fish for a lot of folks
-that he’s seen in just reg’lar ordinary clothes that same day.”
-
-“You know you enjoy being seen in one. The other evening you admitted
-you were glad I’d insisted on your dressing. You said you felt a lot
-better for it. And oh, Georgie, I do wish you wouldn’t say ‘Tux.’ It’s
-‘dinner-jacket.’”
-
-“Rats, what’s the odds?”
-
-“Well, it’s what all the nice folks say. Suppose Lucile McKelvey heard
-you calling it a ‘Tux.’”
-
-“Well, that’s all right now! Lucile McKelvey can’t pull anything on me!
-Her folks are common as mud, even if her husband and her dad are
-millionaires! I suppose you’re trying to rub in _your_ exalted social
-position! Well, let me tell you that your revered paternal ancestor,
-Henry T., doesn’t even call it a ‘Tux.’! He calls it a ‘bobtail jacket
-for a ringtail monkey,’ and you couldn’t get him into one unless you
-chloroformed him!”
-
-“Now don’t be horrid, George.”
-
-“Well, I don’t want to be horrid, but Lord! you’re getting as fussy as
-Verona. Ever since she got out of college she’s been too rambunctious to
-live with--doesn’t know what she wants--well, I know what she
-wants!--all she wants is to marry a millionaire, and live in Europe, and
-hold some preacher’s hand, and simultaneously at the same time stay
-right here in Zenith and be some blooming kind of a socialist agitator
-or boss charity-worker or some damn thing! Lord, and Ted is just as bad!
-He wants to go to college, and he doesn’t want to go to college. Only
-one of the three that knows her own mind is Tinka. Simply can’t
-understand how I ever came to have a pair of shillyshallying children
-like Rone and Ted. I may not be any Rockefeller or James J. Shakespeare,
-but I certainly do know my own mind, and I do keep right on plugging
-along in the office and-- Do you know the latest? Far as I can figure
-out, Ted’s new bee is he’d like to be a movie actor and-- And here I’ve
-told him a hundred times, if he’ll go to college and law-school and make
-good, I’ll set him up in business and-- Verona just exactly as bad.
-Doesn’t know what she wants. Well, well, come on! Aren’t you ready yet?
-The girl rang the bell three minutes ago.”
-
-
-V
-
-Before he followed his wife, Babbitt stood at the westernmost window of
-their room. This residential settlement, Floral Heights, was on a rise;
-and though the center of the city was three miles away-- Zenith had
-between three and four hundred thousand inhabitants now--he could see
-the top of the Second National Tower, an Indiana limestone building of
-thirty-five stories.
-
-Its shining walls rose against April sky to a simple cornice like a
-streak of white fire. Integrity was in the tower, and decision. It bore
-its strength lightly as a tall soldier. As Babbitt stared, the
-nervousness was soothed from his face, his slack chin lifted in
-reverence. All he articulated was “That’s one lovely sight!” but he was
-inspired by the rhythm of the city; his love of it renewed. He beheld
-the tower as a temple-spire of the religion of business, a faith
-passionate, exalted, surpassing common men; and as he clumped down to
-breakfast he whistled the ballad “Oh, by gee, by gosh, by jingo” as
-though it were a hymn melancholy and noble.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-
-I
-
-Relieved of Babbitt’s bumbling and the soft grunts with which his wife
-expressed the sympathy she was too experienced to feel and much too
-experienced not to show, their bedroom settled instantly into
-impersonality.
-
-It gave on the sleeping-porch. It served both of them as dressing-room,
-and on the coldest nights Babbitt luxuriously gave up the duty of being
-manly and retreated to the bed inside, to curl his toes in the warmth
-and laugh at the January gale.
-
-The room displayed a modest and pleasant color-scheme, after one of the
-best standard designs of the decorator who “did the interiors” for most
-of the speculative-builders’ houses in Zenith. The walls were gray, the
-woodwork white, the rug a serene blue; and very much like mahogany was
-the furniture--the bureau with its great clear mirror, Mrs. Babbitt’s
-dressing-table with toilet-articles of almost solid silver, the plain
-twin beds, between them a small table holding a standard electric
-bedside lamp, a glass for water, and a standard bedside book with
-colored illustrations--what particular book it was cannot be
-ascertained, since no one had ever opened it. The mattresses were firm
-but not hard, triumphant modern mattresses which had cost a great deal
-of money; the hot-water radiator was of exactly the proper scientific
-surface for the cubic contents of the room. The windows were large and
-easily opened, with the best catches and cords, and Holland
-roller-shades guaranteed not to crack. It was a masterpiece among
-bedrooms, right out of Cheerful Modern Houses for Medium Incomes. Only
-it had nothing to do with the Babbitts, nor with any one else. If
-people had ever lived and loved here, read thrillers at midnight and
-lain in beautiful indolence on a Sunday morning, there were no signs of
-it. It had the air of being a very good room in a very good hotel. One
-expected the chambermaid to come in and make it ready for people who
-would stay but one night, go without looking back, and never think of it
-again.
-
-Every second house in Floral Heights had a bedroom precisely like this.
-
-The Babbitts’ house was five years old. It was all as competent and
-glossy as this bedroom. It had the best of taste, the best of
-inexpensive rugs, a simple and laudable architecture, and the latest
-conveniences. Throughout, electricity took the place of candles and
-slatternly hearth-fires. Along the bedroom baseboard were three plugs
-for electric lamps, concealed by little brass doors. In the halls were
-plugs for the vacuum cleaner, and in the living-room plugs for the piano
-lamp, for the electric fan. The trim dining-room (with its admirable oak
-buffet, its leaded-glass cupboard, its creamy plaster walls, its modest
-scene of a salmon expiring upon a pile of oysters) had plugs which
-supplied the electric percolator and the electric toaster.
-
-In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt house: It was not
-a home.
-
-
-II
-
-Often of a morning Babbitt came bouncing and jesting in to breakfast.
-But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As he pontifically tread the
-upper hall he looked into Verona’s bedroom and protested, “What’s the
-use of giving the family a high-class house when they don’t appreciate
-it and tend to business and get down to brass tacks?”
-
-He marched upon them: Verona, a dumpy brown-haired girl of twenty-two,
-just out of Bryn Mawr, given to solicitudes about duty and sex and God
-and the unconquerable bagginess of the gray sports-suit she was now
-wearing. Ted--Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt--a decorative boy of seventeen.
-Tinka--Katherine--still a baby at ten, with radiant red hair and a thin
-skin which hinted of too much candy and too many ice cream sodas.
-Babbitt did not show his vague irritation as he tramped in. He really
-disliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging was as meaningless as it
-was frequent. He shouted at Tinka, “Well, kittiedoolie!” It was the only
-pet name in his vocabulary, except the “dear” and “hon.” with which he
-recognized his wife, and he flung it at Tinka every morning.
-
-He gulped a cup of coffee in the hope of pacifying his stomach and his
-soul. His stomach ceased to feel as though it did not belong to him, but
-Verona began to be conscientious and annoying, and abruptly there
-returned to Babbitt the doubts regarding life and families and business
-which had clawed at him when his dream-life and the slim fairy girl had
-fled.
-
-Verona had for six months been filing-clerk at the Gruensberg Leather
-Company offices, with a prospect of becoming secretary to Mr. Gruensberg
-and thus, as Babbitt defined it, “getting some good out of your
-expensive college education till you’re ready to marry and settle down.”
-
-But now said Verona: “Father! I was talking to a classmate of mine
-that’s working for the Associated Charities--oh, Dad, there’s the
-sweetest little babies that come to the milk-station there!--and I feel
-as though I ought to be doing something worth while like that.”
-
-“What do you mean ‘worth while’? If you get to be Gruensberg’s
-secretary--and maybe you would, if you kept up your shorthand and didn’t
-go sneaking off to concerts and talk-fests every evening--I guess you’ll
-find thirty-five or forty bones a week worth while!”
-
-“I know, but--oh, I want to--contribute-- I wish I were working in a
-settlement-house. I wonder if I could get one of the department-stores
-to let me put in a welfare-department with a nice rest-room and chintzes
-and wicker chairs and so on and so forth. Or I could--”
-
-“Now you look here! The first thing you got to understand is that all
-this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing
-in God’s world but the entering wedge for socialism. The sooner a man
-learns he isn’t going to be coddled, and he needn’t expect a lot of free
-grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his
-kids unless he earns ’em, why, the sooner he’ll get on the job and
-produce--produce--produce! That’s what the country needs, and not all
-this fancy stuff that just enfeebles the will-power of the working man
-and gives his kids a lot of notions above their class. And you--if you’d
-tend to business instead of fooling and fussing-- All the time! When I
-was a young man I made up my mind what I wanted to do, and stuck to it
-through thick and thin, and that’s why I’m where I am to-day, and-- Myra!
-What do you let the girl chop the toast up into these dinky little
-chunks for? Can’t get your fist onto ’em. Half cold, anyway!”
-
-Ted Babbitt, junior in the great East Side High School, had been making
-hiccup-like sounds of interruption. He blurted now, “Say, Rone, you
-going to--”
-
-Verona whirled. “Ted! Will you kindly not interrupt us when we’re
-talking about serious matters!”
-
-“Aw punk,” said Ted judicially. “Ever since somebody slipped up and let
-you out of college, Ammonia, you been pulling these nut conversations
-about what-nots and so-on-and-so-forths. Are you going to-- I want to use
-the car to-night.”
-
-Babbitt snorted, “Oh, you do! May want it myself!” Verona protested,
-“Oh, you do, Mr. Smarty! I’m going to take it myself!” Tinka wailed,
-“Oh, papa, you said maybe you’d drive us down to Rosedale!” and Mrs.
-Babbitt, “Careful, Tinka, your sleeve is in the butter.” They glared,
-and Verona hurled, “Ted, you’re a perfect pig about the car!”
-
-“Course you’re not! Not a-tall!” Ted could be maddeningly bland. “You
-just want to grab it off, right after dinner, and leave it in front of
-some skirt’s house all evening while you sit and gas about lite’ature
-and the highbrows you’re going to marry--if they only propose!”
-
-“Well, Dad oughtn’t to _ever_ let you have it! You and those beastly
-Jones boys drive like maniacs. The idea of your taking the turn on
-Chautauqua Place at forty miles an hour!”
-
-“Aw, where do you get that stuff! You’re so darn scared of the car that
-you drive up-hill with the emergency brake on!”
-
-“I do not! And you-- Always talking about how much you know about motors,
-and Eunice Littlefield told me you said the battery fed the generator!”
-
-“You--why, my good woman, you don’t know a generator from a
-differential.” Not unreasonably was Ted lofty with her. He was a natural
-mechanic, a maker and tinkerer of machines; he lisped in blueprints for
-the blueprints came.
-
-“That’ll do now!” Babbitt flung in mechanically, as he lighted the
-gloriously satisfying first cigar of the day and tasted the exhilarating
-drug of the _Advocate-Times_ headlines.
-
-Ted negotiated: “Gee, honest, Rone, I don’t want to take the old boat,
-but I promised couple o’ girls in my class I’d drive ’em down to the
-rehearsal of the school chorus, and, gee, I don’t want to, but a
-gentleman’s got to keep his social engagements.”
-
-“Well, upon my word! You and your social engagements! In high school!”
-
-“Oh, ain’t we select since we went to that hen college! Let me tell you
-there isn’t a private school in the state that’s got as swell a bunch as
-we got in Gamma Digamma this year. There’s two fellows that their dads
-are millionaires. Say, gee, I ought to have a car of my own, like lots
-of the fellows.”
-
-Babbitt almost rose. “A car of your own! Don’t you want a yacht, and a
-house and lot? That pretty nearly takes the cake! A boy that can’t pass
-his Latin examinations, like any other boy ought to, and he expects me
-to give him a motor-car, and I suppose a chauffeur, and an aeroplane
-maybe, as a reward for the hard work he puts in going to the movies with
-Eunice Littlefield! Well, when you see me giving you--”
-
-Somewhat later, after diplomacies, Ted persuaded Verona to admit that
-she was merely going to the Armory, that evening, to see the dog and cat
-show. She was then, Ted planned, to park the car in front of the
-candy-store across from the Armory and he would pick it up. There were
-masterly arrangements regarding leaving the key, and having the gasoline
-tank filled; and passionately, devotees of the Great God Motor, they
-hymned the patch on the spare inner-tube, and the lost jack-handle.
-
-Their truce dissolving, Ted observed that her friends were “a scream of
-a bunch--stuck-up gabby four-flushers.” His friends, she indicated, were
-“disgusting imitation sports, and horrid little shrieking ignorant
-girls.” Further: “It’s disgusting of you to smoke cigarettes, and so on
-and so forth, and those clothes you’ve got on this morning, they’re too
-utterly ridiculous--honestly, simply disgusting.”
-
-Ted balanced over to the low beveled mirror in the buffet, regarded his
-charms, and smirked. His suit, the latest thing in Old Eli Togs, was
-skin-tight, with skimpy trousers to the tops of his glaring tan boots, a
-chorus-man waistline, pattern of an agitated check, and across the back
-a belt which belted nothing. His scarf was an enormous black silk wad.
-His flaxen hair was ice-smooth, pasted back without parting. When he
-went to school he would add a cap with a long vizor like a shovel-blade.
-Proudest of all was his waistcoat, saved for, begged for, plotted for; a
-real Fancy Vest of fawn with polka dots of a decayed red, the points
-astoundingly long. On the lower edge of it he wore a high-school
-button, a class button, and a fraternity pin.
-
-And none of it mattered. He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes
-(which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not
-over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: “Yes, I
-guess we’re pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our
-new necktie is some smear!”
-
-Babbitt barked: “It is! And while you’re admiring yourself, let me tell
-you it might add to your manly beauty if you wiped some of that egg off
-your mouth!”
-
-Verona giggled, momentary victor in the greatest of Great Wars, which is
-the family war. Ted looked at her hopelessly, then shrieked at Tinka:
-“For the love o’ Pete, quit pouring the whole sugar bowl on your corn
-flakes!”
-
-When Verona and Ted were gone and Tinka upstairs, Babbitt groaned to his
-wife: “Nice family, I must say! I don’t pretend to be any baa-lamb, and
-maybe I’m a little cross-grained at breakfast sometimes, but the way
-they go on jab-jab-jabbering, I simply can’t stand it. I swear, I feel
-like going off some place where I can get a little peace. I do think
-after a man’s spent his lifetime trying to give his kids a chance and a
-decent education, it’s pretty discouraging to hear them all the time
-scrapping like a bunch of hyenas and never--and never-- Curious; here in
-the paper it says-- Never silent for one mom-- Seen the morning paper
-yet?”
-
-“No, dear.” In twenty-three years of married life, Mrs. Babbitt had seen
-the paper before her husband just sixty-seven times.
-
-“Lots of news. Terrible big tornado in the South. Hard luck, all right.
-But this, say, this is corking! Beginning of the end for those fellows!
-New York Assembly has passed some bills that ought to completely outlaw
-the socialists! And there’s an elevator-runners’ strike in New York and
-a lot of college boys are taking their places. That’s the stuff! And a
-mass-meeting in Birmingham’s demanded that this Mick agitator, this
-fellow De Valera, be deported. Dead right, by golly! All these agitators
-paid with German gold anyway. And we got no business interfering with
-the Irish or any other foreign government. Keep our hands strictly off.
-And there’s another well-authenticated rumor from Russia that Lenin is
-dead. That’s fine. It’s beyond me why we don’t just step in there and
-kick those Bolshevik cusses out.”
-
-“That’s so,” said Mrs. Babbitt.
-
-“And it says here a fellow was inaugurated mayor in overalls--a
-preacher, too! What do you think of that!”
-
-“Humph! Well!”
-
-He searched for an attitude, but neither as a Republican, a
-Presbyterian, an Elk, nor a real-estate broker did he have any doctrine
-about preacher-mayors laid down for him, so he grunted and went on. She
-looked sympathetic and did not hear a word. Later she would read the
-headlines, the society columns, and the department-store advertisements.
-
-“What do you know about this! Charley McKelvey still doing the sassiety
-stunt as heavy as ever. Here’s what that gushy woman reporter says about
-last night:”
-
-     Never is Society with the big, big S more flattered than when they
-     are bidden to partake of good cheer at the distinguished and
-     hospitable residence of Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. McKelvey as they
-     were last night. Set in its spacious lawns and landscaping, one of
-     the notable sights crowning Royal Ridge, but merry and homelike
-     despite its mighty stone walls and its vast rooms famed for their
-     decoration, their home was thrown open last night for a dance in
-     honor of Mrs. McKelvey’s notable guest, Miss J. Sneeth of
-     Washington. The wide hall is so generous in its proportions that it
-     made a perfect ballroom, its hardwood floor reflecting the charming
-     pageant above its polished surface. Even the delights of dancing
-     paled before the alluring opportunities for tête-à-têtes that
-     invited the soul to loaf in the long library before the baronial
-     fireplace, or in the drawing-room with its deep comfy armchairs,
-     its shaded lamps just made for a sly whisper of pretty nothings all
-     a deux; or even in the billiard room where one could take a cue
-     and show a prowess at still another game than that sponsored by
-     Cupid and Terpsichore.
-
-There was more, a great deal more, in the best urban journalistic style
-of Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, the popular society editor of the
-_Advocate-Times_. But Babbitt could not abide it. He grunted. He
-wrinkled the newspaper. He protested: “Can you beat it! I’m willing to
-hand a lot of credit to Charley McKelvey. When we were in college
-together, he was just as hard up as any of us, and he’s made a million
-good bucks out of contracting and hasn’t been any dishonester or bought
-any more city councils than was necessary. And that’s a good house of
-his--though it ain’t any ‘mighty stone walls’ and it ain’t worth the
-ninety thousand it cost him. But when it comes to talking as though
-Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoisting set of his are any blooming
-bunch of of, of Vanderbilts, why, it makes me tired!”
-
-Timidly from Mrs. Babbitt: “I would like to see the inside of their
-house though. It must be lovely. I’ve never been inside.”
-
-“Well, I have! Lots of--couple of times. To see Chaz about business
-deals, in the evening. It’s not so much. I wouldn’t _want_ to go there
-to dinner with that gang of, of high-binders. And I’ll bet I make a
-whole lot more money than some of those tin-horns that spend all they
-got on dress-suits and haven’t got a decent suit of underwear to their
-name! Hey! What do you think of this!”
-
-Mrs. Babbitt was strangely unmoved by the tidings from the Real Estate
-and Building column of the _Advocate-Times_:
-
-                Ashtabula Street, 496--J. K. Dawson to
-               Thomas Mullally, April 17, 15.7 × 112.2,
-                    mtg. $4000................ Nom.
-
-And this morning Babbitt was too disquieted to entertain her with items
-from Mechanics’ Liens, Mortgages Recorded, and Contracts Awarded. He
-rose. As he looked at her his eyebrows seemed shaggier than usual.
-Suddenly:
-
-“Yes, maybe-- Kind of shame to not keep in touch with folks like the
-McKelveys. We might try inviting them to dinner, some evening. Oh,
-thunder, let’s not waste our good time thinking about ’em! Our little
-bunch has a lot liver times than all those plutes. Just compare a real
-human like you with these neurotic birds like Lucile McKelvey--all
-highbrow talk and dressed up like a plush horse! You’re a great old
-girl, hon.!”
-
-He covered his betrayal of softness with a complaining: “Say, don’t let
-Tinka go and eat any more of that poison nut-fudge. For Heaven’s sake,
-try to keep her from ruining her digestion. I tell you, most folks don’t
-appreciate how important it is to have a good digestion and regular
-habits. Be back ’bout usual time, I guess.”
-
-He kissed her--he didn’t quite kiss her--he laid unmoving lips against
-her unflushing cheek. He hurried out to the garage, muttering: “Lord,
-what a family! And now Myra is going to get pathetic on me because we
-don’t train with this millionaire outfit. Oh, Lord, sometimes I’d like
-to quit the whole game. And the office worry and detail just as bad. And
-I act cranky and-- I don’t mean to, but I get-- So darn tired!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-I
-
-
-To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his
-motor car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism. The office was his
-pirate ship but the car his perilous excursion ashore.
-
-Among the tremendous crises of each day none was more dramatic than
-starting the engine. It was slow on cold mornings; there was the long,
-anxious whirr of the starter; and sometimes he had to drip ether into
-the cocks of the cylinders, which was so very interesting that at lunch
-he would chronicle it drop by drop, and orally calculate how much each
-drop had cost him.
-
-This morning he was darkly prepared to find something wrong, and he felt
-belittled when the mixture exploded sweet and strong, and the car didn’t
-even brush the door-jamb, gouged and splintery with many bruisings by
-fenders, as he backed out of the garage. He was confused. He shouted
-“Morning!” to Sam Doppelbrau with more cordiality than he had intended.
-
-Babbitt’s green and white Dutch Colonial house was one of three in that
-block on Chatham Road. To the left of it was the residence of Mr. Samuel
-Doppelbrau, secretary of an excellent firm of bathroom-fixture jobbers.
-His was a comfortable house with no architectural manners whatever; a
-large wooden box with a squat tower, a broad porch, and glossy paint
-yellow as a yolk. Babbitt disapproved of Mr. and Mrs. Doppelbrau as
-“Bohemian.” From their house came midnight music and obscene laughter;
-there were neighborhood rumors of bootlegged whisky and fast motor
-rides. They furnished Babbitt with many happy evenings of discussion,
-during which he announced firmly, “I’m not straitlaced, and I don’t mind
-seeing a fellow throw in a drink once in a while, but when it comes to
-deliberately trying to get away with a lot of hell-raising all the while
-like the Doppelbraus do, it’s too rich for my blood!”
-
-On the other side of Babbitt lived Howard Littlefield, Ph.D., in a
-strictly modern house whereof the lower part was dark red tapestry
-brick, with a leaded oriel, the upper part of pale stucco like spattered
-clay, and the roof red-tiled. Littlefield was the Great Scholar of the
-neighborhood; the authority on everything in the world except babies,
-cooking, and motors. He was a Bachelor of Arts of Blodgett College, and
-a Doctor of Philosophy in economics of Yale. He was the
-employment-manager and publicity-counsel of the Zenith Street Traction
-Company. He could, on ten hours’ notice, appear before the board of
-aldermen or the state legislature and prove, absolutely, with figures
-all in rows and with precedents from Poland and New Zealand, that the
-street-car company loved the Public and yearned over its employees; that
-all its stock was owned by Widows and Orphans; and that whatever it
-desired to do would benefit property-owners by increasing rental values,
-and help the poor by lowering rents. All his acquaintances turned to
-Littlefield when they desired to know the date of the battle of
-Saragossa, the definition of the word “sabotage,” the future of the
-German mark, the translation of “_hinc illæ lachrimæ_” or the number of
-products of coal tar. He awed Babbitt by confessing that he often sat up
-till midnight reading the figures and footnotes in Government reports,
-or skimming (with amusement at the author’s mistakes) the latest volumes
-of chemistry, archaeology, and ichthyology.
-
-But Littlefield’s great value was as a spiritual example. Despite his
-strange learnings he was as strict a Presbyterian and as firm a
-Republican as George F. Babbitt. He confirmed the business men in the
-faith. Where they knew only by passionate instinct that their system of
-industry and manners was perfect, Dr. Howard Littlefield proved it to
-them, out of history, economics, and the confessions of reformed
-radicals.
-
-Babbitt had a good deal of honest pride in being the neighbor of such a
-savant, and in Ted’s intimacy with Eunice Littlefield. At sixteen Eunice
-was interested in no statistics save those regarding the ages and
-salaries of motion-picture stars, but--as Babbitt definitively put
-it--“she was her father’s daughter.”
-
-The difference between a light man like Sam Doppelbrau and a really fine
-character like Littlefield was revealed in their appearances. Doppelbrau
-was disturbingly young for a man of forty-eight. He wore his derby on
-the back of his head, and his red face was wrinkled with meaningless
-laughter. But Littlefield was old for a man of forty-two. He was tall,
-broad, thick; his gold-rimmed spectacles were engulfed in the folds of
-his long face; his hair was a tossed mass of greasy blackness; he puffed
-and rumbled as he talked; his Phi Beta Kappa key shone against a spotty
-black vest; he smelled of old pipes; he was altogether funereal and
-archidiaconal; and to real-estate brokerage and the jobbing of
-bathroom-fixtures he added an aroma of sanctity.
-
-This morning he was in front of his house, inspecting the grass parking
-between the curb and the broad cement sidewalk. Babbitt stopped his car
-and leaned out to shout “Mornin’!” Littlefield lumbered over and stood
-with one foot up on the running-board.
-
-“Fine morning,” said Babbitt, lighting--illegally early--his second
-cigar of the day.
-
-“Yes, it’s a mighty fine morning,” said Littlefield.
-
-“Spring coming along fast now.”
-
-“Yes, it’s real spring now, all right,” said Littlefield.
-
-“Still cold nights, though. Had to have a couple blankets, on the
-sleeping-porch last night.”
-
-“Yes, it wasn’t any too warm last night,” said Littlefield.
-
-“But I don’t anticipate we’ll have any more real cold weather now.”
-
-“No, but still, there was snow at Tiflis, Montana, yesterday,” said the
-Scholar, “and you remember the blizzard they had out West three days
-ago--thirty inches of snow at Greeley, Colorado--and two years ago we
-had a snow-squall right here in Zenith on the twenty-fifth of April.”
-
-“Is that a fact! Say, old man, what do you think about the Republican
-candidate? Who’ll they nominate for president? Don’t you think it’s
-about time we had a real business administration?”
-
-“In my opinion, what the country needs, first and foremost, is a good,
-sound, business-like conduct of its affairs. What we need is--a business
-administration!” said Littlefield.
-
-“I’m glad to hear you say that! I certainly am glad to hear you say
-that! I didn’t know how you’d feel about it, with all your associations
-with colleges and so on, and I’m glad you feel that way. What the
-country needs--just at this present juncture--is neither a college
-president nor a lot of monkeying with foreign affairs, but a
-good--sound--economical--business--administration, that will give us a
-chance to have something like a decent turnover.”
-
-“Yes. It isn’t generally realized that even in China the schoolmen are
-giving way to more practical men, and of course you can see what that
-implies.”
-
-“Is that a fact! Well, well!” breathed Babbitt, feeling much calmer, and
-much happier about the way things were going in the world. “Well, it’s
-been nice to stop and parleyvoo a second. Guess I’ll have to get down to
-the office now and sting a few clients. Well, so long, old man. See you
-to-night. So long.”
-
-
-II
-
-They had labored, these solid citizens. Twenty years before, the hill
-on which Floral Heights was spread, with its bright roofs and immaculate
-turf and amazing comfort, had been a wilderness of rank second-growth
-elms and oaks and maples. Along the precise streets were still a few
-wooded vacant lots, and the fragment of an old orchard. It was brilliant
-to-day; the apple boughs were lit with fresh leaves like torches of
-green fire. The first white of cherry blossoms flickered down a gully,
-and robins clamored.
-
-Babbitt sniffed the earth, chuckled at the hysteric robins as he would
-have chuckled at kittens or at a comic movie. He was, to the eye, the
-perfect office-going executive--a well-fed man in a correct brown soft
-hat and frameless spectacles, smoking a large cigar, driving a good
-motor along a semisuburban parkway. But in him was some genius of
-authentic love for his neighborhood, his city, his clan. The winter was
-over; the time was come for the building, the visible growth, which to
-him was glory. He lost his dawn depression; he was ruddily cheerful when
-he stopped on Smith Street to leave the brown trousers, and to have the
-gasoline-tank filled.
-
-The familiarity of the rite fortified him: the sight of the tall red
-iron gasoline-pump, the hollow-tile and terra-cotta garage, the window
-full of the most agreeable accessories--shiny casings, spark-plugs with
-immaculate porcelain jackets, tire-chains of gold and silver. He was
-flattered by the friendliness with which Sylvester Moon, dirtiest and
-most skilled of motor mechanics, came out to serve him. “Mornin’, Mr.
-Babbitt!” said Moon, and Babbitt felt himself a person of importance,
-one whose name even busy garagemen remembered--not one of these
-cheap-sports flying around in flivvers. He admired the ingenuity of the
-automatic dial, clicking off gallon by gallon; admired the smartness of
-the sign: “A fill in time saves getting stuck--gas to-day 31 cents”;
-admired the rhythmic gurgle of the gasoline as it flowed into the tank,
-and the mechanical regularity with which Moon turned the handle.
-
-“How much we takin’ to-day?” asked Moon, in a manner which combined the
-independence of the great specialist, the friendliness of a familiar
-gossip, and respect for a man of weight in the community, like George F.
-Babbitt.
-
-“Fill ’er up.”
-
-“Who you rootin’ for for Republican candidate, Mr. Babbitt?”
-
-“It’s too early to make any predictions yet. After all, there’s still a
-good month and two weeks--no, three weeks--must be almost three
-weeks--well, there’s more than six weeks in all before the Republican
-convention, and I feel a fellow ought to keep an open mind and give all
-the candidates a show--look ’em all over and size ’em up, and then
-decide carefully.”
-
-“That’s a fact, Mr. Babbitt.”
-
-“But I’ll tell you--and my stand on this is just the same as it was four
-years ago, and eight years ago, and it’ll be my stand four years from
-now--yes, and eight years from now! What I tell everybody, and it can’t
-be too generally understood, is that what we need first, last, and all
-the time is a good, sound business administration!”
-
-“By golly, that’s right!”
-
-“How do those front tires look to you?”
-
-“Fine! Fine! Wouldn’t be much work for garages if everybody looked after
-their car the way you do.”
-
-“Well, I do try and have some sense about it.” Babbitt paid his bill,
-said adequately, “Oh, keep the change,” and drove off in an ecstasy of
-honest self-appreciation. It was with the manner of a Good Samaritan
-that he shouted at a respectable-looking man who was waiting for a
-trolley car, “Have a lift?” As the man climbed in Babbitt condescended,
-“Going clear down-town? Whenever I see a fellow waiting for a trolley, I
-always make it a practice to give him a lift--unless, of course, he
-looks like a bum.”
-
-“Wish there were more folks that were so generous with their machines,”
-dutifully said the victim of benevolence.
-
-“Oh, no, ’tain’t a question of generosity, hardly. Fact, I always
-feel-- I was saying to my son just the other night--it’s a fellow’s duty
-to share the good things of this world with his neighbors, and it gets
-my goat when a fellow gets stuck on himself and goes around tooting his
-horn merely because he’s charitable.”
-
-The victim seemed unable to find the right answer. Babbitt boomed on:
-
-“Pretty punk service the Company giving us on these carlines. Nonsense
-to only run the Portland Road cars once every seven minutes. Fellow gets
-mighty cold on a winter morning, waiting on a street corner with the
-wind nipping at his ankles.”
-
-“That’s right. The Street Car Company don’t care a damn what kind of a
-deal they give us. Something ought to happen to ’em.”
-
-Babbitt was alarmed. “But still, of course it won’t do to just keep
-knocking the Traction Company and not realize the difficulties they’re
-operating under, like these cranks that want municipal ownership. The
-way these workmen hold up the Company for high wages is simply a crime,
-and of course the burden falls on you and me that have to pay a
-seven-cent fare! Fact, there’s remarkable service on all their
-lines--considering.”
-
-“Well--” uneasily.
-
-“Darn fine morning,” Babbitt explained. “Spring coming along fast.”
-
-“Yes, it’s real spring now.”
-
-The victim had no originality, no wit, and Babbitt fell into a great
-silence and devoted himself to the game of beating trolley cars to the
-corner: a spurt, a tail-chase, nervous speeding between the huge yellow
-side of the trolley and the jagged row of parked motors, shooting past
-just as the trolley stopped--a rare game and valiant.
-
-And all the while he was conscious of the loveliness of Zenith. For
-weeks together he noticed nothing but clients and the vexing To Rent
-signs of rival brokers. To-day, in mysterious malaise, he raged or
-rejoiced with equal nervous swiftness, and to-day the light of spring
-was so winsome that he lifted his head and saw.
-
-He admired each district along his familiar route to the office: The
-bungalows and shrubs and winding irregular driveways of Floral Heights.
-The one-story shops on Smith Street, a glare of plate-glass and new
-yellow brick; groceries and laundries and drug-stores to supply the more
-immediate needs of East Side housewives. The market gardens in Dutch
-Hollow, their shanties patched with corrugated iron and stolen doors.
-Billboards with crimson goddesses nine feet tall advertising cinema
-films, pipe tobacco, and talcum powder. The old “mansions” along Ninth
-Street, S.E., like aged dandies in filthy linen; wooden castles turned
-into boarding-houses, with muddy walks and rusty hedges, jostled by
-fast-intruding garages, cheap apartment-houses, and fruit-stands
-conducted by bland, sleek Athenians. Across the belt of railroad-tracks,
-factories with high-perched water-tanks and tall stacks--factories
-producing condensed milk, paper boxes, lighting-fixtures, motor cars.
-Then the business center, the thickening darting traffic, the crammed
-trolleys unloading, and high doorways of marble and polished granite.
-
-It was big--and Babbitt respected bigness in anything; in mountains,
-jewels, muscles, wealth, or words. He was, for a spring-enchanted
-moment, the lyric and almost unselfish lover of Zenith. He thought of
-the outlying factory suburbs; of the Chaloosa River with its strangely
-eroded banks; of the orchard-dappled Tonawanda Hills to the North, and
-all the fat dairy land and big barns and comfortable herds. As he
-dropped his passenger he cried, “Gosh, I feel pretty good this
-morning!”
-
-
-III
-
-Epochal as starting the car was the drama of parking it before he
-entered his office. As he turned from Oberlin Avenue round the corner
-into Third Street, N.E., he peered ahead for a space in the line of
-parked cars. He angrily just missed a space as a rival driver slid into
-it. Ahead, another car was leaving the curb, and Babbitt slowed up,
-holding out his hand to the cars pressing on him from behind, agitatedly
-motioning an old woman to go ahead, avoiding a truck which bore down on
-him from one side. With front wheels nicking the wrought-steel bumper of
-the car in front, he stopped, feverishly cramped his steering-wheel,
-slid back into the vacant space and, with eighteen inches of room,
-manœuvered to bring the car level with the curb. It was a virile
-adventure masterfully executed. With satisfaction he locked a
-thief-proof steel wedge on the front wheel, and crossed the street to
-his real-estate office on the ground floor of the Reeves Building.
-
-The Reeves Building was as fireproof as a rock and as efficient as a
-typewriter; fourteen stories of yellow pressed brick, with clean,
-upright, unornamented lines. It was filled with the offices of lawyers,
-doctors, agents for machinery, for emery wheels, for wire fencing, for
-mining-stock. Their gold signs shone on the windows. The entrance was
-too modern to be flamboyant with pillars; it was quiet, shrewd, neat.
-Along the Third Street side were a Western Union Telegraph Office, the
-Blue Delft Candy Shop, Shotwell’s Stationery Shop, and the
-Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company.
-
-Babbitt could have entered his office from the street, as customers did,
-but it made him feel an insider to go through the corridor of the
-building and enter by the back door. Thus he was greeted by the
-villagers.
-
-The little unknown people who inhabited the Reeves Building
-corridors--elevator-runners, starter, engineers, superintendent, and the
-doubtful-looking lame man who conducted the news and cigar stand--were
-in no way city-dwellers. They were rustics, living in a constricted
-valley, interested only in one another and in The Building. Their Main
-Street was the entrance hall, with its stone floor, severe marble
-ceiling, and the inner windows of the shops. The liveliest place on the
-street was the Reeves Building Barber Shop, but this was also Babbitt’s
-one embarrassment. Himself, he patronized the glittering Pompeian Barber
-Shop in the Hotel Thornleigh, and every time he passed the Reeves
-shop--ten times a day, a hundred times--he felt untrue to his own
-village.
-
-Now, as one of the squirearchy, greeted with honorable salutations by
-the villagers, he marched into his office, and peace and dignity were
-upon him, and the morning’s dissonances all unheard.
-
-They were heard again, immediately.
-
-Stanley Graff, the outside salesman, was talking on the telephone with
-tragic lack of that firm manner which disciplines clients: “Say, uh, I
-think I got just the house that would suit you--the Percival House, in
-Linton.... Oh, you’ve seen it. Well, how’d it strike you?... Huh?...
-Oh,” irresolutely, “oh, I see.”
-
-As Babbitt marched into his private room, a coop with semi-partition of
-oak and frosted glass, at the back of the office, he reflected how hard
-it was to find employees who had his own faith that he was going to make
-sales.
-
-There were nine members of the staff, besides Babbitt and his partner
-and father-in-law, Henry Thompson, who rarely came to the office. The
-nine were Stanley Graff, the outside salesman--a youngish man given to
-cigarettes and the playing of pool; old Mat Penniman, general utility
-man, collector of rents and salesman of insurance--broken, silent, gray;
-a mystery, reputed to have been a “crack” real-estate man with a firm of
-his own in haughty Brooklyn; Chester Kirby Laylock, resident salesman
-out at the Glen Oriole acreage development--an enthusiastic person with
-a silky mustache and much family; Miss Theresa McGoun, the swift and
-rather pretty stenographer; Miss Wilberta Bannigan, the thick, slow,
-laborious accountant and file-clerk; and four freelance part-time
-commission salesmen.
-
-As he looked from his own cage into the main room Babbitt mourned,
-“McGoun’s a good stenog., smart’s a whip, but Stan Graff and all those
-bums--” The zest of the spring morning was smothered in the stale office
-air.
-
-Normally he admired the office, with a pleased surprise that he should
-have created this sure lovely thing; normally he was stimulated by the
-clean newness of it and the air of bustle; but to-day it seemed
-flat--the tiled floor, like a bathroom, the ocher-colored metal ceiling,
-the faded maps on the hard plaster walls, the chairs of varnished pale
-oak, the desks and filing-cabinets of steel painted in olive drab. It
-was a vault, a steel chapel where loafing and laughter were raw sin.
-
-He hadn’t even any satisfaction in the new water-cooler! And it was the
-very best of water-coolers, up-to-date, scientific, and right-thinking.
-It had cost a great deal of money (in itself a virtue). It possessed a
-non-conducting fiber ice-container, a porcelain water-jar (guaranteed
-hygienic), a dripless non-clogging sanitary faucet, and machine-painted
-decorations in two tones of gold. He looked down the relentless stretch
-of tiled floor at the water-cooler, and assured himself that no tenant
-of the Reeves Building had a more expensive one, but he could not
-recapture the feeling of social superiority it had given him. He
-astoundingly grunted, “I’d like to beat it off to the woods right now.
-And loaf all day. And go to Gunch’s again to-night, and play poker, and
-cuss as much as I feel like, and drink a hundred and nine-thousand
-bottles of beer.”
-
-He sighed; he read through his mail; he shouted “Msgoun,” which meant
-“Miss McGoun”; and began to dictate.
-
-This was his own version of his first letter:
-
-“Omar Gribble, send it to his office, Miss McGoun, yours of twentieth to
-hand and in reply would say look here, Gribble, I’m awfully afraid if we
-go on shilly-shallying like this we’ll just naturally lose the Allen
-sale, I had Allen up on carpet day before yesterday and got right down
-to cases and think I can assure you--uh, uh, no, change that: all my
-experience indicates he is all right, means to do business, looked into
-his financial record which is fine--that sentence seems to be a little
-balled up, Miss McGoun; make a couple sentences out of it if you have
-to, period, new paragraph.
-
-“He is perfectly willing to pro rate the special assessment and strikes
-me, am dead sure there will be no difficulty in getting him to pay for
-title insurance, so now for heaven’s sake let’s get busy--no, make that:
-so now let’s go to it and get down--no, that’s enough--you can tie those
-sentences up a little better when you type ’em, Miss McGoun--your
-sincerely, etcetera.”
-
-This is the version of his letter which he received, typed, from Miss
-McGoun that afternoon:
-
-                        BABBITT-THOMPSON REALTY CO.
-                        Homes for Folks
-                        Reeves Bldg., Oberlin Avenue & 3d St., N.E.
-                        Zenith
-
-Omar Gribble, Esq.,
-576 North American Building,
-Zenith.
-
-     Dear Mr. Gribble:
-
-     Your letter of the twentieth to hand. I must say I’m awfully afraid
-     that if we go on shilly-shallying like this we’ll just naturally
-     lose the Allen sale. I had Allen up on the carpet day before
-     yesterday, and got right down to cases. All my experience indicates
-     that he means to do business. I have also looked into his financial
-     record, which is fine.
-
-     He is perfectly willing to pro rate the special assessment and
-     there will be no difficulty in getting him to pay for title
-     insurance.
-
-     _So let’s go!_
-
-                           Yours sincerely,
-
-
-
-As he read and signed it, in his correct flowing business-college hand,
-Babbitt reflected, “Now that’s a good, strong letter, and clear’s a
-bell. Now what the-- I never told McGoun to make a third paragraph there!
-Wish she’d quit trying to improve on my dictation! But what I can’t
-understand is: why can’t Stan Graff or Chet Laylock write a letter like
-that? With punch! With a kick!”
-
-The most important thing he dictated that morning was the fortnightly
-form-letter, to be mimeographed and sent out to a thousand “prospects.”
-It was diligently imitative of the best literary models of the day; of
-heart-to-heart-talk advertisements, “sales-pulling” letters, discourses
-on the “development of Will-power,” and hand-shaking house-organs, as
-richly poured forth by the new school of Poets of Business. He had
-painfully written out a first draft, and he intoned it now like a poet
-delicate and distrait:
-
-     SAY, OLD MAN!
-
-     I just want to know can I do you a whaleuva favor? Honest! No
-     kidding! I know you’re interested in getting a house, not merely a
-     place where you hang up the old bonnet but a love-nest for the wife
-     and kiddies--and maybe for the flivver out beyant (be sure and
-     spell that b-e-y-a-n-t, Miss McGoun) the spud garden. Say, did you
-     ever stop to think that we’re here to save you trouble? That’s how
-     we make a living--folks don’t pay us for our lovely beauty! Now
-     take a look:
-
-     Sit right down at the handsome carved mahogany escritoire and shoot
-     us in a line telling us just what you want, and if we can find it
-     we’ll come hopping down your lane with the good tidings, and if we
-     can’t, we won’t bother you. To save your time, just fill out the
-     blank enclosed. On request will also send blank regarding store
-     properties in Floral Heights, Silver Grove, Linton, Bellevue, and
-     all East Side residential districts.
-
-                          Yours for service,
-
-     P.S.--Just a hint of some plums we can pick for you--some genuine
-     bargains that came in to-day:
-
-     SILVER GROVE.--Cute four-room California bungalow, a.m.i., garage,
-     dandy shade tree, swell neighborhood, handy car line. $3700, $780
-     down and balance liberal, Babbitt-Thompson terms, cheaper than
-     rent.
-
-     DORCHESTER.--A corker! Artistic two-family house, all oak trim,
-     parquet floors, lovely gas log, big porches, colonial, HEATED
-     ALL-WEATHER GARAGE, a bargain at $11,250.
-
-Dictation over, with its need of sitting and thinking instead of
-bustling around and making a noise and really doing something, Babbitt
-sat creakily back in his revolving desk-chair and beamed on Miss McGoun.
-He was conscious of her as a girl, of black bobbed hair against demure
-cheeks. A longing which was indistinguishable from loneliness enfeebled
-him. While she waited, tapping a long, precise pencil-point on the
-desk-tablet, he half identified her with the fairy girl of his dreams.
-He imagined their eyes meeting with terrifying recognition; imagined
-touching her lips with frightened reverence and-- She was chirping, “Any
-more, Mist’ Babbitt?” He grunted, “That winds it up, I guess,” and
-turned heavily away.
-
-For all his wandering thoughts, they had never been more intimate than
-this. He often reflected, “Nev’ forget how old Jake Offutt said a wise
-bird never goes love-making in his own office or his own home. Start
-trouble. Sure. But--”
-
-In twenty-three years of married life he had peered uneasily at every
-graceful ankle, every soft shoulder; in thought he had treasured them;
-but not once had he hazarded respectability by adventuring. Now, as he
-calculated the cost of repapering the Styles house, he was restless
-again, discontented about nothing and everything, ashamed of his
-discontentment, and lonely for the fairy girl.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-
-I
-
-It was a morning of artistic creation. Fifteen minutes after the purple
-prose of Babbitt’s form-letter, Chester Kirby Laylock, the resident
-salesman at Glen Oriole, came in to report a sale and submit an
-advertisement. Babbitt disapproved of Laylock, who sang in choirs and
-was merry at home over games of Hearts and Old Maid. He had a tenor
-voice, wavy chestnut hair, and a mustache like a camel’s-hair brush.
-Babbitt considered it excusable in a family-man to growl, “Seen this new
-picture of the kid--husky little devil, eh?” but Laylock’s domestic
-confidences were as bubbling as a girl’s.
-
-“Say, I think I got a peach of an ad for the Glen, Mr. Babbitt. Why
-don’t we try something in poetry? Honest, it’d have wonderful
-pulling-power. Listen:
-
-    ’Mid pleasures and palaces,
-    Wherever you may roam,
-    You just provide the little bride
-    And we’ll provide the home.
-
-Do you get it? See--like ‘Home Sweet Home.’ Don’t you--”
-
-“Yes, yes, yes, hell yes, of course I get it. But-- Oh, I think we’d
-better use something more dignified and forceful, like ‘We lead, others
-follow,’ or ‘Eventually, why not now?’ Course I believe in using poetry
-and humor and all that junk when it turns the trick, but with a
-high-class restricted development like the Glen we better stick to the
-more dignified approach, see how I mean? Well, I guess that’s all, this
-morning, Chet.”
-
-
-II
-
-By a tragedy familiar to the world of art, the April enthusiasm of Chet
-Laylock served only to stimulate the talent of the older craftsman,
-George F. Babbitt. He grumbled to Stanley Graff, “That tan-colored voice
-of Chet’s gets on my nerves,” yet he was aroused and in one swoop he
-wrote:
-
-DO YOU RESPECT YOUR LOVED ONES?
-
-When the last sad rites of bereavement are over, do
-you know for certain that you have done your best for
-the Departed? You haven’t unless they lie in the
-Cemetery Beautiful.
-
-LINDEN LANE
-
-the only strictly up-to-date burial place in or near
-Zenith, where exquisitely gardened plots look from
-daisy-dotted hill-slopes across the smiling fields of
-Dorchester.
-
-Sole agents
-BABBITT-THOMPSON REALTY COMPANY
-Reeves Building
-
-
-
-He rejoiced, “I guess that’ll show Chan Mott and his weedy old Wildwood
-Cemetery something about modern merchandizing!”
-
-
-III
-
-He sent Mat Penniman to the recorder’s office to dig out the names of
-the owners of houses which were displaying For Rent signs of other
-brokers; he talked to a man who desired to lease a store-building for a
-pool-room; he ran over the list of home-leases which were about to
-expire; he sent Thomas Bywaters, a street-car conductor who played at
-real estate in spare time, to call on side-street “prospects” who were
-unworthy the strategies of Stanley Graff. But he had spent his credulous
-excitement of creation, and these routine details annoyed him. One
-moment of heroism he had, in discovering a new way of stopping smoking.
-
-He stopped smoking at least once a month. He went through with it like
-the solid citizen he was: admitted the evils of tobacco, courageously
-made resolves, laid out plans to check the vice, tapered off his
-allowance of cigars, and expounded the pleasures of virtuousness to
-every one he met. He did everything, in fact, except stop smoking.
-
-Two months before, by ruling out a schedule, noting down the hour and
-minute of each smoke, and ecstatically increasing the intervals between
-smokes, he had brought himself down to three cigars a day. Then he had
-lost the schedule.
-
-A week ago he had invented a system of leaving his cigar-case
-and cigarette-box in an unused drawer at the bottom of the
-correspondence-file, in the outer office. “I’ll just naturally be
-ashamed to go poking in there all day long, making a fool of myself
-before my own employees!” he reasoned. By the end of three days he was
-trained to leave his desk, walk to the file, take out and light a cigar,
-without knowing that he was doing it.
-
-This morning it was revealed to him that it had been too easy to open
-the file. Lock it, that was the thing! Inspired, he rushed out and
-locked up his cigars, his cigarettes, and even his box of safety
-matches; and the key to the file drawer he hid in his desk. But the
-crusading passion of it made him so tobacco-hungry that he immediately
-recovered the key, walked with forbidding dignity to the file, took out
-a cigar and a match--“but only one match; if ole cigar goes out, it’ll
-by golly have to stay out!” Later, when the cigar did go out, he took
-one more match from the file, and when a buyer and a seller came in for
-a conference at eleven-thirty, naturally he had to offer them cigars.
-His conscience protested, “Why, you’re smoking with them!” but he
-bullied it, “Oh, shut up! I’m busy now. Of course by-and-by--” There was
-no by-and-by, yet his belief that he had crushed the unclean habit made
-him feel noble and very happy. When he called up Paul Riesling he was,
-in his moral splendor, unusually eager.
-
-He was fonder of Paul Riesling than of any one on earth except himself
-and his daughter Tinka. They had been classmates, roommates, in the
-State University, but always he thought of Paul Riesling, with his dark
-slimness, his precisely parted hair, his nose-glasses, his hesitant
-speech, his moodiness, his love of music, as a younger brother, to be
-petted and protected. Paul had gone into his father’s business, after
-graduation; he was now a wholesaler and small manufacturer of
-prepared-paper roofing. But Babbitt strenuously believed and lengthily
-announced to the world of Good Fellows that Paul could have been a great
-violinist or painter or writer. “Why say, the letters that boy sent me
-on his trip to the Canadian Rockies, they just absolutely make you see
-the place as if you were standing there. Believe me, he could have given
-any of these bloomin’ authors a whale of a run for their money!”
-
-Yet on the telephone they said only:
-
-“South 343. No, no, no! I said _South_--South 343. Say, operator, what
-the dickens is the trouble? Can’t you get me South 343? Why certainly
-they’ll answer. Oh, Hello, 343? Wanta speak Mist’ Riesling, Mist’
-Babbitt talking.... ‘Lo, Paul?”
-
-“Yuh.”
-
-“’S George speaking.”
-
-“Yuh.”
-
-“How’s old socks?”
-
-“Fair to middlin’. How’re you?”
-
-“Fine, Paulibus. Well, what do you know?”
-
-“Oh, nothing much.”
-
-“Where you been keepin’ yourself?”
-
-“Oh, just stickin’ round. What’s up, Georgie?”
-
-“How ’bout lil lunch’s noon?”
-
-“Be all right with me, I guess. Club?”
-
-“Yuh. Meet you there twelve-thirty.”
-
-“A’ right. Twelve-thirty. S’ long, Georgie.”
-
-
-IV
-
-His morning was not sharply marked into divisions. Interwoven with
-correspondence and advertisement-writing were a thousand nervous
-details: calls from clerks who were incessantly and hopefully seeking
-five furnished rooms and bath at sixty dollars a month; advice to Mat
-Penniman on getting money out of tenants who had no money.
-
-Babbitt’s virtues as a real-estate broker--as the servant of society in
-the department of finding homes for families and shops for distributors
-of food--were steadiness and diligence. He was conventionally honest, he
-kept his records of buyers and sellers complete, he had experience with
-leases and titles and an excellent memory for prices. His shoulders were
-broad enough, his voice deep enough, his relish of hearty humor strong
-enough, to establish him as one of the ruling caste of Good Fellows. Yet
-his eventual importance to mankind was perhaps lessened by his large and
-complacent ignorance of all architecture save the types of houses turned
-out by speculative builders; all landscape gardening save the use of
-curving roads, grass, and six ordinary shrubs; and all the commonest
-axioms of economics. He serenely believed that the one purpose of the
-real-estate business was to make money for George F. Babbitt. True, it
-was a good advertisement at Boosters’ Club lunches, and all the
-varieties of Annual Banquets to which Good Fellows were invited, to
-speak sonorously of Unselfish Public Service, the Broker’s Obligation to
-Keep Inviolate the Trust of His Clients, and a thing called Ethics,
-whose nature was confusing but if you had it you were a High-class
-Realtor and if you hadn’t you were a shyster, a piker, and a
-fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence, and enabled you to
-handle Bigger Propositions. But they didn’t imply that you were to be
-impractical and refuse to take twice the value of a house if a buyer was
-such an idiot that he didn’t jew you down on the asking-price.
-
-Babbitt spoke well--and often--at these orgies of commercial
-righteousness about the “realtor’s function as a seer of the future
-development of the community, and as a prophetic engineer clearing the
-pathway for inevitable changes”--which meant that a real-estate broker
-could make money by guessing which way the town would grow. This
-guessing he called Vision.
-
-In an address at the Boosters’ Club he had admitted, “It is at once the
-duty and the privilege of the realtor to know everything about his own
-city and its environs. Where a surgeon is a specialist on every vein and
-mysterious cell of the human body, and the engineer upon electricity in
-all its phases, or every bolt of some great bridge majestically arching
-o’er a mighty flood, the realtor must know his city, inch by inch, and
-all its faults and virtues.”
-
-Though he did know the market-price, inch by inch, of certain districts
-of Zenith, he did not know whether the police force was too large or too
-small, or whether it was in alliance with gambling and prostitution. He
-knew the means of fireproofing buildings and the relation of
-insurance-rates to fireproofing, but he did not know how many firemen
-there were in the city, how they were trained and paid, or how complete
-their apparatus. He sang eloquently the advantages of proximity of
-school-buildings to rentable homes, but he did not know--he did not know
-that it was worth while to know--whether the city schoolrooms were
-properly heated, lighted, ventilated, furnished; he did not know how the
-teachers were chosen; and though he chanted “One of the boasts of Zenith
-is that we pay our teachers adequately,” that was because he had read
-the statement in the _Advocate-Times_. Himself, he could not have given
-the average salary of teachers in Zenith or anywhere else.
-
-He had heard it said that “conditions” in the County Jail and the Zenith
-City Prison were not very “scientific;” he had, with indignation at the
-criticism of Zenith, skimmed through a report in which the notorious
-pessimist Seneca Doane, the radical lawyer, asserted that to throw boys
-and young girls into a bull-pen crammed with men suffering from
-syphilis, delirium tremens, and insanity was not the perfect way of
-educating them. He had controverted the report by growling, “Folks that
-think a jail ought to be a bloomin’ Hotel Thornleigh make me sick. If
-people don’t like a jail, let ’em behave ’emselves and keep out of it.
-Besides, these reform cranks always exaggerate.” That was the beginning
-and quite completely the end of his investigations into Zenith’s
-charities and corrections; and as to the “vice districts” he brightly
-expressed it, “Those are things that no decent man monkeys with.
-Besides, smatter fact, I’ll tell you confidentially: it’s a protection
-to our daughters and to decent women to have a district where tough nuts
-can raise cain. Keeps ’em away from our own homes.”
-
-As to industrial conditions, however, Babbitt had thought a great deal,
-and his opinions may be coordinated as follows:
-
-“A good labor union is of value because it keeps out radical unions,
-which would destroy property. No one ought to be forced to belong to a
-union, however. All labor agitators who try to force men to join a union
-should be hanged. In fact, just between ourselves, there oughtn’t to be
-any unions allowed at all; and as it’s the best way of fighting the
-unions, every business man ought to belong to an employers’-association
-and to the Chamber of Commerce. In union there is strength. So any
-selfish hog who doesn’t join the Chamber of Commerce ought to be forced
-to.”
-
-In nothing--as the expert on whose advice families moved to new
-neighborhoods to live there for a generation--was Babbitt more
-splendidly innocent than in the science of sanitation. He did not know a
-malaria-bearing mosquito from a bat; he knew nothing about tests of
-drinking water; and in the matters of plumbing and sewage he was as
-unlearned as he was voluble. He often referred to the excellence of the
-bathrooms in the houses he sold. He was fond of explaining why it was
-that no European ever bathed. Some one had told him, when he was
-twenty-two, that all cesspools were unhealthy, and he still denounced
-them. If a client impertinently wanted him to sell a house which had a
-cesspool, Babbitt always spoke about it--before accepting the house and
-selling it.
-
-When he laid out the Glen Oriole acreage development, when he ironed
-woodland and dipping meadow into a glenless, orioleless, sunburnt flat
-prickly with small boards displaying the names of imaginary streets, he
-righteously put in a complete sewage-system. It made him feel superior;
-it enabled him to sneer privily at the Martin Lumsen development,
-Avonlea, which had a cesspool; and it provided a chorus for the
-full-page advertisements in which he announced the beauty, convenience,
-cheapness, and supererogatory healthfulness of Glen Oriole. The only
-flaw was that the Glen Oriole sewers had insufficient outlet, so that
-waste remained in them, not very agreeably, while the Avonlea cesspool
-was a Waring septic tank.
-
-The whole of the Glen Oriole project was a suggestion that Babbitt,
-though he really did hate men recognized as swindlers, was not too
-unreasonably honest. Operators and buyers prefer that brokers should not
-be in competition with them as operators and buyers themselves, but
-attend to their clients’ interests only. It was supposed that the
-Babbitt-Thompson Company were merely agents for Glen Oriole, serving the
-real owner, Jake Offutt, but the fact was that Babbitt and Thompson
-owned sixty-two per cent. of the Glen, the president and purchasing
-agent of the Zenith Street Traction Company owned twenty-eight per
-cent., and Jake Offutt (a gang-politician, a small manufacturer, a
-tobacco-chewing old farceur who enjoyed dirty politics, business
-diplomacy, and cheating at poker) had only ten per cent., which Babbitt
-and the Traction officials had given to him for “fixing” health
-inspectors and fire inspectors and a member of the State Transportation
-Commission.
-
-But Babbitt was virtuous. He advocated, though he did not practise, the
-prohibition of alcohol; he praised, though he did not obey, the laws
-against motor-speeding; he paid his debts; he contributed to the church,
-the Red Cross, and the Y. M. C. A.; he followed the custom of his clan
-and cheated only as it was sanctified by precedent; and he never
-descended to trickery--though, as he explained to Paul Riesling:
-
-“Course I don’t mean to say that every ad I write is literally true or
-that I always believe everything I say when I give some buyer a good
-strong selling-spiel. You see--you see it’s like this: In the first
-place, maybe the owner of the property exaggerated when he put it into
-my hands, and it certainly isn’t my place to go proving my principal a
-liar! And then most folks are so darn crooked themselves that they
-expect a fellow to do a little lying, so if I was fool enough to never
-whoop the ante I’d get the credit for lying anyway! In self-defense I
-got to toot my own horn, like a lawyer defending a client--his bounden
-duty, ain’t it, to bring out the poor dub’s good points? Why, the Judge
-himself would bawl out a lawyer that didn’t, even if they both knew the
-guy was guilty! But even so, I don’t pad out the truth like Cecil
-Rountree or Thayer or the rest of these realtors. Fact, I think a fellow
-that’s willing to deliberately up and profit by lying ought to be shot!”
-
-Babbitt’s value to his clients was rarely better shown than this
-morning, in the conference at eleven-thirty between himself, Conrad
-Lyte, and Archibald Purdy.
-
-
-V
-
-Conrad Lyte was a real-estate speculator. He was a nervous speculator.
-Before he gambled he consulted bankers, lawyers, architects, contracting
-builders, and all of their clerks and stenographers who were willing to
-be cornered and give him advice. He was a bold entrepreneur, and he
-desired nothing more than complete safety in his investments, freedom
-from attention to details, and the thirty or forty per cent. profit
-which, according to all authorities, a pioneer deserves for his risks
-and foresight. He was a stubby man with a cap-like mass of short gray
-curls and clothes which, no matter how well cut, seemed shaggy. Below
-his eyes were semicircular hollows, as though silver dollars had been
-pressed against them and had left an imprint.
-
-Particularly and always Lyte consulted Babbitt, and trusted in his slow
-cautiousness.
-
-Six months ago Babbitt had learned that one Archibald Purdy, a grocer in
-the indecisive residential district known as Linton, was talking of
-opening a butcher shop beside his grocery. Looking up the ownership of
-adjoining parcels of land, Babbitt found that Purdy owned his present
-shop but did not own the one available lot adjoining. He advised Conrad
-Lyte to purchase this lot, for eleven thousand dollars, though an
-appraisal on a basis of rents did not indicate its value as above nine
-thousand. The rents, declared Babbitt, were too low; and by waiting they
-could make Purdy come to their price. (This was Vision.) He had to bully
-Lyte into buying. His first act as agent for Lyte was to increase the
-rent of the battered store-building on the lot. The tenant said a number
-of rude things, but he paid.
-
-Now, Purdy seemed ready to buy, and his delay was going to cost him ten
-thousand extra dollars--the reward paid by the community to Mr. Conrad
-Lyte for the virtue of employing a broker who had Vision and who
-understood Talking Points, Strategic Values, Key Situations,
-Underappraisals, and the Psychology of Salesmanship.
-
-Lyte came to the conference exultantly. He was fond of Babbitt, this
-morning, and called him “old hoss.” Purdy, the grocer, a long-nosed man
-and solemn, seemed to care less for Babbitt and for Vision, but Babbitt
-met him at the street door of the office and guided him toward the
-private room with affectionate little cries of “This way, Brother
-Purdy!” He took from the correspondence-file the entire box of cigars
-and forced them on his guests. He pushed their chairs two inches forward
-and three inches back, which gave an hospitable note, then leaned back
-in his desk-chair and looked plump and jolly. But he spoke to the
-weakling grocer with firmness.
-
-“Well, Brother Purdy, we been having some pretty tempting offers from
-butchers and a slew of other folks for that lot next to your store, but
-I persuaded Brother Lyte that we ought to give you a shot at the
-property first. I said to Lyte, ‘It’d be a rotten shame,’ I said, ‘if
-somebody went and opened a combination grocery and meat market right
-next door and ruined Purdy’s nice little business.’ Especially--”
-Babbitt leaned forward, and his voice was harsh, “--it would be hard
-luck if one of these cash-and-carry chain-stores got in there and
-started cutting prices below cost till they got rid of competition and
-forced you to the wall!”
-
-Purdy snatched his thin hands from his pockets, pulled up his trousers,
-thrust his hands back into his pockets, tilted in the heavy oak chair,
-and tried to look amused, as he struggled:
-
-“Yes, they’re bad competition. But I guess you don’t realize the Pulling
-Power that Personality has in a neighborhood business.”
-
-The great Babbitt smiled. “That’s so. Just as you feel, old man. We
-thought we’d give you first chance. All right then--”
-
-“Now look here!” Purdy wailed. “I know f’r a fact that a piece of
-property ’bout same size, right near, sold for less ’n eighty-five
-hundred, ’twa’n’t two years ago, and here you fellows are asking me
-twenty-four thousand dollars! Why, I’d have to mortgage-- I wouldn’t mind
-so much paying twelve thousand but-- Why good God, Mr. Babbitt, you’re
-asking more ’n twice its value! And threatening to ruin me if I don’t
-take it!”
-
-“Purdy, I don’t like your way of talking! I don’t like it one little
-bit! Supposing Lyte and I were stinking enough to want to ruin any
-fellow human, don’t you suppose we know it’s to our own selfish interest
-to have everybody in Zenith prosperous? But all this is beside the
-point. Tell you what we’ll do: We’ll come down to twenty-three
-thousand--five thousand down and the rest on mortgage--and if you want
-to wreck the old shack and rebuild, I guess I can get Lyte here to
-loosen up for a building-mortgage on good liberal terms. Heavens, man,
-we’d be glad to oblige you! We don’t like these foreign grocery trusts
-any better ’n you do! But it isn’t reasonable to expect us to sacrifice
-eleven thousand or more just for neighborliness, _is_ it! How about it,
-Lyte? You willing to come down?”
-
-By warmly taking Purdy’s part, Babbitt persuaded the benevolent Mr. Lyte
-to reduce his price to twenty-one thousand dollars. At the right moment
-Babbitt snatched from a drawer the agreement he had had Miss McGoun type
-out a week ago and thrust it into Purdy’s hands. He genially shook his
-fountain pen to make certain that it was flowing, handed it to Purdy,
-and approvingly watched him sign.
-
-The work of the world was being done. Lyte had made something over nine
-thousand dollars, Babbitt had made a four-hundred-and-fifty dollar
-commission, Purdy had, by the sensitive mechanism of modern finance,
-been provided with a business-building, and soon the happy inhabitants
-of Linton would have meat lavished upon them at prices only a little
-higher than those down-town.
-
-It had been a manly battle, but after it Babbitt drooped. This was the
-only really amusing contest he had been planning. There was nothing
-ahead save details of leases, appraisals, mortgages.
-
-He muttered, “Makes me sick to think of Lyte carrying off most of the
-profit when I did all the work, the old skinflint! And-- What else have I
-got to do to-day?... Like to take a good long vacation. Motor trip.
-Something.”
-
-He sprang up, rekindled by the thought of lunching with Paul Riesling.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-
-I
-
-Babbitt’s preparations for leaving the office to its feeble self during
-the hour and a half of his lunch-period were somewhat less elaborate
-than the plans for a general European war.
-
-He fretted to Miss McGoun, “What time you going to lunch? Well, make
-sure Miss Bannigan is in then. Explain to her that if Wiedenfeldt calls
-up, she’s to tell him I’m already having the title traced. And oh, b’
-the way, remind me to-morrow to have Penniman trace it. Now if anybody
-comes in looking for a cheap house, remember we got to shove that Bangor
-Road place off onto somebody. If you need me, I’ll be at the Athletic
-Club. And--uh-- And--uh-- I’ll be back by two.”
-
-He dusted the cigar-ashes off his vest. He placed a difficult unanswered
-letter on the pile of unfinished work, that he might not fail to attend
-to it that afternoon. (For three noons, now, he had placed the same
-letter on the unfinished pile.) He scrawled on a sheet of yellow
-backing-paper the memorandum: “See abt apt h drs,” which gave him an
-agreeable feeling of having already seen about the apartment-house
-doors.
-
-He discovered that he was smoking another cigar. He threw it away,
-protesting, “Darn it, I thought you’d quit this darn smoking!” He
-courageously returned the cigar-box to the correspondence-file, locked
-it up, hid the key in a more difficult place, and raged, “Ought to take
-care of myself. And need more exercise--walk to the club, every single
-noon--just what I’ll do--every noon--cut out this motoring all the
-time.”
-
-The resolution made him feel exemplary. Immediately after it he decided
-that this noon it was too late to walk.
-
-It took but little more time to start his car and edge it into the
-traffic than it would have taken to walk the three and a half blocks to
-the club.
-
-
-II
-
-As he drove he glanced with the fondness of familiarity at the
-buildings.
-
-A stranger suddenly dropped into the business-center of Zenith could not
-have told whether he was in a city of Oregon or Georgia, Ohio or Maine,
-Oklahoma or Manitoba. But to Babbitt every inch was individual and
-stirring. As always he noted that the California Building across the way
-was three stories lower, therefore three stories less beautiful, than
-his own Reeves Building. As always when he passed the Parthenon Shoe
-Shine Parlor, a one-story hut which beside the granite and red-brick
-ponderousness of the old California Building resembled a bath-house
-under a cliff, he commented, “Gosh, ought to get my shoes shined this
-afternoon. Keep forgetting it.” At the Simplex Office Furniture Shop,
-the National Cash Register Agency, he yearned for a dictaphone, for a
-typewriter which would add and multiply, as a poet yearns for quartos or
-a physician for radium.
-
-At the Nobby Men’s Wear Shop he took his left hand off the
-steering-wheel to touch his scarf, and thought well of himself as one
-who bought expensive ties “and could pay cash for ’em, too, by golly;”
-and at the United Cigar Store, with its crimson and gold alertness, he
-reflected, “Wonder if I need some cigars--idiot--plumb forgot--going t’
-cut down my fool smoking.” He looked at his bank, the Miners’ and
-Drovers’ National, and considered how clever and solid he was to bank
-with so marbled an establishment. His high moment came in the clash of
-traffic when he was halted at the corner beneath the lofty Second
-National Tower. His car was banked with four others in a line of steel
-restless as cavalry, while the crosstown traffic, limousines and
-enormous moving-vans and insistent motor-cycles, poured by; on the
-farther corner, pneumatic riveters rang on the sun-plated skeleton of a
-new building; and out of this tornado flashed the inspiration of a
-familiar face, and a fellow Booster shouted, “H’ are you, George!”
-Babbitt waved in neighborly affection, and slid on with the traffic as
-the policeman lifted his hand. He noted how quickly his car picked up.
-He felt superior and powerful, like a shuttle of polished steel darting
-in a vast machine.
-
-As always he ignored the next two blocks, decayed blocks not yet
-reclaimed from the grime and shabbiness of the Zenith of 1885. While he
-was passing the five-and-ten-cent store, the Dakota Lodging House,
-Concordia Hall with its lodge-rooms and the offices of fortune-tellers
-and chiropractors, he thought of how much money he made, and he boasted
-a little and worried a little and did old familiar sums:
-
-“Four hundred fifty plunks this morning from the Lyte deal. But taxes
-due. Let’s see: I ought to pull out eight thousand net this year, and
-save fifteen hundred of that--no, not if I put up garage and-- Let’s see:
-six hundred and forty clear last month, and twelve times six-forty
-makes--makes--let see: six times twelve is seventy-two hundred and-- Oh
-rats, anyway, I’ll make eight thousand--gee now, that’s not so bad;
-mighty few fellows pulling down eight thousand dollars a year--eight
-thousand good hard iron dollars--bet there isn’t more than five per
-cent. of the people in the whole United States that make more than Uncle
-George does, by golly! Right up at the top of the heap! But-- Way
-expenses are-- Family wasting gasoline, and always dressed like
-millionaires, and sending that eighty a month to Mother-- And all these
-stenographers and salesmen gouging me for every cent they can get--”
-
-The effect of his scientific budget-planning was that he felt at once
-triumphantly wealthy and perilously poor, and in the midst of
-these dissertations he stopped his car, rushed into a small
-news-and-miscellany shop, and bought the electric cigar-lighter which he
-had coveted for a week. He dodged his conscience by being jerky and
-noisy, and by shouting at the clerk, “Guess this will prett’ near pay
-for itself in matches, eh?”
-
-It was a pretty thing, a nickeled cylinder with an almost silvery
-socket, to be attached to the dashboard of his car. It was not only, as
-the placard on the counter observed, “a dandy little refinement, lending
-the last touch of class to a gentleman’s auto,” but a priceless
-time-saver. By freeing him from halting the car to light a match, it
-would in a month or two easily save ten minutes.
-
-As he drove on he glanced at it. “Pretty nice. Always wanted one,” he
-said wistfully. “The one thing a smoker needs, too.”
-
-Then he remembered that he had given up smoking.
-
-“Darn it!” he mourned. “Oh well, I suppose I’ll hit a cigar once in a
-while. And-- Be a great convenience for other folks. Might make just the
-difference in getting chummy with some fellow that would put over a
-sale. And-- Certainly looks nice there. Certainly is a mighty clever
-little jigger. Gives the last touch of refinement and class. I-- By
-golly, I guess I can afford it if I want to! Not going to be the only
-member of this family that never has a single doggone luxury!”
-
-Thus, laden with treasure, after three and a half blocks of romantic
-adventure, he drove up to the club.
-
-
-III
-
-The Zenith Athletic Club is not athletic and it isn’t exactly a club,
-but it is Zenith in perfection. It has an active and smoke-misted
-billiard room, it is represented by baseball and football teams, and in
-the pool and the gymnasium a tenth of the members sporadically try to
-reduce. But most of its three thousand members use it as a café in which
-to lunch, play cards, tell stories, meet customers, and entertain
-out-of-town uncles at dinner. It is the largest club in the city, and
-its chief hatred is the conservative Union Club, which all sound members
-of the Athletic call “a rotten, snobbish, dull, expensive old hole--not
-one Good Mixer in the place--you couldn’t hire me to join.” Statistics
-show that no member of the Athletic has ever refused election to the
-Union, and of those who are elected, sixty-seven per cent. resign from
-the Athletic and are thereafter heard to say, in the drowsy sanctity of
-the Union lounge, “The Athletic would be a pretty good hotel, if it were
-more exclusive.”
-
-The Athletic Club building is nine stories high, yellow brick with
-glassy roof-garden above and portico of huge limestone columns below.
-The lobby, with its thick pillars of porous Caen stone, its pointed
-vaulting, and a brown glazed-tile floor like well-baked bread-crust, is
-a combination of cathedral-crypt and rathskellar. The members rush into
-the lobby as though they were shopping and hadn’t much time for it. Thus
-did Babbitt enter, and to the group standing by the cigar-counter he
-whooped, “How’s the boys? How’s the boys? Well, well, fine day!”
-
-Jovially they whooped back--Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer, Sidney
-Finkelstein, the ladies’-ready-to-wear buyer for Parcher & Stein’s
-department-store, and Professor Joseph K. Pumphrey, owner of the Riteway
-Business College and instructor in Public Speaking, Business English,
-Scenario Writing, and Commercial Law. Though Babbitt admired this
-savant, and appreciated Sidney Finkelstein as “a mighty smart buyer and
-a good liberal spender,” it was to Vergil Gunch that he turned with
-enthusiasm. Mr. Gunch was president of the Boosters’ Club, a weekly
-lunch-club, local chapter of a national organization which promoted
-sound business and friendliness among Regular Fellows. He was also no
-less an official than Esteemed Leading Knight in the Benevolent and
-Protective Order of Elks, and it was rumored that at the next election
-he would be a candidate for Exalted Ruler. He was a jolly man, given to
-oratory and to chumminess with the arts. He called on the famous actors
-and vaudeville artists when they came to town, gave them cigars,
-addressed them by their first names, and--sometimes--succeeded in
-bringing them to the Boosters’ lunches to give The Boys a Free
-Entertainment. He was a large man with hair _en brosse_, and he knew the
-latest jokes, but he played poker close to the chest. It was at his
-party that Babbitt had sucked in the virus of to-day’s restlessness.
-
-Gunch shouted, “How’s the old Bolsheviki? How do you feel, the morning
-after the night before?”
-
-“Oh, boy! Some head! That was a regular party you threw, Verg! Hope you
-haven’t forgotten I took that last cute little jack-pot!” Babbitt
-bellowed. (He was three feet from Gunch.)
-
-“That’s all right now! What I’ll hand you next time, Georgie! Say, juh
-notice in the paper the way the New York Assembly stood up to the Reds?”
-
-“You bet I did. That was fine, eh? Nice day to-day.”
-
-“Yes, it’s one mighty fine spring day, but nights still cold.”
-
-“Yeh, you’re right they are! Had to have coupla blankets last night, out
-on the sleeping-porch. Say, Sid,” Babbitt turned to Finkelstein, the
-buyer, “got something wanta ask you about. I went out and bought me an
-electric cigar-lighter for the car, this noon, and--”
-
-“Good hunch!” said Finkelstein, while even the learned Professor
-Pumphrey, a bulbous man with a pepper-and-salt cutaway and a pipe-organ
-voice, commented, “That makes a dandy accessory. Cigar-lighter gives
-tone to the dashboard.”
-
-“Yep, finally decided I’d buy me one. Got the best on the market, the
-clerk said it was. Paid five bucks for it. Just wondering if I got
-stuck. What do they charge for ’em at the store, Sid?”
-
-Finkelstein asserted that five dollars was not too great a sum, not for
-a really high-class lighter which was suitably nickeled and provided
-with connections of the very best quality. “I always say--and believe
-me, I base it on a pretty fairly extensive mercantile experience--the
-best is the cheapest in the long run. Of course if a fellow wants to be
-a Jew about it, he can get cheap junk, but in the long _run_, the
-cheapest thing is--the best you can get! Now you take here just th’
-other day: I got a new top for my old boat and some upholstery, and I
-paid out a hundred and twenty-six fifty, and of course a lot of fellows
-would say that was too much-- Lord, if the Old Folks--they live in one of
-these hick towns up-state and they simply can’t get onto the way a city
-fellow’s mind works, and then, of course, they’re Jews, and they’d lie
-right down and die if they knew Sid had anted up a hundred and
-twenty-six bones. But I don’t figure I was stuck, George, not a bit.
-Machine looks brand new now--not that it’s so darned old, of course; had
-it less ’n three years, but I give it hard service; never drive less ’n
-a hundred miles on Sunday and, uh-- Oh, I don’t really think you got
-stuck, George. In the _long_ run, the best is, you might say, it’s
-unquestionably the cheapest.”
-
-“That’s right,” said Vergil Gunch. “That’s the way I look at it. If a
-fellow is keyed up to what you might call intensive living, the way you
-get it here in Zenith--all the hustle and mental activity that’s going
-on with a bunch of live-wires like the Boosters and here in the Z.A.C.,
-why, he’s got to save his nerves by having the best.”
-
-Babbitt nodded his head at every fifth word in the roaring rhythm; and
-by the conclusion, in Gunch’s renowned humorous vein, he was enchanted:
-
-“Still, at that, George, don’t know’s you can afford it. I’ve heard your
-business has been kind of under the eye of the gov’ment since you stole
-the tail of Eathorne Park and sold it!”
-
-“Oh, you’re a great little josher, Verg. But when it comes to kidding,
-how about this report that you stole the black marble steps off the
-post-office and sold ’em for high-grade coal!” In delight Babbitt
-patted Gunch’s back, stroked his arm.
-
-“That’s all right, but what I want to know is: who’s the real-estate
-shark that bought that coal for his apartment-houses?”
-
-“I guess that’ll hold you for a while, George!” said Finkelstein. “I’ll
-tell you, though, boys, what I did hear: George’s missus went into the
-gents’ wear department at Parcher’s to buy him some collars, and before
-she could give his neck-size the clerk slips her some thirteens. ‘How
-juh know the size?’ says Mrs. Babbitt, and the clerk says, ‘Men that let
-their wives buy collars for ’em always wear thirteen, madam.’ How’s
-that! That’s pretty good, eh? How’s that, eh? I guess that’ll about fix
-you, George!”
-
-“I--I--” Babbitt sought for amiable insults in answer. He stopped,
-stared at the door. Paul Riesling was coming in. Babbitt cried, “See you
-later, boys,” and hastened across the lobby. He was, just then, neither
-the sulky child of the sleeping-porch, the domestic tyrant of the
-breakfast table, the crafty money-changer of the Lyte-Purdy conference,
-nor the blaring Good Fellow, the Josher and Regular Guy, of the Athletic
-Club. He was an older brother to Paul Riesling, swift to defend him,
-admiring him with a proud and credulous love passing the love of women.
-Paul and he shook hands solemnly; they smiled as shyly as though they
-had been parted three years, not three days--and they said:
-
-“How’s the old horse-thief?”
-
-“All right, I guess. How’re you, you poor shrimp?”
-
-“I’m first-rate, you second-hand hunk o’ cheese.”
-
-Reassured thus of their high fondness, Babbitt grunted, “You’re a fine
-guy, you are! Ten minutes late!” Riesling snapped, “Well, you’re lucky
-to have a chance to lunch with a gentleman!” They grinned and went into
-the Neronian washroom, where a line of men bent over the bowls inset
-along a prodigious slab of marble as in religious prostration before
-their own images in the massy mirror. Voices thick, satisfied,
-authoritative, hurtled along the marble walls, bounded from the ceiling
-of lavender-bordered milky tiles, while the lords of the city, the
-barons of insurance and law and fertilizers and motor tires, laid down
-the law for Zenith; announced that the day was warm--indeed,
-indisputably of spring; that wages were too high and the interest on
-mortgages too low; that Babe Ruth, the eminent player of baseball, was a
-noble man; and that “those two nuts at the Climax Vaudeville Theater
-this week certainly are a slick pair of actors.” Babbitt, though
-ordinarily his voice was the surest and most episcopal of all, was
-silent. In the presence of the slight dark reticence of Paul Riesling,
-he was awkward, he desired to be quiet and firm and deft.
-
-The entrance lobby of the Athletic Club was Gothic, the washroom Roman
-Imperial, the lounge Spanish Mission, and the reading-room in Chinese
-Chippendale, but the gem of the club was the dining-room, the
-masterpiece of Ferdinand Reitman, Zenith’s busiest architect. It was
-lofty and half-timbered, with Tudor leaded casements, an oriel, a
-somewhat musicianless musicians’-gallery, and tapestries believed to
-illustrate the granting of Magna Charta. The open beams had been
-hand-adzed at Jake Offutt’s car-body works, the hinges were of
-hand-wrought iron, the wainscot studded with handmade wooden pegs, and
-at one end of the room was a heraldic and hooded stone fireplace which
-the club’s advertising-pamphlet asserted to be not only larger than any
-of the fireplaces in European castles but of a draught incomparably more
-scientific. It was also much cleaner, as no fire had ever been built in
-it.
-
-Half of the tables were mammoth slabs which seated twenty or thirty men.
-Babbitt usually sat at the one near the door, with a group including
-Gunch, Finkelstein, Professor Pumphrey, Howard Littlefield, his
-neighbor, T. Cholmondeley Frink, the poet and advertising-agent, and
-Orville Jones, whose laundry was in many ways the best in Zenith. They
-composed a club within the club, and merrily called themselves “The
-Roughnecks.” To-day as he passed their table the Roughnecks greeted him,
-“Come on, sit in! You ’n’ Paul too proud to feed with poor folks? Afraid
-somebody might stick you for a bottle of Bevo, George? Strikes me you
-swells are getting awful darn exclusive!”
-
-He thundered, “You bet! We can’t afford to have our reps ruined by being
-seen with you tightwads!” and guided Paul to one of the small tables
-beneath the musicians’-gallery. He felt guilty. At the Zenith Athletic
-Club, privacy was very bad form. But he wanted Paul to himself.
-
-That morning he had advocated lighter lunches and now he ordered nothing
-but English mutton chop, radishes, peas, deep-dish apple pie, a bit of
-cheese, and a pot of coffee with cream, adding, as he did invariably,
-“And uh-- Oh, and you might give me an order of French fried potatoes.”
-When the chop came he vigorously peppered it and salted it. He always
-peppered and salted his meat, and vigorously, before tasting it.
-
-Paul and he took up the spring-like quality of the spring, the virtues
-of the electric cigar-lighter, and the action of the New York State
-Assembly. It was not till Babbitt was thick and disconsolate with mutton
-grease that he flung out:
-
-“I wound up a nice little deal with Conrad Lyte this morning that put
-five hundred good round plunks in my pocket. Pretty nice--pretty nice!
-And yet-- I don’t know what’s the matter with me to-day. Maybe it’s an
-attack of spring fever, or staying up too late at Verg Gunch’s, or maybe
-it’s just the winter’s work piling up, but I’ve felt kind of down in the
-mouth all day long. Course I wouldn’t beef about it to the fellows at
-the Roughnecks’ Table there, but you-- Ever feel that way, Paul? Kind of
-comes over me: here I’ve pretty much done all the things I ought to;
-supported my family, and got a good house and a six-cylinder car, and
-built up a nice little business, and I haven’t any vices ’specially,
-except smoking--and I’m practically cutting that out, by the way. And I
-belong to the church, and play enough golf to keep in trim, and I only
-associate with good decent fellows. And yet, even so, I don’t know that
-I’m entirely satisfied!”
-
-It was drawled out, broken by shouts from the neighboring tables, by
-mechanical love-making to the waitress, by stertorous grunts as the
-coffee filled him with dizziness and indigestion. He was apologetic and
-doubtful, and it was Paul, with his thin voice, who pierced the fog:
-
-“Good Lord, George, you don’t suppose it’s any novelty to me to find
-that we hustlers, that think we’re so all-fired successful, aren’t
-getting much out of it? You look as if you expected me to report you as
-seditious! You know what my own life’s been.”
-
-“I know, old man.”
-
-“I ought to have been a fiddler, and I’m a pedler of tar-roofing! And
-Zilla-- Oh, I don’t want to squeal, but you know as well as I do about
-how inspiring a wife she is.... Typical instance last evening: We went
-to the movies. There was a big crowd waiting in the lobby, us at the
-tail-end. She began to push right through it with her ‘Sir, how dare
-you?’ manner-- Honestly, sometimes when I look at her and see how she’s
-always so made up and stinking of perfume and looking for trouble and
-kind of always yelping, ‘I tell yuh I’m a lady, damn yuh!’--why, I want
-to kill her! Well, she keeps elbowing through the crowd, me after her,
-feeling good and ashamed, till she’s almost up to the velvet rope and
-ready to be the next let in. But there was a little squirt of a man
-there--probably been waiting half an hour-- I kind of admired the little
-cuss--and he turns on Zilla and says, perfectly polite, ‘Madam, why are
-you trying to push past me?’ And she simply-- God, I was so ashamed!--she
-rips out at him, ‘You’re no gentleman,’ and she drags me into it and
-hollers, ‘Paul, this person insulted me!’ and the poor skate, he got
-ready to fight.
-
-“I made out I hadn’t heard them--sure! same as you wouldn’t hear a
-boiler-factory!--and I tried to look away-- I can tell you exactly how
-every tile looks in the ceiling of that lobby; there’s one with brown
-spots on it like the face of the devil--and all the time the people
-there--they were packed in like sardines--they kept making remarks about
-us, and Zilla went right on talking about the little chap, and
-screeching that ‘folks like him oughtn’t to be admitted in a place
-that’s _supposed_ to be for ladies and gentlemen,’ and ‘Paul, will you
-kindly call the manager, so I can report this dirty rat?’ and-- Oof!
-Maybe I wasn’t glad when I could sneak inside and hide in the dark!
-
-“After twenty-four years of that kind of thing, you don’t expect me to
-fall down and foam at the mouth when you hint that this sweet, clean,
-respectable, moral life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, do you? I can’t
-even talk about it, except to you, because anybody else would think I
-was yellow. Maybe I am. Don’t care any longer.... Gosh, you’ve had to
-stand a lot of whining from me, first and last, Georgie!”
-
-“Rats, now, Paul, you’ve never really what you could call whined.
-Sometimes-- I’m always blowing to Myra and the kids about what a whale of
-a realtor I am, and yet sometimes I get a sneaking idea I’m not such a
-Pierpont Morgan as I let on to be. But if I ever do help by jollying you
-along, old Paulski, I guess maybe Saint Pete may let me in after all!”
-
-“Yuh, you’re an old blow-hard, Georgie, you cheerful cutthroat, but
-you’ve certainly kept me going.”
-
-“Why don’t you divorce Zilla?”
-
-“Why don’t I! If I only could! If she’d just give me the chance! You
-couldn’t hire her to divorce me, no, nor desert me. She’s too fond of
-her three squares and a few pounds of nut-center chocolates in between.
-If she’d only be what they call unfaithful to me! George, I don’t want
-to be too much of a stinker; back in college I’d ’ve thought a man who
-could say that ought to be shot at sunrise. But honestly, I’d be
-tickled to death if she’d really go making love with somebody. Fat
-chance! Of course she’ll flirt with anything--you know how she holds
-hands and laughs--that laugh--that horrible brassy laugh--the way she
-yaps, ‘You naughty man, you better be careful or my big husband will be
-after you!’--and the guy looking me over and thinking, ‘Why, you cute
-little thing, you run away now or I’ll spank you!’ And she’ll let him go
-just far enough so she gets some excitement out of it and then she’ll
-begin to do the injured innocent and have a beautiful time wailing, ‘I
-didn’t think you were that kind of a person.’ They talk about these
-_demi-vierges_ in stories--”
-
-“These _whats_?”
-
-“--but the wise, hard, corseted, old married women like Zilla are worse
-than any bobbed-haired girl that ever went boldly out into this-here
-storm of life--and kept her umbrella slid up her sleeve! But rats, you
-know what Zilla is. How she nags--nags--nags. How she wants everything I
-can buy her, and a lot that I can’t, and how absolutely unreasonable she
-is, and when I get sore and try to have it out with her she plays the
-Perfect Lady so well that even I get fooled and get all tangled up in a
-lot of ‘Why did you say’s’ and ‘I didn’t mean’s.’ I’ll tell you,
-Georgie: You know my tastes are pretty fairly simple--in the matter of
-food, at least. Course, as you’re always complaining, I do like decent
-cigars--not those Flor de Cabagos you’re smoking--”
-
-“That’s all right now! That’s a good two-for. By the way, Paul, did I
-tell you I decided to practically cut out smok--”
-
-“Yes you-- At the same time, if I can’t get what I like, why, I can do
-without it. I don’t mind sitting down to burnt steak, with canned
-peaches and store cake for a thrilling little dessert afterwards, but I
-do draw the line at having to sympathize with Zilla because she’s so
-rotten bad-tempered that the cook has quit, and she’s been so busy
-sitting in a dirty lace negligée all afternoon, reading about some brave
-manly Western hero, that she hasn’t had time to do any cooking. You’re
-always talking about ‘morals’--meaning monogamy, I suppose. You’ve been
-the rock of ages to me, all right, but you’re essentially a simp. You--”
-
-“Where d’ you get that ‘simp,’ little man? Let me tell you--”
-
-“--love to look earnest and inform the world that it’s the ‘duty of
-responsible business men to be strictly moral, as an example to the
-community.’ In fact you’re so earnest about morality, old Georgie, that
-I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath. All
-right, you can--”
-
-“Wait, wait now! What’s--”
-
-“--talk about morals all you want to, old thing, but believe me, if it
-hadn’t been for you and an occasional evening playing the violin to
-Terrill O’Farrell’s ’cello, and three or four darling girls that let me
-forget this beastly joke they call ‘respectable life,’ I’d ’ve killed
-myself years ago.
-
-“And business! The roofing business! Roofs for cowsheds! Oh, I don’t
-mean I haven’t had a lot of fun out of the Game; out of putting it over
-on the labor unions, and seeing a big check coming in, and the business
-increasing. But what’s the use of it? You know, my business isn’t
-distributing roofing--it’s principally keeping my competitors from
-distributing roofing. Same with you. All we do is cut each other’s
-throats and make the public pay for it!”
-
-“Look here now, Paul! You’re pretty darn near talking socialism!”
-
-“Oh yes, of course I don’t really exactly mean that-- I s’pose.
-Course--competition--brings out the best--survival of the
-fittest--but-- But I mean: Take all these fellows we know, the kind right
-here in the club now, that seem to be perfectly content with their
-home-life and their businesses, and that boost Zenith and the Chamber of
-Commerce and holler for a million population. I bet if you could cut
-into their heads you’d find that one-third of ’em are sure-enough
-satisfied with their wives and kids and friends and their offices; and
-one-third feel kind of restless but won’t admit it; and one-third are
-miserable and know it. They hate the whole peppy, boosting, go-ahead
-game, and they’re bored by their wives and think their families are
-fools--at least when they come to forty or forty-five they’re bored--and
-they hate business, and they’d go-- Why do you suppose there’s so many
-‘mysterious’ suicides? Why do you suppose so many Substantial Citizens
-jumped right into the war? Think it was all patriotism?”
-
-Babbitt snorted, “What do you expect? Think we were sent into the world
-to have a soft time and--what is it?--‘float on flowery beds of ease’?
-Think Man was just made to be happy?”
-
-“Why not? Though I’ve never discovered anybody that knew what the deuce
-Man really was made for!”
-
-“Well we know--not just in the Bible alone, but it stands to reason--a
-man who doesn’t buckle down and do his duty, even if it does bore him
-sometimes, is nothing but a--well, he’s simply a weakling. Mollycoddle,
-in fact! And what do you advocate? Come down to cases! If a man is bored
-by his wife, do you seriously mean he has a right to chuck her and take
-a sneak, or even kill himself?”
-
-“Good Lord, I don’t know what ‘rights’ a man has! And I don’t know the
-solution of boredom. If I did, I’d be the one philosopher that had the
-cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find
-their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do
-believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of
-being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and
-patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we
-might make life more fun.”
-
-They drifted into a maze of speculation. Babbitt was elephantishly
-uneasy. Paul was bold, but not quite sure about what he was being bold.
-Now and then Babbitt suddenly agreed with Paul in an admission which
-contradicted all his defense of duty and Christian patience, and at
-each admission he had a curious reckless joy. He said at last:
-
-“Look here, old Paul, you do a lot of talking about kicking things in
-the face, but you never kick. Why don’t you?”
-
-“Nobody does. Habit too strong. But-- Georgie, I’ve been thinking of one
-mild bat--oh, don’t worry, old pillar of monogamy; it’s highly proper.
-It seems to be settled now, isn’t it--though of course Zilla keeps
-rooting for a nice expensive vacation in New York and Atlantic City,
-with the bright lights and the bootlegged cocktails and a bunch of
-lounge-lizards to dance with--but the Babbitts and the Rieslings are
-sure-enough going to Lake Sunasquam, aren’t we? Why couldn’t you and I
-make some excuse--say business in New York--and get up to Maine four or
-five days before they do, and just loaf by ourselves and smoke and cuss
-and be natural?”
-
-“Great! Great idea!” Babbitt admired.
-
-Not for fourteen years had he taken a holiday without his wife, and
-neither of them quite believed they could commit this audacity. Many
-members of the Athletic Club did go camping without their wives, but
-they were officially dedicated to fishing and hunting, whereas the
-sacred and unchangeable sports of Babbitt and Paul Riesling were
-golfing, motoring, and bridge. For either the fishermen or the golfers
-to have changed their habits would have been an infraction of their
-self-imposed discipline which would have shocked all right-thinking and
-regularized citizens.
-
-Babbitt blustered, “Why don’t we just put our foot down and say, ‘We’re
-going on ahead of you, and that’s all there is to it!’ Nothing criminal
-in it. Simply say to Zilla--”
-
-“You don’t say anything to Zilla simply. Why, Georgie, she’s almost as
-much of a moralist as you are, and if I told her the truth she’d believe
-we were going to meet some dames in New York. And even Myra--she never
-nags you, the way Zilla does, but she’d worry. She’d say, ‘Don’t you
-_want_ me to go to Maine with you? I shouldn’t dream of going unless
-you wanted me;’ and you’d give in to save her feelings. Oh, the devil!
-Let’s have a shot at duck-pins.”
-
-During the game of duck-pins, a juvenile form of bowling, Paul was
-silent. As they came down the steps of the club, not more than half an
-hour after the time at which Babbitt had sternly told Miss McGoun he
-would be back, Paul sighed, “Look here, old man, oughtn’t to talked
-about Zilla way I did.”
-
-“Rats, old man, it lets off steam.”
-
-“Oh, I know! After spending all noon sneering at the conventional stuff,
-I’m conventional enough to be ashamed of saving my life by busting out
-with my fool troubles!”
-
-“Old Paul, your nerves are kind of on the bum. I’m going to take you
-away. I’m going to rig this thing. I’m going to have an important deal
-in New York and--and sure, of course!-- I’ll need you to advise me on the
-roof of the building! And the ole deal will fall through, and there’ll
-be nothing for us but to go on ahead to Maine. I-- Paul, when it comes
-right down to it, I don’t care whether you bust loose or not. I do like
-having a rep for being one of the Bunch, but if you ever needed me I’d
-chuck it and come out for you every time! Not of course but what
-you’re--course I don’t mean you’d ever do anything that would put--that
-would put a decent position on the fritz but-- See how I mean? I’m kind
-of a clumsy old codger, and I need your fine Eyetalian hand. We-- Oh,
-hell, I can’t stand here gassing all day! On the job! S’ long! Don’t
-take any wooden money, Paulibus! See you soon! S’ long!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-
-I
-
-He forgot Paul Riesling in an afternoon of not unagreeable details.
-After a return to his office, which seemed to have staggered on without
-him, he drove a “prospect” out to view a four-flat tenement in the
-Linton district. He was inspired by the customer’s admiration of the new
-cigar-lighter. Thrice its novelty made him use it, and thrice he hurled
-half-smoked cigarettes from the car, protesting, “I _got_ to quit
-smoking so blame much!”
-
-Their ample discussion of every detail of the cigar-lighter led them to
-speak of electric flat-irons and bed-warmers. Babbitt apologized for
-being so shabbily old-fashioned as still to use a hot-water bottle, and
-he announced that he would have the sleeping-porch wired at once. He had
-enormous and poetic admiration, though very little understanding, of all
-mechanical devices. They were his symbols of truth and beauty. Regarding
-each new intricate mechanism--metal lathe, two-jet carburetor, machine
-gun, oxyacetylene welder--he learned one good realistic-sounding phrase,
-and used it over and over, with a delightful feeling of being technical
-and initiated.
-
-The customer joined him in the worship of machinery, and they came
-buoyantly up to the tenement and began that examination of plastic slate
-roof, kalamein doors, and seven-eighths-inch blind-nailed flooring,
-began those diplomacies of hurt surprise and readiness to be persuaded
-to do something they had already decided to do, which would some day
-result in a sale.
-
-On the way back Babbitt picked up his partner and father-in-law, Henry
-T. Thompson, at his kitchen-cabinet works, and they drove through South
-Zenith, a high-colored, banging, exciting region: new factories of
-hollow tile with gigantic wire-glass windows, surly old red-brick
-factories stained with tar, high-perched water-tanks, big red trucks
-like locomotives, and, on a score of hectic side-tracks, far-wandering
-freight-cars from the New York Central and apple orchards, the Great
-Northern and wheat-plateaus, the Southern Pacific and orange groves.
-
-They talked to the secretary of the Zenith Foundry Company about an
-interesting artistic project--a cast-iron fence for Linden Lane
-Cemetery. They drove on to the Zeeco Motor Company and interviewed the
-sales-manager, Noël Ryland, about a discount on a Zeeco car for
-Thompson. Babbitt and Ryland were fellow-members of the Boosters’ Club,
-and no Booster felt right if he bought anything from another Booster
-without receiving a discount. But Henry Thompson growled, “Oh, t’ hell
-with ’em! I’m not going to crawl around mooching discounts, not from
-nobody.” It was one of the differences between Thompson, the
-old-fashioned, lean Yankee, rugged, traditional, stage type of American
-business man, and Babbitt, the plump, smooth, efficient,
-up-to-the-minute and otherwise perfected modern. Whenever Thompson
-twanged, “Put your John Hancock on that line,” Babbitt was as much
-amused by the antiquated provincialism as any proper Englishman by any
-American. He knew himself to be of a breeding altogether more esthetic
-and sensitive than Thompson’s. He was a college graduate, he played
-golf, he often smoked cigarettes instead of cigars, and when he went to
-Chicago he took a room with a private bath. “The whole thing is,” he
-explained to Paul Riesling, “these old codgers lack the subtlety that
-you got to have to-day.”
-
-This advance in civilization could be carried too far, Babbitt
-perceived. Noël Ryland, sales-manager of the Zeeco, was a frivolous
-graduate of Princeton, while Babbitt was a sound and standard ware from
-that great department-store, the State University. Ryland wore spats, he
-wrote long letters about City Planning and Community Singing, and,
-though he was a Booster, he was known to carry in his pocket small
-volumes of poetry in a foreign language. All this was going too far.
-Henry Thompson was the extreme of insularity, and Noël Ryland the
-extreme of frothiness, while between them, supporting the state,
-defending the evangelical churches and domestic brightness and sound
-business, were Babbitt and his friends.
-
-With this just estimate of himself--and with the promise of a discount
-on Thompson’s car--he returned to his office in triumph.
-
-But as he went through the corridor of the Reeves Building he sighed,
-“Poor old Paul! I got to-- Oh, damn Noël Ryland! Damn Charley McKelvey!
-Just because they make more money than I do, they think they’re so
-superior. I wouldn’t be found dead in their stuffy old Union Club!
-I-- Somehow, to-day, I don’t feel like going back to work. Oh well--”
-
-
-II
-
-He answered telephone calls, he read the four o’clock mail, he signed
-his morning’s letters, he talked to a tenant about repairs, he fought
-with Stanley Graff.
-
-Young Graff, the outside salesman, was always hinting that he deserved
-an increase of commission, and to-day he complained, “I think I ought to
-get a bonus if I put through the Heiler sale. I’m chasing around and
-working on it every single evening, almost.”
-
-Babbitt frequently remarked to his wife that it was better to “con your
-office-help along and keep ’em happy ’stead of jumping on ’em and poking
-’em up--get more work out of ’em that way,” but this unexampled lack of
-appreciation hurt him, and he turned on Graff:
-
-“Look here, Stan; let’s get this clear. You’ve got an idea somehow that
-it’s you that do all the selling. Where d’ you get that stuff? Where d’
-you think you’d be if it wasn’t for our capital behind you, and our
-lists of properties, and all the prospects we find for you? All you got
-to do is follow up our tips and close the deal. The hall-porter could
-sell Babbitt-Thompson listings! You say you’re engaged to a girl, but
-have to put in your evenings chasing after buyers. Well, why the devil
-shouldn’t you? What do you want to do? Sit around holding her hand? Let
-me tell you, Stan, if your girl is worth her salt, she’ll be glad to
-know you’re out hustling, making some money to furnish the home-nest,
-instead of doing the lovey-dovey. The kind of fellow that kicks about
-working overtime, that wants to spend his evenings reading trashy novels
-or spooning and exchanging a lot of nonsense and foolishness with some
-girl, he ain’t the kind of upstanding, energetic young man, with a
-future--and with Vision!--that we want here. How about it? What’s your
-Ideal, anyway? Do you want to make money and be a responsible member of
-the community, or do you want to be a loafer, with no Inspiration or
-Pep?”
-
-Graff was not so amenable to Vision and Ideals as usual. “You bet I want
-to make money! That’s why I want that bonus! Honest, Mr. Babbitt, I
-don’t want to get fresh, but this Heiler house is a terror. Nobody’ll
-fall for it. The flooring is rotten and the walls are full of cracks.”
-
-“That’s exactly what I mean! To a salesman with a love for his
-profession, it’s hard problems like that that inspire him to do his
-best. Besides, Stan-- Matter o’ fact, Thompson and I are against bonuses,
-as a matter of principle. We like you, and we want to help you so you
-can get married, but we can’t be unfair to the others on the staff. If
-we start giving you bonuses, don’t you see we’re going to hurt the
-feeling and be unjust to Penniman and Laylock? Right’s right, and
-discrimination is unfair, and there ain’t going to be any of it in this
-office! Don’t get the idea, Stan, that because during the war salesmen
-were hard to hire, now, when there’s a lot of men out of work, there
-aren’t a slew of bright young fellows that would be glad to step in and
-enjoy your opportunities, and not act as if Thompson and I were his
-enemies and not do any work except for bonuses. How about it, heh? How
-about it?”
-
-“Oh--well--gee--of course--” sighed Graff, as he went out, crabwise.
-
-Babbitt did not often squabble with his employees. He liked to like the
-people about him; he was dismayed when they did not like him. It was
-only when they attacked the sacred purse that he was frightened into
-fury, but then, being a man given to oratory and high principles, he
-enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own
-virtue. To-day he had so passionately indulged in self-approval that he
-wondered whether he had been entirely just:
-
-“After all, Stan isn’t a boy any more. Oughtn’t to call him so hard. But
-rats, got to haul folks over the coals now and then for their own good.
-Unpleasant duty, but-- I wonder if Stan is sore? What’s he saying to
-McGoun out there?”
-
-So chill a wind of hatred blew from the outer office that the normal
-comfort of his evening home-going was ruined. He was distressed by
-losing that approval of his employees to which an executive is always
-slave. Ordinarily he left the office with a thousand enjoyable fussy
-directions to the effect that there would undoubtedly be important tasks
-to-morrow, and Miss McGoun and Miss Bannigan would do well to be there
-early, and for heaven’s sake remind him to call up Conrad Lyte soon ’s
-he came in. To-night he departed with feigned and apologetic liveliness.
-He was as afraid of his still-faced clerks--of the eyes focused on him,
-Miss McGoun staring with head lifted from her typing, Miss Bannigan
-looking over her ledger, Mat Penniman craning around at his desk in the
-dark alcove, Stanley Graff sullenly expressionless--as a parvenu before
-the bleak propriety of his butler. He hated to expose his back to their
-laughter, and in his effort to be casually merry he stammered and was
-raucously friendly and oozed wretchedly out of the door.
-
-But he forgot his misery when he saw from Smith Street the charms of
-Floral Heights; the roofs of red tile and green slate, the shining new
-sun-parlors, and the stainless walls.
-
-
-III
-
-He stopped to inform Howard Littlefield, his scholarly neighbor, that
-though the day had been springlike the evening might be cold. He went in
-to shout “Where are you?” at his wife, with no very definite desire to
-know where she was. He examined the lawn to see whether the furnace-man
-had raked it properly. With some satisfaction and a good deal of
-discussion of the matter with Mrs. Babbitt, Ted, and Howard Littlefield,
-he concluded that the furnace-man had not raked it properly. He cut two
-tufts of wild grass with his wife’s largest dressmaking-scissors; he
-informed Ted that it was all nonsense having a furnace-man--“big husky
-fellow like you ought to do all the work around the house;” and
-privately he meditated that it was agreeable to have it known throughout
-the neighborhood that he was so prosperous that his son never worked
-around the house.
-
-He stood on the sleeping-porch and did his day’s exercises: arms out
-sidewise for two minutes, up for two minutes, while he muttered, “Ought
-take more exercise; keep in shape;” then went in to see whether his
-collar needed changing before dinner. As usual it apparently did not.
-
-The Lettish-Croat maid, a powerful woman, beat the dinner-gong.
-
-The roast of beef, roasted potatoes, and string beans were excellent
-this evening and, after an adequate sketch of the day’s progressive
-weather-states, his four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar fee, his lunch with
-Paul Riesling, and the proven merits of the new cigar-lighter, he was
-moved to a benign, “Sort o’ thinking about buying a new car. Don’t
-believe we’ll get one till next year, but still, we might.”
-
-Verona, the older daughter, cried, “Oh, Dad, if you do, why don’t you
-get a sedan? That would be perfectly slick! A closed car is so much more
-comfy than an open one.”
-
-“Well now, I don’t know about that. I kind of like an open car. You get
-more fresh air that way.”
-
-“Oh, shoot, that’s just because you never tried a sedan. Let’s get one.
-It’s got a lot more class,” said Ted.
-
-“A closed car does keep the clothes nicer,” from Mrs. Babbitt; “You
-don’t get your hair blown all to pieces,” from Verona; “It’s a lot
-sportier,” from Ted; and from Tinka, the youngest, “Oh, let’s have a
-sedan! Mary Ellen’s father has got one.” Ted wound up, “Oh, everybody’s
-got a closed car now, except us!”
-
-Babbitt faced them: “I guess you got nothing very terrible to complain
-about! Anyway, I don’t keep a car just to enable you children to look
-like millionaires! And I like an open car, so you can put the top down
-on summer evenings and go out for a drive and get some good fresh air.
-Besides-- A closed car costs more money.”
-
-“Aw, gee whiz, if the Doppelbraus can afford a closed car, I guess we
-can!” prodded Ted.
-
-“Humph! I make eight thousand a year to his seven! But I don’t blow it
-all in and waste it and throw it around, the way he does! Don’t believe
-in this business of going and spending a whole lot of money to show off
-and--”
-
-They went, with ardor and some thoroughness, into the matters of
-streamline bodies, hill-climbing power, wire wheels, chrome steel,
-ignition systems, and body colors. It was much more than a study of
-transportation. It was an aspiration for knightly rank. In the city of
-Zenith, in the barbarous twentieth century, a family’s motor indicated
-its social rank as precisely as the grades of the peerage determined the
-rank of an English family--indeed, more precisely, considering the
-opinion of old county families upon newly created brewery barons and
-woolen-mill viscounts. The details of precedence were never officially
-determined. There was no court to decide whether the second son of a
-Pierce Arrow limousine should go in to dinner before the first son of a
-Buick roadster, but of their respective social importance there was no
-doubt; and where Babbitt as a boy had aspired to the presidency, his son
-Ted aspired to a Packard twin-six and an established position in the
-motored gentry.
-
-The favor which Babbitt had won from his family by speaking of a new car
-evaporated as they realized that he didn’t intend to buy one this year.
-Ted lamented, “Oh, punk! The old boat looks as if it’d had fleas and
-been scratching its varnish off.” Mrs. Babbitt said abstractedly,
-“Snoway talkcher father.” Babbitt raged, “If you’re too much of a
-high-class gentleman, and you belong to the _bon ton_ and so on, why,
-you needn’t take the car out this evening.” Ted explained, “I didn’t
-mean--” and dinner dragged on with normal domestic delight to the
-inevitable point at which Babbitt protested, “Come, come now, we can’t
-sit here all evening. Give the girl a chance to clear away the table.”
-
-He was fretting, “What a family! I don’t know how we all get to
-scrapping this way. Like to go off some place and be able to hear myself
-think.... Paul... Maine.... Wear old pants, and loaf, and cuss.” He said
-cautiously to his wife, “I’ve been in correspondence with a man in New
-York--wants me to see him about a real-estate trade--may not come off
-till summer. Hope it doesn’t break just when we and the Rieslings get
-ready to go to Maine. Be a shame if we couldn’t make the trip there
-together. Well, no use worrying now.”
-
-Verona escaped, immediately after dinner, with no discussion save an
-automatic “Why don’t you ever stay home?” from Babbitt.
-
-In the living-room, in a corner of the davenport, Ted settled down to
-his Home Study; plain geometry, Cicero, and the agonizing metaphors of
-Comus.
-
-“I don’t see why they give us this old-fashioned junk by Milton and
-Shakespeare and Wordsworth and all these has-beens,” he protested. “Oh,
-I guess I could stand it to see a show by Shakespeare, if they had swell
-scenery and put on a lot of dog, but to sit down in cold blood and
-_read_ ’em-- These teachers--how do they get that way?”
-
-Mrs. Babbitt, darning socks, speculated, “Yes, I wonder why. Of course I
-don’t want to fly in the face of the professors and everybody, but I do
-think there’s things in Shakespeare--not that I read him much, but when
-I was young the girls used to show me passages that weren’t, really,
-they weren’t at all nice.”
-
-Babbitt looked up irritably from the comic strips in the _Evening
-Advocate_. They composed his favorite literature and art, these
-illustrated chronicles in which Mr. Mutt hit Mr. Jeff with a rotten egg,
-and Mother corrected Father’s vulgarisms by means of a rolling-pin. With
-the solemn face of a devotee, breathing heavily through his open mouth,
-he plodded nightly through every picture, and during the rite he
-detested interruptions. Furthermore, he felt that on the subject of
-Shakespeare he wasn’t really an authority. Neither the _Advocate-Times_,
-the _Evening Advocate_, nor the _Bulletin of the Zenith Chamber of
-Commerce_ had ever had an editorial on the matter, and until one of them
-had spoken he found it hard to form an original opinion. But even at
-risk of floundering in strange bogs, he could not keep out of an open
-controversy.
-
-“I’ll tell you why you have to study Shakespeare and those. It’s because
-they’re required for college entrance, and that’s all there is to it!
-Personally, I don’t see myself why they stuck ’em into an up-to-date
-high-school system like we have in this state. Be a good deal better if
-you took Business English, and learned how to write an ad, or letters
-that would pull. But there it is, and there’s no talk, argument, or
-discussion about it! Trouble with you, Ted, is you always want to do
-something different! If you’re going to law-school--and you are!-- I
-never had a chance to, but I’ll see that you do--why, you’ll want to
-lay in all the English and Latin you can get.”
-
-“Oh punk. I don’t see what’s the use of law-school--or even finishing
-high school. I don’t want to go to college specially. Honest, there’s
-lot of fellows that have graduated from colleges that don’t begin to
-make as much money as fellows that went to work early. Old Shimmy
-Peters, that teaches Latin in the High, he’s a what-is-it from Columbia
-and he sits up all night reading a lot of greasy books and he’s always
-spieling about the ‘value of languages,’ and the poor soak doesn’t make
-but eighteen hundred a year, and no traveling salesman would think of
-working for that. I know what I’d like to do. I’d like to be an aviator,
-or own a corking big garage, or else--a fellow was telling me about it
-yesterday-- I’d like to be one of these fellows that the Standard Oil
-Company sends out to China, and you live in a compound and don’t have to
-do any work, and you get to see the world and pagodas and the ocean and
-everything! And then I could take up correspondence-courses. That’s the
-real stuff! You don’t have to recite to some frosty-faced old dame
-that’s trying to show off to the principal, and you can study any
-subject you want to. Just listen to these! I clipped out the ads of some
-swell courses.”
-
-He snatched from the back of his geometry half a hundred advertisements
-of those home-study courses which the energy and foresight of American
-commerce have contributed to the science of education. The first
-displayed the portrait of a young man with a pure brow, an iron jaw,
-silk socks, and hair like patent leather. Standing with one hand in his
-trousers-pocket and the other extended with chiding forefinger, he was
-bewitching an audience of men with gray beards, paunches, bald heads,
-and every other sign of wisdom and prosperity. Above the picture was an
-inspiring educational symbol--no antiquated lamp or torch or owl of
-Minerva, but a row of dollar signs. The text ran:
-
-
-                           $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
-
-                POWER AND PROSPERITY IN PUBLIC SPEAKING
-
-                        A Yarn Told at the Club
-
-Who do you think I ran into the other evening at the De Luxe Restaurant?
-Why, old Freddy Durkee, that used to be a dead-or-alive shipping clerk
-in my old place-- Mr. Mouse-Man we used to laughingly call the dear
-fellow. One time he was so timid he was plumb scared of the Super, and
-never got credit for the dandy work he did. Him at the De Luxe! And if
-he wasn’t ordering a tony feed with all the “fixings” from celery to
-nuts! And instead of being embarrassed by the waiters, like he used to
-be at the little dump where we lunched in Old Lang Syne, he was bossing
-them around like he was a millionaire!
-
-     WHAT WE TEACH YOU!
-
-     How to address your lodge.
-
-     How to give toasts.
-
-     How to tell dialect stories.
-
-     How to propose to a lady.
-
-     How to entertain banquets.
-
-     How to make convincing selling-talks.
-
-     How to build big vocabulary.
-
-     How to create a strong personality.
-
-     How to become a rational, powerful and original thinker.
-
-     How to be a MASTER MAN!
-
-I cautiously asked him what he was doing. Freddy laughed and said, “Say,
-old chum, I guess you’re wondering what’s come over me. You’ll be glad
-to know I’m now Assistant Super at the old shop, and right on the High
-Road to Prosperity and Domination, and I look forward with confidence to
-a twelve-cylinder car, and the wife is making things hum in the best
-society and the kiddies getting a first-class education.
-
-“Here’s how it happened. I ran across an ad of a course that claimed to
-teach people how to talk easily and on their feet, how to answer
-complaints, how to lay a proposition before the Boss, how to hit a bank
-for a loan, how to hold a big audience spellbound with wit, humor,
-anecdote, inspiration, etc. It was compiled by the Master Orator, Prof.
-Waldo F. Peet. I was skeptical, too, but I wrote (just _on a postcard_,
-with name and address) to the publisher for the lessons--sent On Trial,
-money back if you are not absolutely satisfied. There were eight simple
-lessons in plain language anybody could understand, and I studied them
-just a few hours a night, then started practising on the wife. Soon
-found I could talk right up to the Super and get due credit for all the
-good work I did. They began to appreciate me and advance me fast, and
-say, old doggo, what do you think they’re paying me now? $6,500 per
-year! And say, I find I can keep a big audience fascinated, speaking on
-any topic. As a friend, old boy, I advise you to send for circular (no
-obligation) and valuable free Art Picture to:--
-
-                     SHORTCUT EDUCATIONAL PUB. CO.
-                     Desk WA       Sandpit, Iowa.
-
-              ARE YOU A 100 PERCENTER OR A 10 PERCENTER?
-
-     PROF. W. F. PEET
-
-     author of the Shortcut Course in Public-Speaking, is easily the
-     foremost figure in practical literature, psychology & oratory. A
-     graduate of some of our leading universities, lecturer, extensive
-     traveler, author of books, poetry, etc., a man with the unique
-     PERSONALITY OF THE MASTER MINDS, he is ready to give _YOU_ all the
-     secrets of his culture and hammering Force, in a few easy lessons
-     that will not interfere with other occupations.
-
-Babbitt was again without a canon which would enable him to speak with
-authority. Nothing in motoring or real estate had indicated what a Solid
-Citizen and Regular Fellow ought to think about culture by mail. He
-began with hesitation:
-
-“Well--sounds as if it covered the ground. It certainly is a fine thing
-to be able to orate. I’ve sometimes thought I had a little talent that
-way myself, and I know darn well that one reason why a fourflushing old
-back-number like Chan Mott can get away with it in real estate is just
-because he can make a good talk, even when he hasn’t got a doggone thing
-to say! And it certainly is pretty cute the way they get out all these
-courses on various topics and subjects nowadays. I’ll tell you, though:
-No need to blow in a lot of good money on this stuff when you can get a
-first-rate course in eloquence and English and all that right in your
-own school--and one of the biggest school buildings in the entire
-country!”
-
-“That’s so,” said Mrs. Babbitt comfortably, while Ted complained:
-
-“Yuh, but Dad, they just teach a lot of old junk that isn’t any
-practical use--except the manual training and typewriting and basketball
-and dancing--and in these correspondence-courses, gee, you can get all
-kinds of stuff that would come in handy. Say, listen to this one:”
-
-CAN YOU PLAY A MAN’S PART?
-
-If you are walking with your mother, sister or best
-girl and some one passes a slighting remark or uses
-improper language, won’t you be ashamed if you can’t
-take her part? Well, can you?
-
-We teach boxing and self-defense by mail. Many
-pupils have written saying that after a few lessons
-they’ve outboxed bigger and heavier opponents. The
-lessons start with simple movements practised before
-your mirror--holding out your hand for a coin, the
-breast-stroke in swimming, etc. Before you realize it
-you are striking scientifically, ducking, guarding and
-feinting, just as if you had a real opponent before you.
-
-
-
-“Oh, baby, maybe I wouldn’t like that!” Ted chanted. “I’ll tell the
-world! Gosh, I’d like to take one fellow I know in school that’s always
-shooting off his mouth, and catch him alone--”
-
-“Nonsense! The idea! Most useless thing I ever heard of!” Babbitt
-fulminated.
-
-“Well, just suppose I was walking with Mama or Rone, and somebody passed
-a slighting remark or used improper language. What would I do?”
-
-“Why, you’d probably bust the record for the hundred-yard dash!”
-
-“I _would_ not! I’d stand right up to any mucker that passed a slighting
-remark on _my_ sister and I’d show him--”
-
-“Look here, young Dempsey! If I ever catch you fighting I’ll whale the
-everlasting daylights out of you--and I’ll do it without practising
-holding out my hand for a coin before the mirror, too!”
-
-“Why, Ted dear,” Mrs. Babbitt said placidly, “it’s not at all nice, your
-talking of fighting this way!”
-
-“Well, gosh almighty, that’s a fine way to appreciate-- And then suppose
-I was walking with _you_, Ma, and somebody passed a slighting remark--”
-
-“Nobody’s going to pass no slighting remarks on nobody,” Babbitt
-observed, “not if they stay home and study their geometry and mind their
-own affairs instead of hanging around a lot of poolrooms and
-soda-fountains and places where nobody’s got any business to be!”
-
-“But gooooooosh, Dad, if they DID!”
-
-Mrs. Babbitt chirped, “Well, if they did, I wouldn’t do them the honor
-of paying any attention to them! Besides, they never do. You always hear
-about these women that get followed and insulted and all, but I don’t
-believe a word of it, or it’s their own fault, the way some women look
-at a person. I certainly never’ve been insulted by--”
-
-“Aw shoot, Mother, just suppose you _were_ sometime! Just _suppose_!
-Can’t you suppose something? Can’t you imagine things?”
-
-“Certainly I can imagine things! The idea!”
-
-“Certainly your mother can imagine things--and suppose things! Think
-you’re the only member of this household that’s got an imagination?”
-Babbitt demanded. “But what’s the use of a lot of supposing? Supposing
-never gets you anywhere. No sense supposing when there’s a lot of real
-facts to take into considera--”
-
-“Look here, Dad. Suppose-- I mean, just--just suppose you were in your
-office and some rival real-estate man--”
-
-“Realtor!”
-
-“--some realtor that you hated came in--”
-
-“I don’t hate any realtor.”
-
-“But suppose you _did_!”
-
-“I don’t intend to suppose anything of the kind! There’s plenty of
-fellows in my profession that stoop and hate their competitors, but if
-you were a little older and understood business, instead of always going
-to the movies and running around with a lot of fool girls with their
-dresses up to their knees and powdered and painted and rouged and God
-knows what all as if they were chorus-girls, then you’d know--and you’d
-suppose--that if there’s any one thing that I stand for in the
-real-estate circles of Zenith, it is that we ought to always speak of
-each other only in the friendliest terms and institute a spirit of
-brotherhood and coöperation, and so I certainly can’t suppose and I
-can’t imagine my hating any realtor, not even that dirty, fourflushing
-society sneak, Cecil Rountree!”
-
-“But--”
-
-“And there’s no If, And or But about it! But if I _were_ going to
-lambaste somebody, I wouldn’t require any fancy ducks or
-swimming-strokes before a mirror, or any of these doodads and flipflops!
-Suppose you were out some place and a fellow called you vile names.
-Think you’d want to box and jump around like a dancing-master? You’d
-just lay him out cold (at least I certainly hope any son of mine would!)
-and then you’d dust off your hands and go on about your business, and
-that’s all there is to it, and you aren’t going to have any
-boxing-lessons by mail, either!”
-
-“Well but-- Yes-- I just wanted to show how many different kinds of
-correspondence-courses there are, instead of all the camembert they
-teach us in the High.”
-
-“But I thought they taught boxing in the school gymnasium.”
-
-“That’s different. They stick you up there and some big stiff amuses
-himself pounding the stuffin’s out of you before you have a chance to
-learn. Hunka! Not any! But anyway-- Listen to some of these others.”
-
-The advertisements were truly philanthropic. One of them bore the
-rousing headline: “Money! Money!! Money!!!” The second announced that
-“Mr. P. R., formerly making only eighteen a week in a barber shop,
-writes to us that since taking our course he is now pulling down $5,000
-as an Osteo-vitalic Physician;” and the third that “Miss J. L., recently
-a wrapper in a store, is now getting Ten Real Dollars a day teaching our
-Hindu System of Vibratory Breathing and Mental Control.”
-
-Ted had collected fifty or sixty announcements, from annual
-reference-books, from Sunday School periodicals, fiction-magazines, and
-journals of discussion. One benefactor implored, “Don’t be a
-Wallflower-- Be More Popular and Make More Money-- You Can Ukulele or Sing
-Yourself into Society! By the secret principles of a Newly Discovered
-System of Music Teaching, any one--man, lady or child--can, without
-tiresome exercises, special training or long drawn out study, and
-without waste of time, money or energy, learn to play by note, piano,
-banjo, cornet, clarinet, saxophone, violin or drum, and learn
-sight-singing.”
-
-The next, under the wistful appeal “Finger Print Detectives Wanted-- Big
-Incomes!” confided: “YOU red-blooded men and women--this is the
-PROFESSION you have been looking for. There’s MONEY in it, BIG money,
-and that rapid change of scene, that entrancing and compelling interest
-and fascination, which your active mind and adventurous spirit crave.
-Think of being the chief figure and directing factor in solving strange
-mysteries and baffling crimes. This wonderful profession brings you into
-contact with influential men on the basis of equality, and often calls
-upon you to travel everywhere, maybe to distant lands--all expenses
-paid. NO SPECIAL EDUCATION REQUIRED.”
-
-“Oh, boy! I guess that wins the fire-brick necklace! Wouldn’t it be
-swell to travel everywhere and nab some famous crook!” whooped Ted.
-
-“Well, I don’t think much of that. Doggone likely to get hurt. Still,
-that music-study stunt might be pretty fair, though. There’s no reason
-why, if efficiency-experts put their minds to it the way they have to
-routing products in a factory, they couldn’t figure out some scheme so a
-person wouldn’t have to monkey with all this practising and exercises
-that you get in music.” Babbitt was impressed, and he had a delightful
-parental feeling that they two, the men of the family, understood each
-other.
-
-He listened to the notices of mail-box universities which taught
-Short-story Writing and Improving the Memory, Motion-picture-acting and
-Developing the Soul-power, Banking and Spanish, Chiropody and
-Photography, Electrical Engineering and Window-trimming, Poultry-raising
-and Chemistry.
-
-“Well--well--” Babbitt sought for adequate expression of his admiration.
-“I’m a son of a gun! I knew this correspondence-school business had
-become a mighty profitable game--makes suburban real-estate look like
-two cents!--but I didn’t realize it’d got to be such a reg’lar
-key-industry! Must rank right up with groceries and movies. Always
-figured somebody’d come along with the brains to not leave education to
-a lot of bookworms and impractical theorists but make a big thing out
-of it. Yes, I can see how a lot of these courses might interest you. I
-must ask the fellows at the Athletic if they ever realized-- But same
-time, Ted, you know how advertisers, I means some advertisers,
-exaggerate. I don’t know as they’d be able to jam you through these
-courses as fast as they claim they can.”
-
-“Oh sure, Dad; of course.” Ted had the immense and joyful maturity of a
-boy who is respectfully listened to by his elders. Babbitt concentrated
-on him with grateful affection:
-
-“I can see what an influence these courses might have on the whole
-educational works. Course I’d never admit it publicly--fellow like
-myself, a State U. graduate, it’s only decent and patriotic for him to
-blow his horn and boost the Alma Mater--but smatter of fact, there’s a
-whole lot of valuable time lost even at the U., studying poetry and
-French and subjects that never brought in anybody a cent. I don’t know
-but what maybe these correspondence-courses might prove to be one of the
-most important American inventions.
-
-“Trouble with a lot of folks is: they’re so blame material; they don’t
-see the spiritual and mental side of American supremacy; they think that
-inventions like the telephone and the areoplane and wireless--no, that
-was a Wop invention, but anyway: they think these mechanical
-improvements are all that we stand for; whereas to a real thinker, he
-sees that spiritual and, uh, dominating movements like Efficiency, and
-Rotarianism, and Prohibition, and Democracy are what compose our deepest
-and truest wealth. And maybe this new principle in education-at-home may
-be another--may be another factor. I tell you, Ted, we’ve got to have
-Vision--”
-
-“I think those correspondence-courses are terrible!”
-
-The philosophers gasped. It was Mrs. Babbitt who had made this discord
-in their spiritual harmony, and one of Mrs. Babbitt’s virtues was that,
-except during dinner-parties, when she was transformed into a raging
-hostess, she took care of the house and didn’t bother the males by
-thinking. She went on firmly:
-
-“It sounds awful to me, the way they coax those poor young folks to
-think they’re learning something, and nobody ’round to help them
-and-- You two learn so quick, but me, I always was slow. But just the
-same--”
-
-Babbitt attended to her: “Nonsense! Get just as much, studying at home.
-You don’t think a fellow learns any more because he blows in his
-father’s hard-earned money and sits around in Morris chairs in a swell
-Harvard dormitory with pictures and shields and table-covers and those
-doodads, do you? I tell you, I’m a college man-- I _know_! There is one
-objection you might make though. I certainly do protest against any
-effort to get a lot of fellows out of barber shops and factories into
-the professions. They’re too crowded already, and what’ll we do for
-workmen if all those fellows go and get educated?”
-
-Ted was leaning back, smoking a cigarette without reproof. He was, for
-the moment, sharing the high thin air of Babbitt’s speculation as though
-he were Paul Riesling or even Dr. Howard Littlefield. He hinted:
-
-“Well, what do you think then, Dad? Wouldn’t it be a good idea if I
-could go off to China or some peppy place, and study engineering or
-something by mail?”
-
-“No, and I’ll tell you why, son. I’ve found out it’s a mighty nice thing
-to be able to say you’re a B.A. Some client that doesn’t know what you
-are and thinks you’re just a plug business man, he gets to shooting off
-his mouth about economics or literature or foreign trade conditions, and
-you just ease in something like, ‘When I was in college--course I got my
-B.A. in sociology and all that junk--’ Oh, it puts an awful crimp in
-their style! But there wouldn’t be any class to saying ‘I got the degree
-of Stamp-licker from the Bezuzus Mail-order University!’ You see-- My
-dad was a pretty good old coot, but he never had much style to him, and
-I had to work darn hard to earn my way through college. Well, it’s been
-worth it, to be able to associate with the finest gentlemen in Zenith,
-at the clubs and so on, and I wouldn’t want you to drop out of the
-gentlemen class--the class that are just as red-blooded as the Common
-People but still have power and personality. It would kind of hurt me if
-you did that, old man!”
-
-“I know, Dad! Sure! All right. I’ll stick to it. Say! Gosh! Gee whiz! I
-forgot all about those kids I was going to take to the chorus rehearsal.
-I’ll have to duck!”
-
-“But you haven’t done all your home-work.”
-
-“Do it first thing in the morning.”
-
-“Well--”
-
-Six times in the past sixty days Babbitt had stormed, “You will not ‘do
-it first thing in the morning’! You’ll do it right now!” but to-night he
-said, “Well, better hustle,” and his smile was the rare shy radiance he
-kept for Paul Riesling.
-
-
-IV
-
-“Ted’s a good boy,” he said to Mrs. Babbitt.
-
-“Oh, he is!”
-
-“Who’s these girls he’s going to pick up? Are they nice decent girls?”
-
-“I don’t know. Oh dear, Ted never tells me anything any more. I don’t
-understand what’s come over the children of this generation. I used to
-have to tell Papa and Mama everything, but seems like the children
-to-day have just slipped away from all control.”
-
-“I hope they’re decent girls. Course Ted’s no longer a kid, and I
-wouldn’t want him to, uh, get mixed up and everything.”
-
-“George: I wonder if you oughtn’t to take him aside and tell him
-about-- Things!” She blushed and lowered her eyes.
-
-“Well, I don’t know. Way I figure it, Myra, no sense suggesting a lot of
-Things to a boy’s mind. Think up enough devilment by himself. But I
-wonder-- It’s kind of a hard question. Wonder what Littlefield thinks
-about it?”
-
-“Course Papa agrees with you. He says all this--Instruction--is-- He says
-’tisn’t decent.”
-
-“Oh, he does, does he! Well, let me tell you that whatever Henry T.
-Thompson thinks--about morals, I mean, though course you can’t beat the
-old duffer--”
-
-“Why, what a way to talk of Papa!”
-
-“--simply can’t beat him at getting in on the ground floor of a deal,
-but let me tell you whenever he springs any ideas about higher things
-and education, then I know I think just the opposite. You may not regard
-me as any great brain-shark, but believe me, I’m a regular college
-president, compared with Henry T.! Yes sir, by golly, I’m going to take
-Ted aside and tell him why I lead a strictly moral life.”
-
-“Oh, will you? When?”
-
-“When? When? What’s the use of trying to pin me down to When and Why and
-Where and How and When? That’s the trouble with women, that’s why they
-don’t make high-class executives; they haven’t any sense of diplomacy.
-When the proper opportunity and occasion arises so it just comes in
-natural, why then I’ll have a friendly little talk with him
-and--and-- Was that Tinka hollering up-stairs? She ought to been asleep,
-long ago.”
-
-He prowled through the living-room, and stood in the sun-parlor, that
-glass-walled room of wicker chairs and swinging couch in which they
-loafed on Sunday afternoons. Outside, only the lights of Doppelbrau’s
-house and the dim presence of Babbitt’s favorite elm broke the softness
-of April night.
-
-“Good visit with the boy. Getting over feeling cranky, way I did this
-morning. And restless. Though, by golly, I will have a few days alone
-with Paul in Maine!... That devil Zilla!... But.... Ted’s all right.
-Whole family all right. And good business. Not many fellows make four
-hundred and fifty bucks, practically half of a thousand dollars, easy as
-I did to-day! Maybe when we all get to rowing it’s just as much my
-fault as it is theirs. Oughtn’t to get grouchy like I do. But-- Wish I’d
-been a pioneer, same as my grand-dad. But then, wouldn’t have a house
-like this. I-- Oh, gosh, _I don’t know_!”
-
-He thought moodily of Paul Riesling, of their youth together, of the
-girls they had known.
-
-When Babbitt had graduated from the State University, twenty-four years
-ago, he had intended to be a lawyer. He had been a ponderous debater in
-college; he felt that he was an orator; he saw himself becoming governor
-of the state. While he read law he worked as a real-estate salesman. He
-saved money, lived in a boarding-house, supped on poached egg on hash.
-The lively Paul Riesling (who was certainly going off to Europe to study
-violin, next month or next year) was his refuge till Paul was bespelled
-by Zilla Colbeck, who laughed and danced and drew men after her plump
-and gaily wagging finger.
-
-Babbitt’s evenings were barren then, and he found comfort only in Paul’s
-second cousin, Myra Thompson, a sleek and gentle girl who showed her
-capacity by agreeing with the ardent young Babbitt that of course he was
-going to be governor some day. Where Zilla mocked him as a country boy,
-Myra said indignantly that he was ever so much solider than the young
-dandies who had been born in the great city of Zenith--an ancient
-settlement in 1897, one hundred and five years old, with two hundred
-thousand population, the queen and wonder of all the state and, to the
-Catawba boy, George Babbitt, so vast and thunderous and luxurious that
-he was flattered to know a girl ennobled by birth in Zenith.
-
-Of love there was no talk between them. He knew that if he was to study
-law he could not marry for years; and Myra was distinctly a Nice
-Girl--one didn’t kiss her, one didn’t “think about her that way at all”
-unless one was going to marry her. But she was a dependable companion.
-She was always ready to go skating, walking; always content to hear his
-discourses on the great things he was going to do, the distressed poor
-whom he would defend against the Unjust Rich, the speeches he would make
-at Banquets, the inexactitudes of popular thought which he would
-correct.
-
-One evening when he was weary and soft-minded, he saw that she had been
-weeping. She had been left out of a party given by Zilla. Somehow her
-head was on his shoulder and he was kissing away the tears--and she
-raised her head to say trustingly, “Now that we’re engaged, shall we be
-married soon or shall we wait?”
-
-Engaged? It was his first hint of it. His affection for this brown
-tender woman thing went cold and fearful, but he could not hurt her,
-could not abuse her trust. He mumbled something about waiting, and
-escaped. He walked for an hour, trying to find a way of telling her that
-it was a mistake. Often, in the month after, he got near to telling her,
-but it was pleasant to have a girl in his arms, and less and less could
-he insult her by blurting that he didn’t love her. He himself had no
-doubt. The evening before his marriage was an agony, and the morning
-wild with the desire to flee.
-
-She made him what is known as a Good Wife. She was loyal, industrious,
-and at rare times merry. She passed from a feeble disgust at their
-closer relations into what promised to be ardent affection, but it
-drooped into bored routine. Yet she existed only for him and for the
-children, and she was as sorry, as worried as himself, when he gave up
-the law and trudged on in a rut of listing real estate.
-
-“Poor kid, she hasn’t had much better time than I have,” Babbitt
-reflected, standing in the dark sun-parlor. “But-- I wish I could’ve had
-a whirl at law and politics. Seen what I could do. Well-- Maybe I’ve made
-more money as it is.”
-
-He returned to the living-room but before he settled down he smoothed
-his wife’s hair, and she glanced up, happy and somewhat surprised.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-
-I
-
-He solemnly finished the last copy of the _American Magazine_, while his
-wife sighed, laid away her darning, and looked enviously at the lingerie
-designs in a women’s magazine. The room was very still.
-
-It was a room which observed the best Floral Heights standards. The gray
-walls were divided into artificial paneling by strips of white-enameled
-pine. From the Babbitts’ former house had come two much-carved
-rocking-chairs, but the other chairs were new, very deep and restful,
-upholstered in blue and gold-striped velvet. A blue velvet davenport
-faced the fireplace, and behind it was a cherrywood table and a tall
-piano-lamp with a shade of golden silk. (Two out of every three houses
-in Floral Heights had before the fireplace a davenport, a mahogany table
-real or imitation, and a piano-lamp or a reading-lamp with a shade of
-yellow or rose silk.)
-
-On the table was a runner of gold-threaded Chinese fabric, four
-magazines, a silver box containing cigarette-crumbs, and three
-“gift-books”--large, expensive editions of fairy-tales illustrated by
-English artists and as yet unread by any Babbitt save Tinka.
-
-In a corner by the front windows was a large cabinet Victrola. (Eight
-out of every nine Floral Heights houses had a cabinet phonograph.)
-
-Among the pictures, hung in the exact center of each gray panel, were a
-red and black imitation English hunting-print, an anemic imitation
-boudoir-print with a French caption of whose morality Babbitt had always
-been rather suspicious, and a “hand-colored” photograph of a Colonial
-room--rag rug, maiden spinning, cat demure before a white fireplace.
-(Nineteen out of every twenty houses in Floral Heights had either a
-hunting-print, a _Madame Fait la Toilette_ print, a colored photograph
-of a New England house, a photograph of a Rocky Mountain, or all four.)
-
-It was a room as superior in comfort to the “parlor” of Babbitt’s
-boyhood as his motor was superior to his father’s buggy. Though there
-was nothing in the room that was interesting, there was nothing that was
-offensive. It was as neat, and as negative, as a block of artificial
-ice. The fireplace was unsoftened by downy ashes or by sooty brick; the
-brass fire-irons were of immaculate polish; and the grenadier andirons
-were like samples in a shop, desolate, unwanted, lifeless things of
-commerce.
-
-Against the wall was a piano, with another piano-lamp, but no one used
-it save Tinka. The hard briskness of the phonograph contented them;
-their store of jazz records made them feel wealthy and cultured; and all
-they knew of creating music was the nice adjustment of a bamboo needle.
-The books on the table were unspotted and laid in rigid parallels; not
-one corner of the carpet-rug was curled; and nowhere was there a
-hockey-stick, a torn picture-book, an old cap, or a gregarious and
-disorganizing dog.
-
-
-II
-
-At home, Babbitt never read with absorption. He was concentrated enough
-at the office but here he crossed his legs and fidgeted. When his story
-was interesting he read the best, that is the funniest, paragraphs to
-his wife; when it did not hold him he coughed, scratched his ankles and
-his right ear, thrust his left thumb into his vest pocket, jingled his
-silver, whirled the cigar-cutter and the keys on one end of his
-watch-chain, yawned, rubbed his nose, and found errands to do. He went
-upstairs to put on his slippers--his elegant slippers of seal-brown,
-shaped like medieval shoes. He brought up an apple from the barrel which
-stood by the trunk-closet in the basement.
-
-“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” he enlightened Mrs. Babbitt, for
-quite the first time in fourteen hours.
-
-“That’s so.”
-
-“An apple is Nature’s best regulator.”
-
-“Yes, it--”
-
-“Trouble with women is, they never have sense enough to form regular
-habits.”
-
-“Well, I--”
-
-“Always nibbling and eating between meals.”
-
-“George!” She looked up from her reading. “Did you have a light lunch
-to-day, like you were going to? I did!”
-
-This malicious and unprovoked attack astounded him. “Well, maybe it
-wasn’t as light as-- Went to lunch with Paul and didn’t have much chance
-to diet. Oh, you needn’t to grin like a chessy cat! If it wasn’t for me
-watching out and keeping an eye on our diet-- I’m the only member of this
-family that appreciates the value of oatmeal for breakfast. I--”
-
-She stooped over her story while he piously sliced and gulped down the
-apple, discoursing:
-
-“One thing I’ve done: cut down my smoking.
-
-“Had kind of a run-in with Graff in the office. He’s getting too darn
-fresh. I’ll stand for a good deal, but once in a while I got to assert
-my authority, and I jumped him. ‘Stan,’ I said-- Well, I told him just
-exactly where he got off.
-
-“Funny kind of a day. Makes you feel restless.
-
-“Wellllllllll, uh--” That sleepiest sound in the world, the terminal
-yawn. Mrs. Babbitt yawned with it, and looked grateful as he droned,
-“How about going to bed, eh? Don’t suppose Rone and Ted will be in till
-all hours. Yep, funny kind of a day; not terribly warm but yet-- Gosh,
-I’d like-- Some day I’m going to take a long motor trip.”
-
-“Yes, we’d enjoy that,” she yawned.
-
-He looked away from her as he realized that he did not wish to have her
-go with him. As he locked doors and tried windows and set the heat
-regulator so that the furnace-drafts would open automatically in the
-morning, he sighed a little, heavy with a lonely feeling which perplexed
-and frightened him. So absent-minded was he that he could not remember
-which window-catches he had inspected, and through the darkness,
-fumbling at unseen perilous chairs, he crept back to try them all over
-again. His feet were loud on the steps as he clumped upstairs at the end
-of this great and treacherous day of veiled rebellions.
-
-
-III
-
-Before breakfast he always reverted to up-state village boyhood, and
-shrank from the complex urban demands of shaving, bathing, deciding
-whether the current shirt was clean enough for another day. Whenever he
-stayed home in the evening he went to bed early, and thriftily got ahead
-in those dismal duties. It was his luxurious custom to shave while
-sitting snugly in a tubful of hot water. He may be viewed to-night as a
-plump, smooth, pink, baldish, podgy goodman, robbed of the importance of
-spectacles, squatting in breast-high water, scraping his lather-smeared
-cheeks with a safety-razor like a tiny lawn-mower, and with melancholy
-dignity clawing through the water to recover a slippery and active piece
-of soap.
-
-He was lulled to dreaming by the caressing warmth. The light fell on the
-inner surface of the tub in a pattern of delicate wrinkled lines which
-slipped with a green sparkle over the curving porcelain as the clear
-water trembled. Babbitt lazily watched it; noted that along the
-silhouette of his legs against the radiance on the bottom of the tub,
-the shadows of the air-bubbles clinging to the hairs were reproduced as
-strange jungle mosses. He patted the water, and the reflected light
-capsized and leaped and volleyed. He was content and childish. He
-played. He shaved a swath down the calf of one plump leg.
-
-The drain-pipe was dripping, a dulcet and lively song: drippety drip
-drip dribble, drippety drip drip drip. He was enchanted by it. He looked
-at the solid tub, the beautiful nickel taps, the tiled walls of the
-room, and felt virtuous in the possession of this splendor.
-
-He roused himself and spoke gruffly to his bath-things. “Come here!
-You’ve done enough fooling!” he reproved the treacherous soap, and
-defied the scratchy nail-brush with “Oh, you would, would you!” He
-soaped himself, and rinsed himself, and austerely rubbed himself; he
-noted a hole in the Turkish towel, and meditatively thrust a finger
-through it, and marched back to the bedroom, a grave and unbending
-citizen.
-
-There was a moment of gorgeous abandon, a flash of melodrama such as he
-found in traffic-driving, when he laid out a clean collar, discovered
-that it was frayed in front, and tore it up with a magnificent yeeeeeing
-sound.
-
-Most important of all was the preparation of his bed and the
-sleeping-porch.
-
-It is not known whether he enjoyed his sleeping-porch because of the
-fresh air or because it was the standard thing to have a sleeping-porch.
-
-Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of
-Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his
-every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican
-Party decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think
-about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national
-advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be his
-individuality. These standard advertised wares--toothpastes, socks,
-tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters--were his symbols and
-proofs of excellence; at first the signs, then the substitutes, for joy
-and passion and wisdom.
-
-But none of these advertised tokens of financial and social success was
-more significant than a sleeping-porch with a sun-parlor below.
-
-The rites of preparing for bed were elaborate and unchanging. The
-blankets had to be tucked in at the foot of his cot. (Also, the reason
-why the maid hadn’t tucked in the blankets had to be discussed with Mrs.
-Babbitt.) The rag rug was adjusted so that his bare feet would strike it
-when he arose in the morning. The alarm clock was wound. The hot-water
-bottle was filled and placed precisely two feet from the bottom of the
-cot.
-
-These tremendous undertakings yielded to his determination; one by one
-they were announced to Mrs. Babbitt and smashed through to
-accomplishment. At last his brow cleared, and in his “Gnight!” rang
-virile power. But there was yet need of courage. As he sank into sleep,
-just at the first exquisite relaxation, the Doppelbrau car came home. He
-bounced into wakefulness, lamenting, “Why the devil can’t some people
-never get to bed at a reasonable hour?” So familiar was he with the
-process of putting up his own car that he awaited each step like an able
-executioner condemned to his own rack.
-
-The car insultingly cheerful on the driveway. The car door opened and
-banged shut, then the garage door slid open, grating on the sill, and
-the car door again. The motor raced for the climb up into the garage and
-raced once more, explosively, before it was shut off. A final opening
-and slamming of the car door. Silence then, a horrible silence filled
-with waiting, till the leisurely Mr. Doppelbrau had examined the state
-of his tires and had at last shut the garage door. Instantly, for
-Babbitt, a blessed state of oblivion.
-
-
-IV
-
-At that moment in the city of Zenith, Horace Updike was making love to
-Lucile McKelvey in her mauve drawing-room on Royal Ridge, after their
-return from a lecture by an eminent English novelist. Updike was
-Zenith’s professional bachelor; a slim-waisted man of forty-six with an
-effeminate voice and taste in flowers, cretonnes, and flappers. Mrs.
-McKelvey was red-haired, creamy, discontented, exquisite, rude, and
-honest. Updike tried his invariable first maneuver--touching her nervous
-wrist.
-
-“Don’t be an idiot!” she said.
-
-“Do you mind awfully?”
-
-“No! That’s what I mind!”
-
-He changed to conversation. He was famous at conversation. He spoke
-reasonably of psychoanalysis, Long Island polo, and the Ming platter he
-had found in Vancouver. She promised to meet him in Deauville, the
-coming summer, “though,” she sighed, “it’s becoming too dreadfully
-banal; nothing but Americans and frowsy English baronesses.”
-
-And at that moment in Zenith, a cocaine-runner and a prostitute were
-drinking cocktails in Healey Hanson’s saloon on Front Street. Since
-national prohibition was now in force, and since Zenith was notoriously
-law-abiding, they were compelled to keep the cocktails innocent by
-drinking them out of tea-cups. The lady threw her cup at the
-cocaine-runner’s head. He worked his revolver out of the pocket in his
-sleeve, and casually murdered her.
-
-At that moment in Zenith, two men sat in a laboratory. For thirty-seven
-hours now they had been working on a report of their investigations of
-synthetic rubber.
-
-At that moment in Zenith, there was a conference of four union officials
-as to whether the twelve thousand coal-miners within a hundred miles of
-the city should strike. Of these men one resembled a testy and
-prosperous grocer, one a Yankee carpenter, one a soda-clerk, and one a
-Russian Jewish actor. The Russian Jew quoted Kautsky, Gene Debs, and
-Abraham Lincoln.
-
-At that moment a G. A. R. veteran was dying. He had come from the Civil
-War straight to a farm which, though it was officially within the
-city-limits of Zenith, was primitive as the backwoods. He had never
-ridden in a motor car, never seen a bath-tub, never read any book save
-the Bible, McGuffey’s readers, and religious tracts; and he believed
-that the earth is flat, that the English are the Lost Ten Tribes of
-Israel, and that the United States is a democracy.
-
-At that moment the steel and cement town which composed the factory of
-the Pullmore Tractor Company of Zenith was running on night shift to
-fill an order of tractors for the Polish army. It hummed like a million
-bees, glared through its wide windows like a volcano. Along the high
-wire fences, searchlights played on cinder-lined yards, switch-tracks,
-and armed guards on patrol.
-
-At that moment Mike Monday was finishing a meeting. Mr. Monday, the
-distinguished evangelist, the best-known Protestant pontiff in America,
-had once been a prize-fighter. Satan had not dealt justly with him. As a
-prize-fighter he gained nothing but his crooked nose, his celebrated
-vocabulary, and his stage-presence. The service of the Lord had been
-more profitable. He was about to retire with a fortune. It had been well
-earned, for, to quote his last report, “Rev. Mr. Monday, the Prophet
-with a Punch, has shown that he is the world’s greatest salesman of
-salvation, and that by efficient organization the overhead of spiritual
-regeneration may be kept down to an unprecedented rock-bottom basis. He
-has converted over two hundred thousand lost and priceless souls at an
-average cost of less than ten dollars a head.”
-
-Of the larger cities of the land, only Zenith had hesitated to submit
-its vices to Mike Monday and his expert reclamation corps. The more
-enterprising organizations of the city had voted to invite him-- Mr.
-George F. Babbitt had once praised him in a speech at the Boosters’
-Club. But there was opposition from certain Episcopalian and
-Congregationalist ministers, those renegades whom Mr. Monday so finely
-called “a bunch of gospel-pushers with dish-water instead of blood, a
-gang of squealers that need more dust on the knees of their pants and
-more hair on their skinny old chests.” This opposition had been crushed
-when the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce had reported to a
-committee of manufacturers that in every city where he had appeared, Mr.
-Monday had turned the minds of workmen from wages and hours to higher
-things, and thus averted strikes. He was immediately invited.
-
-An expense fund of forty thousand dollars had been underwritten; out on
-the County Fair Grounds a Mike Monday Tabernacle had been erected, to
-seat fifteen thousand people. In it the prophet was at this moment
-concluding his message:
-
-“There’s a lot of smart college professors and tea-guzzling slobs in
-this burg that say I’m a roughneck and a never-wuzzer and my knowledge
-of history is not-yet. Oh, there’s a gang of woolly-whiskered book-lice
-that think they know more than Almighty God, and prefer a lot of Hun
-science and smutty German criticism to the straight and simple Word of
-God. Oh, there’s a swell bunch of Lizzie boys and lemon-suckers and
-pie-faces and infidels and beer-bloated scribblers that love to fire off
-their filthy mouths and yip that Mike Monday is vulgar and full of mush.
-Those pups are saying now that I hog the gospel-show, that I’m in it for
-the coin. Well, now listen, folks! I’m going to give those birds a
-chance! They can stand right up here and tell me to my face that I’m a
-galoot and a liar and a hick! Only if they do--if they do!--don’t faint
-with surprise if some of those rum-dumm liars get one good swift poke
-from Mike, with all the kick of God’s Flaming Righteousness behind the
-wallop! Well, come on, folks! Who says it? Who says Mike Monday is a
-fourflush and a yahoo? Huh? Don’t I see anybody standing up? Well, there
-you are! Now I guess the folks in this man’s town will quit listening to
-all this kyoodling from behind the fence; I guess you’ll quit listening
-to the guys that pan and roast and kick and beef, and vomit out filthy
-atheism; and all of you’ll come in, with every grain of pep and
-reverence you got, and boost all together for Jesus Christ and his
-everlasting mercy and tenderness!”
-
-
-V
-
-At that moment Seneca Doane, the radical lawyer, and Dr. Kurt Yavitch,
-the histologist (whose report on the destruction of epithelial cells
-under radium had made the name of Zenith known in Munich, Prague, and
-Rome), were talking in Doane’s library.
-
-“Zenith’s a city with gigantic power--gigantic buildings, gigantic
-machines, gigantic transportation,” meditated Doane.
-
-“I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life. It is
-one big railroad station--with all the people taking tickets for the
-best cemeteries,” Dr. Yavitch said placidly.
-
-Doane roused. “I’m hanged if it is! You make me sick, Kurt, with your
-perpetual whine about ‘standardization.’ Don’t you suppose any other
-nation is ‘standardized?’ Is anything more standardized than England,
-with every house that can afford it having the same muffins at the same
-tea-hour, and every retired general going to exactly the same evensong
-at the same gray stone church with a square tower, and every golfing
-prig in Harris tweeds saying ‘Right you are!’ to every other prosperous
-ass? Yet I love England. And for standardization--just look at the
-sidewalk cafés in France and the love-making in Italy!
-
-“Standardization is excellent, _per se_. When I buy an Ingersoll watch
-or a Ford, I get a better tool for less money, and I know precisely what
-I’m getting, and that leaves me more time and energy to be individual
-in. And-- I remember once in London I saw a picture of an American
-suburb, in a toothpaste ad on the back of the _Saturday Evening
-Post_--an elm-lined snowy street of these new houses, Georgian some of
-’em, or with low raking roofs and-- The kind of street you’d find here in
-Zenith, say in Floral Heights. Open. Trees. Grass. And I was homesick!
-There’s no other country in the world that has such pleasant houses. And
-I don’t care if they _are_ standardized. It’s a corking standard!
-
-“No, what I fight in Zenith is standardization of thought, and, of
-course, the traditions of competition. The real villains of the piece
-are the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand of
-trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worst
-thing about these fellows is that they’re so good and, in their work at
-least, so intelligent. You can’t hate them properly, and yet their
-standardized minds are the enemy.
-
-“Then this boosting-- Sneakingly I have a notion that Zenith is a better
-place to live in than Manchester or Glasgow or Lyons or Berlin or
-Turin--”
-
-“It is not, and I have lift in most of them,” murmured Dr. Yavitch.
-
-“Well, matter of taste. Personally, I prefer a city with a future so
-unknown that it excites my imagination. But what I particularly want--”
-
-“You,” said Dr. Yavitch, “are a middle-road liberal, and you haven’t the
-slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly
-what I want--and what I want now is a drink.”
-
-
-VI
-
-At that moment in Zenith, Jake Offutt, the politician, and Henry T.
-Thompson were in conference. Offutt suggested, “The thing to do is to
-get your fool son-in-law, Babbitt, to put it over. He’s one of these
-patriotic guys. When he grabs a piece of property for the gang, he makes
-it look like we were dyin’ of love for the dear peepul, and I do love to
-buy respectability--reasonable. Wonder how long we can keep it up, Hank?
-We’re safe as long as the good little boys like George Babbitt and all
-the nice respectable labor-leaders think you and me are rugged patriots.
-There’s swell pickings for an honest politician here, Hank: a whole city
-working to provide cigars and fried chicken and dry martinis for us, and
-rallying to our banner with indignation, oh, fierce indignation,
-whenever some squealer like this fellow Seneca Doane comes along!
-Honest, Hank, a smart codger like me ought to be ashamed of himself if
-he didn’t milk cattle like them, when they come around mooing for it!
-But the Traction gang can’t get away with grand larceny like it used to.
-I wonder when-- Hank, I wish we could fix some way to run this fellow
-Seneca Doane out of town. It’s him or us!”
-
-At that moment in Zenith, three hundred and forty or fifty thousand
-Ordinary People were asleep, a vast unpenetrated shadow. In the slum
-beyond the railroad tracks, a young man who for six months had sought
-work turned on the gas and killed himself and his wife.
-
-At that moment Lloyd Mallam, the poet, owner of the Hafiz Book Shop, was
-finishing a rondeau to show how diverting was life amid the feuds of
-medieval Florence, but how dull it was in so obvious a place as Zenith.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-And at that moment George F. Babbitt turned ponderously in bed--the last
-turn, signifying that he’d had enough of this worried business of
-falling asleep and was about it in earnest.
-
-Instantly he was in the magic dream. He was somewhere among unknown
-people who laughed at him. He slipped away, ran down the paths of a
-midnight garden, and at the gate the fairy child was waiting. Her dear
-and tranquil hand caressed his cheek. He was gallant and wise and
-well-beloved; warm ivory were her arms; and beyond perilous moors the
-brave sea glittered.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-
-I
-
-The great events of Babbitt’s spring were the secret buying of
-real-estate options in Linton for certain street-traction officials,
-before the public announcement that the Linton Avenue Car Line would be
-extended, and a dinner which was, as he rejoiced to his wife, not only
-“a regular society spread but a real sure-enough highbrow affair, with
-some of the keenest intellects and the brightest bunch of little women
-in town.” It was so absorbing an occasion that he almost forgot his
-desire to run off to Maine with Paul Riesling.
-
-Though he had been born in the village of Catawba, Babbitt had risen to
-that metropolitan social plane on which hosts have as many as four
-people at dinner without planning it for more than an evening or two.
-But a dinner of twelve, with flowers from the florist’s and all the
-cut-glass out, staggered even the Babbitts.
-
-For two weeks they studied, debated, and arbitrated the list of guests.
-
-Babbitt marveled, “Of course we’re up-to-date ourselves, but still,
-think of us entertaining a famous poet like Chum Frink, a fellow that on
-nothing but a poem or so every day and just writing a few advertisements
-pulls down fifteen thousand berries a year!”
-
-“Yes, and Howard Littlefield. Do you know, the other evening Eunice told
-me her papa speaks three languages!” said Mrs. Babbitt.
-
-“Huh! That’s nothing! So do I--American, baseball, and poker!”
-
-“I don’t think it’s nice to be funny about a matter like that. Think
-how wonderful it must be to speak three languages, and so useful
-and-- And with people like that, I don’t see why we invite the Orville
-Joneses.”
-
-“Well now, Orville is a mighty up-and-coming fellow!”
-
-“Yes, I know, but-- A laundry!”
-
-“I’ll admit a laundry hasn’t got the class of poetry or real estate, but
-just the same, Orvy is mighty deep. Ever start him spieling about
-gardening? Say, that fellow can tell you the name of every kind of tree,
-and some of their Greek and Latin names too! Besides, we owe the Joneses
-a dinner. Besides, gosh, we got to have some boob for audience, when a
-bunch of hot-air artists like Frink and Littlefield get going.”
-
-“Well, dear--I meant to speak of this--I do think that as host you ought
-to sit back and listen, and let your guests have a chance to talk once
-in a while!”
-
-“Oh, you do, do you! Sure! I talk all the time! And I’m just a business
-man--oh sure!--I’m no Ph.D. like Littlefield, and no poet, and I haven’t
-anything to spring! Well, let me tell you, just the other day your darn
-Chum Frink comes up to me at the club begging to know what I thought
-about the Springfield school-bond issue. And who told him? I did! You
-bet your life I told him! Little me! I certainly did! He came up and
-asked me, and I told him all about it! You bet! And he was darn glad to
-listen to me and-- Duty as a host! I guess I know my duty as a host and
-let me tell you--”
-
-In fact, the Orville Joneses were invited.
-
-
-II
-
-On the morning of the dinner, Mrs. Babbitt was restive.
-
-“Now, George, I want you to be sure and be home early to-night.
-Remember, you have to dress.”
-
-“Uh-huh. I see by the _Advocate_ that the Presbyterian General Assembly
-has voted to quit the Interchurch World Movement. That--”
-
-“George! Did you hear what I said? You must be home in time to dress
-to-night.”
-
-“Dress? Hell! I’m dressed now! Think I’m going down to the office in my
-B.V.D.’s?”
-
-“I will not have you talking indecently before the children! And you do
-have to put on your dinner-jacket!”
-
-“I guess you mean my Tux. I tell you, of all the doggone nonsensical
-nuisances that was ever invented--”
-
-Three minutes later, after Babbitt had wailed, “Well, I don’t know
-whether I’m going to dress or _not_” in a manner which showed that he
-was going to dress, the discussion moved on.
-
-“Now, George, you mustn’t forget to call in at Vecchia’s on the way home
-and get the ice cream. Their delivery-wagon is broken down, and I don’t
-want to trust them to send it by--”
-
-“All right! You told me that before breakfast!”
-
-“Well, I don’t want you to forget. I’ll be working my head off all day
-long, training the girl that’s to help with the dinner--”
-
-“All nonsense, anyway, hiring an extra girl for the feed. Matilda could
-perfectly well--”
-
-“--and I have to go out and buy the flowers, and fix them, and set the
-table, and order the salted almonds, and look at the chickens, and
-arrange for the children to have their supper up-stairs and-- And I
-simply must depend on you to go to Vecchia’s for the ice cream.”
-
-“All riiiiiight! Gosh, I’m going to get it!”
-
-“All you have to do is to go in and say you want the ice cream that Mrs.
-Babbitt ordered yesterday by ’phone, and it will be all ready for you.”
-
-At ten-thirty she telephoned to him not to forget the ice cream from
-Vecchia’s.
-
-He was surprised and blasted then by a thought. He wondered whether
-Floral Heights dinners were worth the hideous toil involved. But he
-repented the sacrilege in the excitement of buying the materials for
-cocktails.
-
-Now this was the manner of obtaining alcohol under the reign of
-righteousness and prohibition:
-
-He drove from the severe rectangular streets of the modern business
-center into the tangled byways of Old Town--jagged blocks filled with
-sooty warehouses and lofts; on into The Arbor, once a pleasant orchard
-but now a morass of lodging-houses, tenements, and brothels. Exquisite
-shivers chilled his spine and stomach, and he looked at every policeman
-with intense innocence, as one who loved the law, and admired the Force,
-and longed to stop and play with them. He parked his car a block from
-Healey Hanson’s saloon, worrying, “Well, rats, if anybody did see me,
-they’d think I was here on business.”
-
-He entered a place curiously like the saloons of ante-prohibition days,
-with a long greasy bar with sawdust in front and streaky mirror behind,
-a pine table at which a dirty old man dreamed over a glass of something
-which resembled whisky, and with two men at the bar, drinking something
-which resembled beer, and giving that impression of forming a large
-crowd which two men always give in a saloon. The bartender, a tall pale
-Swede with a diamond in his lilac scarf, stared at Babbitt as he stalked
-plumply up to the bar and whispered, “I’d, uh-- Friend of Hanson’s sent
-me here. Like to get some gin.”
-
-The bartender gazed down on him in the manner of an outraged bishop. “I
-guess you got the wrong place, my friend. We sell nothing but soft
-drinks here.” He cleaned the bar with a rag which would itself have done
-with a little cleaning, and glared across his mechanically moving elbow.
-
-The old dreamer at the table petitioned the bartender, “Say, Oscar,
-listen.”
-
-Oscar did not listen.
-
-“Aw, say, Oscar, listen, will yuh? Say, lis-sen!”
-
-The decayed and drowsy voice of the loafer, the agreeable stink of
-beer-dregs, threw a spell of inanition over Babbitt. The bartender moved
-grimly toward the crowd of two men. Babbitt followed him as delicately
-as a cat, and wheedled, “Say, Oscar, I want to speak to Mr. Hanson.”
-
-“Whajuh wanta see him for?”
-
-“I just want to talk to him. Here’s my card.”
-
-It was a beautiful card, an engraved card, a card in the blackest black
-and the sharpest red, announcing that Mr. George F. Babbitt was Estates,
-Insurance, Rents. The bartender held it as though it weighed ten pounds,
-and read it as though it were a hundred words long. He did not bend from
-his episcopal dignity, but he growled, “I’ll see if he’s around.”
-
-From the back room he brought an immensely old young man, a quiet
-sharp-eyed man, in tan silk shirt, checked vest hanging open, and
-burning brown trousers--Mr. Healey Hanson. Mr. Hanson said only “Yuh?”
-but his implacable and contemptuous eyes queried Babbitt’s soul, and he
-seemed not at all impressed by the new dark-gray suit for which (as he
-had admitted to every acquaintance at the Athletic Club) Babbitt had
-paid a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
-
-“Glad meet you, Mr. Hanson. Say, uh-- I’m George Babbitt of the
-Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company. I’m a great friend of Jake Offutt’s.”
-
-“Well, what of it?”
-
-“Say, uh, I’m going to have a party, and Jake told me you’d be able to
-fix me up with a little gin.” In alarm, in obsequiousness, as Hanson’s
-eyes grew more bored, “You telephone to Jake about me, if you want to.”
-
-Hanson answered by jerking his head to indicate the entrance to the back
-room, and strolled away. Babbitt melodramatically crept into an
-apartment containing four round tables, eleven chairs, a brewery
-calendar, and a smell. He waited. Thrice he saw Healey Hanson saunter
-through, humming, hands in pockets, ignoring him.
-
-By this time Babbitt had modified his valiant morning vow, “I won’t pay
-one cent over seven dollars a quart” to “I might pay ten.” On Hanson’s
-next weary entrance he besought, “Could you fix that up?” Hanson
-scowled, and grated, “Just a minute--Pete’s sake--just a min-ute!” In
-growing meekness Babbitt went on waiting till Hanson casually reappeared
-with a quart of gin--what is euphemistically known as a quart--in his
-disdainful long white hands.
-
-“Twelve bucks,” he snapped.
-
-“Say, uh, but say, cap’n, Jake thought you’d be able to fix me up for
-eight or nine a bottle.”
-
-“Nup. Twelve. This is the real stuff, smuggled from Canada. This is none
-o’ your neutral spirits with a drop of juniper extract,” the honest
-merchant said virtuously. “Twelve bones--if you want it. Course y’
-understand I’m just doing this anyway as a friend of Jake’s.”
-
-“Sure! Sure! I understand!” Babbitt gratefully held out twelve dollars.
-He felt honored by contact with greatness as Hanson yawned, stuffed the
-bills, uncounted, into his radiant vest, and swaggered away.
-
-He had a number of titillations out of concealing the gin-bottle under
-his coat and out of hiding it in his desk. All afternoon he snorted and
-chuckled and gurgled over his ability to “give the Boys a real shot in
-the arm to-night.” He was, in fact, so exhilarated that he was within a
-block of his house before he remembered that there was a certain matter,
-mentioned by his wife, of fetching ice cream from Vecchia’s. He
-explained, “Well, darn it--” and drove back.
-
-Vecchia was not a caterer, he was The Caterer of Zenith. Most coming-out
-parties were held in the white and gold ballroom of the Maison Vecchia;
-at all nice teas the guests recognized the five kinds of Vecchia
-sandwiches and the seven kinds of Vecchia cakes; and all really smart
-dinners ended, as on a resolving chord, in Vecchia Neapolitan ice cream
-in one of the three reliable molds--the melon mold, the round mold like
-a layer cake, and the long brick.
-
-Vecchia’s shop had pale blue woodwork, tracery of plaster roses,
-attendants in frilled aprons, and glass shelves of “kisses” with all the
-refinement that inheres in whites of eggs. Babbitt felt heavy and thick
-amid this professional daintiness, and as he waited for the ice cream he
-decided, with hot prickles at the back of his neck, that a girl customer
-was giggling at him. He went home in a touchy temper. The first thing he
-heard was his wife’s agitated:
-
-“George! _Did_ you remember to go to Vecchia’s and get the ice cream?”
-
-“Say! Look here! Do I ever forget to do things?”
-
-“Yes! Often!”
-
-“Well now, it’s darn seldom I do, and it certainly makes me tired, after
-going into a pink-tea joint like Vecchia’s and having to stand around
-looking at a lot of half-naked young girls, all rouged up like they were
-sixty and eating a lot of stuff that simply ruins their stomachs--”
-
-“Oh, it’s too bad about you! I’ve noticed how you hate to look at pretty
-girls!”
-
-With a jar Babbitt realized that his wife was too busy to be impressed
-by that moral indignation with which males rule the world, and he went
-humbly up-stairs to dress. He had an impression of a glorified
-dining-room, of cut-glass, candles, polished wood, lace, silver, roses.
-With the awed swelling of the heart suitable to so grave a business as
-giving a dinner, he slew the temptation to wear his plaited dress-shirt
-for a fourth time, took out an entirely fresh one, tightened his black
-bow, and rubbed his patent-leather pumps with a handkerchief. He glanced
-with pleasure at his garnet and silver studs. He smoothed and patted his
-ankles, transformed by silk socks from the sturdy shanks of George
-Babbitt to the elegant limbs of what is called a Clubman. He stood
-before the pier-glass, viewing his trim dinner-coat, his beautiful
-triple-braided trousers; and murmured in lyric beatitude, “By golly, I
-don’t look so bad. I certainly don’t look like Catawba. If the hicks
-back home could see me in this rig, they’d have a fit!”
-
-He moved majestically down to mix the cocktails. As he chipped ice, as
-he squeezed oranges, as he collected vast stores of bottles, glasses,
-and spoons at the sink in the pantry, he felt as authoritative as the
-bartender at Healey Hanson’s saloon. True, Mrs. Babbitt said he was
-under foot, and Matilda and the maid hired for the evening brushed by
-him, elbowed him, shrieked “Pleasopn door,” as they tottered through
-with trays, but in this high moment he ignored them.
-
-Besides the new bottle of gin, his cellar consisted of one half-bottle
-of Bourbon whisky, a quarter of a bottle of Italian vermouth, and
-approximately one hundred drops of orange bitters. He did not possess a
-cocktail-shaker. A shaker was proof of dissipation, the symbol of a
-Drinker, and Babbitt disliked being known as a Drinker even more than he
-liked a Drink. He mixed by pouring from an ancient gravy-boat into a
-handleless pitcher; he poured with a noble dignity, holding his alembics
-high beneath the powerful Mazda globe, his face hot, his shirt-front a
-glaring white, the copper sink a scoured red-gold.
-
-He tasted the sacred essence. “Now, by golly, if that isn’t pretty near
-one fine old cocktail! Kind of a Bronx, and yet like a Manhattan.
-Ummmmmm! Hey, Myra, want a little nip before the folks come?”
-
-Bustling into the dining-room, moving each glass a quarter of an inch,
-rushing back with resolution implacable on her face, her gray and
-silver-lace party frock protected by a denim towel, Mrs. Babbitt glared
-at him, and rebuked him, “Certainly not!”
-
-“Well,” in a loose, jocose manner, “I think the old man will!”
-
-The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was
-aware of devastating desires--to rush places in fast motors, to kiss
-girls, to sing, to be witty. He sought to regain his lost dignity by
-announcing to Matilda:
-
-“I’m going to stick this pitcher of cocktails in the refrigerator. Be
-sure you don’t upset any of ’em.”
-
-“Yeh.”
-
-“Well, be sure now. Don’t go putting anything on this top shelf.”
-
-“Yeh.”
-
-“Well, be--” He was dizzy. His voice was thin and distant. “Whee!” With
-enormous impressiveness he commanded, “Well, be sure now,” and minced
-into the safety of the living-room. He wondered whether he could
-persuade “as slow a bunch as Myra and the Littlefields to go some place
-aft’ dinner and raise Cain and maybe dig up smore booze.” He perceived
-that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected.
-
-By the time the guests had come, including the inevitable late couple
-for whom the others waited with painful amiability, a great gray
-emptiness had replaced the purple swirling in Babbitt’s head, and he had
-to force the tumultuous greetings suitable to a host on Floral Heights.
-
-The guests were Howard Littlefield, the doctor of philosophy who
-furnished publicity and comforting economics to the Street Traction
-Company; Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer, equally powerful in the Elks and
-in the Boosters’ Club; Eddie Swanson, the agent for the Javelin Motor
-Car, who lived across the street; and Orville Jones, owner of the Lily
-White Laundry, which justly announced itself “the biggest, busiest,
-bulliest cleanerie shoppe in Zenith.” But, naturally, the most
-distinguished of all was T. Cholmondeley Frink, who was not only the
-author of “Poemulations,” which, syndicated daily in sixty-seven leading
-newspapers, gave him one of the largest audiences of any poet in the
-world, but also an optimistic lecturer and the creator of “Ads that
-Add.” Despite the searching philosophy and high morality of his verses,
-they were humorous and easily understood by any child of twelve; and it
-added a neat air of pleasantry to them that they were set not as verse
-but as prose. Mr. Frink was known from Coast to Coast as “Chum.”
-
-With them were six wives, more or less--it was hard to tell, so early in
-the evening, as at first glance they all looked alike, and as they all
-said, “Oh, _isn’t_ this nice!” in the same tone of determined
-liveliness. To the eye, the men were less similar: Littlefield, a
-hedge-scholar, tall and horse-faced; Chum Frink, a trifle of a man with
-soft and mouse-like hair, advertising his profession as poet by a silk
-cord on his eye-glasses; Vergil Gunch, broad, with coarse black hair _en
-brosse_; Eddie Swanson, a bald and bouncing young man who showed his
-taste for elegance by an evening waistcoat of figured black silk with
-glass buttons; Orville Jones, a steady-looking, stubby, not very
-memorable person, with a hemp-colored toothbrush mustache. Yet they were
-all so well fed and clean, they all shouted “’Evenin’, Georgie!” with
-such robustness, that they seemed to be cousins, and the strange thing
-is that the longer one knew the women, the less alike they seemed; while
-the longer one knew the men, the more alike their bold patterns
-appeared.
-
-The drinking of the cocktails was as canonical a rite as the mixing. The
-company waited, uneasily, hopefully, agreeing in a strained manner that
-the weather had been rather warm and slightly cold, but still Babbitt
-said nothing about drinks. They became despondent. But when the late
-couple (the Swansons) had arrived, Babbitt hinted, “Well, folks, do you
-think you could stand breaking the law a little?”
-
-They looked at Chum Frink, the recognized lord of language. Frink pulled
-at his eye-glass cord as at a bell-rope, he cleared his throat and said
-that which was the custom:
-
-“I’ll tell you, George: I’m a law-abiding man, but they do say Verg
-Gunch is a regular yegg, and of course he’s bigger ’n I am, and I just
-can’t figure out what I’d do if he tried to force me into anything
-criminal!”
-
-Gunch was roaring, “Well, I’ll take a chance--” when Frink held up his
-hand and went on, “So if Verg and you insist, Georgie, I’ll park my car
-on the wrong side of the street, because I take it for granted that’s
-the crime you’re hinting at!”
-
-There was a great deal of laughter. Mrs. Jones asserted, “Mr. Frink is
-simply too killing! You’d think he was so innocent!”
-
-Babbitt clamored, “How did you guess it, Chum? Well, you-all just wait a
-moment while I go out and get the--keys to your cars!” Through a froth
-of merriment he brought the shining promise, the mighty tray of glasses
-with the cloudy yellow cocktails in the glass pitcher in the center. The
-men babbled, “Oh, gosh, have a look!” and “This gets me right where I
-live!” and “Let me at it!” But Chum Frink, a traveled man and not unused
-to woes, was stricken by the thought that the potion might be merely
-fruit-juice with a little neutral spirits. He looked timorous as
-Babbitt, a moist and ecstatic almoner, held out a glass, but as he
-tasted it he piped, “Oh, man, let me dream on! It ain’t true, but don’t
-waken me! Jus’ lemme slumber!”
-
-Two hours before, Frink had completed a newspaper lyric beginning:
-
-_I sat alone and groused and thunk, and scratched my head and sighed and
-wunk, and groaned, “There still are boobs, alack, who’d like the
-old-time gin-mill back; that den that makes a sage a loon, the vile and
-smelly old saloon!” I’ll never miss their poison booze, whilst I the
-bubbling spring can use, that leaves my head at merry morn as clear as
-any babe new-born!_
-
-Babbitt drank with the others; his moment’s depression was gone; he
-perceived that these were the best fellows in the world; he wanted to
-give them a thousand cocktails. “Think you could stand another?” he
-cried. The wives refused, with giggles, but the men, speaking in a
-wide, elaborate, enjoyable manner, gloated, “Well, sooner than have you
-get sore at me, Georgie--”
-
-“You got a little dividend coming,” said Babbitt to each of them, and
-each intoned, “Squeeze it, Georgie, squeeze it!”
-
-When, beyond hope, the pitcher was empty, they stood and talked about
-prohibition. The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in
-their trousers-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the booming
-profundity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed
-statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever.
-
-“Now, I’ll tell you,” said Vergil Gunch; “way I figure it is this, and I
-can speak by the book, because I’ve talked to a lot of doctors and
-fellows that ought to know, and the way I see it is that it’s a good
-thing to get rid of the saloon, but they ought to let a fellow have beer
-and light wines.”
-
-Howard Littlefield observed, “What isn’t generally realized is that it’s
-a dangerous prop’sition to invade the rights of personal liberty. Now,
-take this for instance: The King of-- Bavaria? I think it was
-Bavaria--yes, Bavaria, it was--in 1862, March, 1862, he issued a
-proclamation against public grazing of live-stock. The peasantry had
-stood for overtaxation without the slightest complaint, but when this
-proclamation came out, they rebelled. Or it may have been Saxony. But it
-just goes to show the dangers of invading the rights of personal
-liberty.”
-
-“That’s it--no one got a right to invade personal liberty,” said Orville
-Jones.
-
-“Just the same, you don’t want to forget prohibition is a mighty good
-thing for the working-classes. Keeps ’em from wasting their money and
-lowering their productiveness,” said Vergil Gunch.
-
-“Yes, that’s so. But the trouble is the manner of enforcement,” insisted
-Howard Littlefield. “Congress didn’t understand the right system. Now,
-if I’d been running the thing, I’d have arranged it so that the drinker
-himself was licensed, and then we could have taken care of the shiftless
-workman--kept him from drinking--and yet not’ve interfered with the
-rights--with the personal liberty--of fellows like ourselves.”
-
-They bobbed their heads, looked admiringly at one another, and stated,
-“That’s so, that would be the stunt.”
-
-“The thing that worries me is that a lot of these guys will take to
-cocaine,” sighed Eddie Swanson.
-
-They bobbed more violently, and groaned, “That’s so, there is a danger
-of that.”
-
-Chum Frink chanted, “Oh, say, I got hold of a swell new receipt for
-home-made beer the other day. You take--”
-
-Gunch interrupted, “Wait! Let me tell you mine!” Littlefield snorted,
-“Beer! Rats! Thing to do is to ferment cider!” Jones insisted, “I’ve got
-the receipt that does the business!” Swanson begged, “Oh, say, lemme
-tell you the story--” But Frink went on resolutely, “You take and save
-the shells from peas, and pour six gallons of water on a bushel of
-shells and boil the mixture till--”
-
-Mrs. Babbitt turned toward them with yearning sweetness; Frink hastened
-to finish even his best beer-recipe; and she said gaily, “Dinner is
-served.”
-
-There was a good deal of friendly argument among the men as to which
-should go in last, and while they were crossing the hall from the
-living-room to the dining-room Vergil Gunch made them laugh by
-thundering, “If I can’t sit next to Myra Babbitt and hold her hand under
-the table, I won’t play-- I’m goin’ home.” In the dining-room they stood
-embarrassed while Mrs. Babbitt fluttered, “Now, let me see-- Oh, I was
-going to have some nice hand-painted place-cards for you but-- Oh, let me
-see; Mr. Frink, you sit there.”
-
-The dinner was in the best style of women’s-magazine art, whereby the
-salad was served in hollowed apples, and everything but the invincible
-fried chicken resembled something else.
-
-Ordinarily the men found it hard to talk to the women; flirtation was an
-art unknown on Floral Heights, and the realms of offices and of kitchens
-had no alliances. But under the inspiration of the cocktails,
-conversation was violent. Each of the men still had a number of
-important things to say about prohibition, and now that each had a loyal
-listener in his dinner-partner he burst out:
-
-“I found a place where I can get all the hootch I want at eight a
-quart--”
-
-“Did you read about this fellow that went and paid a thousand dollars
-for ten cases of red-eye that proved to be nothing but water? Seems this
-fellow was standing on the corner and fellow comes up to him--”
-
-“They say there’s a whole raft of stuff being smuggled across at
-Detroit--”
-
-“What I always say is--what a lot of folks don’t realize about
-prohibition--”
-
-“And then you get all this awful poison stuff--wood alcohol and
-everything--”
-
-“Course I believe in it on principle, but I don’t propose to have
-anybody telling me what I got to think and do. No American’ll ever stand
-for that!”
-
-But they all felt that it was rather in bad taste for Orville Jones--and
-he not recognized as one of the wits of the occasion anyway--to say, “In
-fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn’t the initial
-cost, it’s the humidity.”
-
-Not till the one required topic had been dealt with did the conversation
-become general.
-
-It was often and admiringly said of Vergil Gunch, “Gee, that fellow can
-get away with murder! Why, he can pull a Raw One in mixed company and
-all the ladies’ll laugh their heads off, but me, gosh, if I crack
-anything that’s just the least bit off color I get the razz for fair!”
-Now Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of
-the women, “Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie’s doorkey out of his
-pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks
-aren’t looking? Got something,” with a gorgeous leer, “awful important
-to tell you!”
-
-The women wriggled, and Babbitt was stirred to like naughtiness. “Say,
-folks, I wished I dared show you a book I borrowed from Doc Patten!”
-
-“Now, George! The idea!” Mrs. Babbitt warned him.
-
-“This book--racy isn’t the word! It’s some kind of an anthropological
-report about--about Customs, in the South Seas, and what it doesn’t
-_say_! It’s a book you can’t buy. Verg, I’ll lend it to you.”
-
-“Me first!” insisted Eddie Swanson. “Sounds spicy!”
-
-Orville Jones announced, “Say, I heard a Good One the other day about a
-coupla Swedes and their wives,” and, in the best Jewish accent, he
-resolutely carried the Good One to a slightly disinfected ending. Gunch
-capped it. But the cocktails waned, the seekers dropped back into
-cautious reality.
-
-Chum Frink had recently been on a lecture-tour among the small towns,
-and he chuckled, “Awful good to get back to civilization! I certainly
-been seeing some hick towns! I mean-- Course the folks there are the best
-on earth, but, gee whiz, those Main Street burgs are slow, and you
-fellows can’t hardly appreciate what it means to be here with a bunch of
-live ones!”
-
-“You bet!” exulted Orville Jones. “They’re the best folks on earth,
-those small-town folks, but, oh, mama! what conversation! Why, say, they
-can’t talk about anything but the weather and the ne-oo Ford, by
-heckalorum!”
-
-“That’s right. They all talk about just the same things,” said Eddie
-Swanson.
-
-“Don’t they, though! They just say the same things over and over,” said
-Vergil Gunch.
-
-“Yes, it’s really remarkable. They seem to lack all power of looking at
-things impersonally. They simply go over and over the same talk about
-Fords and the weather and so on,” said Howard Littlefield.
-
-“Still, at that, you can’t blame ’em. They haven’t got any intellectual
-stimulus such as you get up here in the city,” said Chum Frink.
-
-“Gosh, that’s right,” said Babbitt. “I don’t want you highbrows to get
-stuck on yourselves but I must say it keeps a fellow right up on his
-toes to sit in with a poet and with Howard, the guy that put the con in
-economics! But these small-town boobs, with nobody but each other to
-talk to, no wonder they get so sloppy and uncultured in their speech,
-and so balled-up in their thinking!”
-
-Orville Jones commented, “And, then take our other advantages--the
-movies, frinstance. These Yapville sports think they’re all-get-out if
-they have one change of bill a week, where here in the city you got your
-choice of a dozen diff’rent movies any evening you want to name!”
-
-“Sure, and the inspiration we get from rubbing up against high-class
-hustlers every day and getting jam full of ginger,” said Eddie Swanson.
-
-“Same time,” said Babbitt, “no sense excusing these rube burgs too easy.
-Fellow’s own fault if he doesn’t show the initiative to up and beat it
-to the city, like we done--did. And, just speaking in confidence among
-friends, they’re jealous as the devil of a city man. Every time I go up
-to Catawba I have to go around apologizing to the fellows I was brought
-up with because I’ve more or less succeeded and they haven’t. And if you
-talk natural to ’em, way we do here, and show finesse and what you might
-call a broad point of view, why, they think you’re putting on side.
-There’s my own half-brother Martin--runs the little ole general store my
-Dad used to keep. Say, I’ll bet he don’t know there is such a thing as a
-Tux--as a dinner-jacket. If he was to come in here now, he’d think we
-were a bunch of--of-- Why, gosh, I swear, he wouldn’t know what to think!
-Yes, sir, they’re jealous!”
-
-Chum Frink agreed, “That’s so. But what I mind is their lack of culture
-and appreciation of the Beautiful--if you’ll excuse me for being
-highbrow. Now, I like to give a high-class lecture, and read some of my
-best poetry--not the newspaper stuff but the magazine things. But say,
-when I get out in the tall grass, there’s nothing will take but a lot of
-cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge
-in it here, he’d get the gate so fast it would make his head swim.”
-
-Vergil Gunch summed it up: “Fact is, we’re mighty lucky to be living
-among a bunch of city-folks, that recognize artistic things and
-business-punch equally. We’d feel pretty glum if we got stuck in some
-Main Street burg and tried to wise up the old codgers to the kind of
-life we’re used to here. But, by golly, there’s this you got to say for
-’em: Every small American town is trying to get population and modern
-ideals. And darn if a lot of ’em don’t put it across! Somebody starts
-panning a rube crossroads, telling how he was there in 1900 and it
-consisted of one muddy street, count ’em, one, and nine hundred human
-clams. Well, you go back there in 1920, and you find pavements and a
-swell little hotel and a first-class ladies’ ready-to-wear shop--real
-perfection, in fact! You don’t want to just look at what these small
-towns are, you want to look at what they’re aiming to become, and they
-all got an ambition that in the long run is going to make ’em the finest
-spots on earth--they all want to be just like Zenith!”
-
-
-III
-
-However intimate they might be with T. Cholmondeley Frink as a neighbor,
-as a borrower of lawn-mowers and monkey-wrenches, they knew that he was
-also a Famous Poet and a distinguished advertising-agent; that behind
-his easiness were sultry literary mysteries which they could not
-penetrate. But to-night, in the gin-evolved confidence, he admitted them
-to the arcanum:
-
-“I’ve got a literary problem that’s worrying me to death. I’m doing a
-series of ads for the Zeeco Car and I want to make each of ’em a real
-little gem--reg’lar stylistic stuff. I’m all for this theory that
-perfection is the stunt, or nothing at all, and these are as tough
-things as I ever tackled. You might think it’d be harder to do my
-poems--all these Heart Topics: home and fireside and happiness--but
-they’re cinches. You can’t go wrong on ’em; you know what sentiments any
-decent go-ahead fellow must have if he plays the game, and you stick
-right to ’em. But the poetry of industrialism, now there’s a literary
-line where you got to open up new territory. Do you know the fellow
-who’s really _the_ American genius? The fellow who you don’t know his
-name and I don’t either, but his work ought to be preserved so’s future
-generations can judge our American thought and originality to-day? Why,
-the fellow that writes the Prince Albert Tobacco ads! Just listen to
-this:
-
-     It’s P.A. that jams such joy in jimmy pipes. Say--bet you’ve often
-     bent-an-ear to that spill-of-speech about hopping from five to
-     f-i-f-t-y p-e-r by “stepping on her a bit!” Guess that’s going
-     some, all right--BUT--just among ourselves, you better start a
-     rapidwhiz system to keep tabs as to how fast you’ll buzz from low
-     smoke spirits to _tip-top-high_--once you line up behind a jimmy
-     pipe that’s all aglow with that peach-of-a-pal, Prince Albert.
-
-     Prince Albert is john-on-the-job--always joy’usly more-_ish_ in
-     flavor; always delightfully cool and fragrant! For a fact, you
-     never hooked such double-decked, copper-riveted, two-fisted smoke
-     enjoyment!
-
-     Go to a pipe--speed-o-quick like you light on a good thing!
-     Why--packed with Prince Albert you can play a joy’us jimmy straight
-     across the boards! _And you know what that means!_”
-
-“Now that,” caroled the motor agent, Eddie Swanson, “that’s what I call
-he-literature! That Prince Albert fellow--though, gosh, there can’t be
-just one fellow that writes ’em; must be a big board of classy
-ink-slingers in conference, but anyway: now, him, he doesn’t write for
-long-haired pikers, he writes for Regular Guys, he writes for _me_, and
-I tip my benny to him! The only thing is: I wonder if it sells the
-goods? Course, like all these poets, this Prince Albert fellow lets his
-idea run away with him. It makes elegant reading, but it don’t say
-nothing. I’d never go out and buy Prince Albert Tobacco after reading
-it, because it doesn’t tell me anything about the stuff. It’s just a
-bunch of fluff.”
-
-Frink faced him: “Oh, you’re crazy! Have I got to sell you the idea of
-Style? Anyway, that’s the kind of stuff I’d like to do for the Zeeco.
-But I simply can’t. So I decided to stick to the straight poetic, and I
-took a shot at a highbrow ad for the Zeeco. How do you like this:
-
-     The long white trail is calling--calling--and it’s over the hills
-     and far away for every man or woman that has red blood in his veins
-     and on his lips the ancient song of the buccaneers. It’s away with
-     dull drudging, and a fig for care. Speed--glorious Speed--it’s more
-     than just a moment’s exhilaration--it’s Life for you and me! This
-     great new truth the makers of the Zeeco Car have considered as much
-     as price and style. It’s fleet as the antelope, smooth as the glide
-     of a swallow, yet powerful as the charge of a bull-elephant. Class
-     breathes in every line. Listen, brother! You’ll never know what the
-     high art of hiking is till you TRY LIFE’S ZIPPINGEST ZEST--THE
-     ZEECO!”
-
-“Yes,” Frink mused, “that’s got an elegant color to it, if I do say so,
-but it ain’t got the originality of ‘spill-of-speech!’”
-
-The whole company sighed with sympathy and admiration.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-
-I
-
-Babbitt was fond of his friends, he loved the importance of being host
-and shouting, “Certainly, you’re going to have smore chicken--the idea!”
-and he appreciated the genius of T. Cholmondeley Frink, but the vigor of
-the cocktails was gone, and the more he ate the less joyful he felt.
-Then the amity of the dinner was destroyed by the nagging of the
-Swansons.
-
-In Floral Heights and the other prosperous sections of Zenith,
-especially in the “young married set,” there were many women who had
-nothing to do. Though they had few servants, yet with gas stoves,
-electric ranges and dish-washers and vacuum cleaners, and tiled kitchen
-walls, their houses were so convenient that they had little housework,
-and much of their food came from bakeries and delicatessens. They had
-but two, one, or no children; and despite the myth that the Great War
-had made work respectable, their husbands objected to their “wasting
-time and getting a lot of crank ideas” in unpaid social work, and still
-more to their causing a rumor, by earning money, that they were not
-adequately supported. They worked perhaps two hours a day, and the rest
-of the time they ate chocolates, went to the motion-pictures, went
-window-shopping, went in gossiping twos and threes to card-parties, read
-magazines, thought timorously of the lovers who never appeared, and
-accumulated a splendid restlessness which they got rid of by nagging
-their husbands. The husbands nagged back.
-
-Of these naggers the Swansons were perfect specimens.
-
-Throughout the dinner Eddie Swanson had been complaining, publicly,
-about his wife’s new frock. It was, he submitted, too short, too low,
-too immodestly thin, and much too expensive. He appealed to Babbitt:
-
-“Honest, George, what do you think of that rag Louetta went and bought?
-Don’t you think it’s the limit?”
-
-“What’s eating you, Eddie? I call it a swell little dress.”
-
-“Oh, it is, Mr. Swanson. It’s a sweet frock,” Mrs. Babbitt protested.
-
-“There now, do you see, smarty! You’re such an authority on clothes!”
-Louetta raged, while the guests ruminated and peeped at her shoulders.
-
-“That’s all right now,” said Swanson. “I’m authority enough so I know it
-was a waste of money, and it makes me tired to see you not wearing out a
-whole closetful of clothes you got already. I’ve expressed my idea about
-this before, and you know good and well you didn’t pay the least bit of
-attention. I have to camp on your trail to get you to do anything--”
-
-There was much more of it, and they all assisted, all but Babbitt.
-Everything about him was dim except his stomach, and that was a bright
-scarlet disturbance. “Had too much grub; oughtn’t to eat this stuff,” he
-groaned--while he went on eating, while he gulped down a chill and
-glutinous slice of the ice-cream brick, and cocoanut cake as oozy as
-shaving-cream. He felt as though he had been stuffed with clay; his body
-was bursting, his throat was bursting, his brain was hot mud; and only
-with agony did he continue to smile and shout as became a host on Floral
-Heights.
-
-He would, except for his guests, have fled outdoors and walked off the
-intoxication of food, but in the haze which filled the room they sat
-forever, talking, talking, while he agonized, “Darn fool to be eating
-all this--not ’nother mouthful,” and discovered that he was again
-tasting the sickly welter of melted ice cream on his plate. There was no
-magic in his friends; he was not uplifted when Howard Littlefield
-produced from his treasure-house of scholarship the information that
-the chemical symbol for raw rubber is C₁₀H₁₆, which turns into
-isoprene, or 2C₅H₈. Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was not merely
-bored but admitting that he was bored. It was ecstasy to escape from the
-table, from the torture of a straight chair, and loll on the davenport
-in the living-room.
-
-The others, from their fitful unconvincing talk, their expressions of
-being slowly and painfully smothered, seemed to be suffering from the
-toil of social life and the horror of good food as much as himself. All
-of them accepted with relief the suggestion of bridge.
-
-Babbitt recovered from the feeling of being boiled. He won at bridge. He
-was again able to endure Vergil Gunch’s inexorable heartiness. But he
-pictured loafing with Paul Riesling beside a lake in Maine. It was as
-overpowering and imaginative as homesickness. He had never seen Maine,
-yet he beheld the shrouded mountains, the tranquil lake of evening.
-“That boy Paul’s worth all these ballyhooing highbrows put together,” he
-muttered; and, “I’d like to get away from--everything.”
-
-Even Louetta Swanson did not rouse him.
-
-Mrs. Swanson was pretty and pliant. Babbitt was not an analyst of women,
-except as to their tastes in Furnished Houses to Rent. He divided them
-into Real Ladies, Working Women, Old Cranks, and Fly Chickens. He mooned
-over their charms but he was of opinion that all of them (save the women
-of his own family) were “different” and “mysterious.” Yet he had known
-by instinct that Louetta Swanson could be approached. Her eyes and lips
-were moist. Her face tapered from a broad forehead to a pointed chin,
-her mouth was thin but strong and avid, and between her brows were two
-outcurving and passionate wrinkles. She was thirty, perhaps, or younger.
-Gossip had never touched her, but every man naturally and instantly rose
-to flirtatiousness when he spoke to her, and every woman watched her
-with stilled blankness.
-
-Between games, sitting on the davenport, Babbitt spoke to her with the
-requisite gallantry, that sonorous Floral Heights gallantry which is
-not flirtation but a terrified flight from it:
-
-“You’re looking like a new soda-fountain to-night, Louetta.”
-
-“Am I?”
-
-“Ole Eddie kind of on the rampage.”
-
-“Yes. I get so sick of it.”
-
-“Well, when you get tired of hubby, you can run off with Uncle George.”
-
-“If I ran away-- Oh, well--”
-
-“Anybody ever tell you your hands are awful pretty?”
-
-She looked down at them, she pulled the lace of her sleeves over them,
-but otherwise she did not heed him. She was lost in unexpressed
-imaginings.
-
-Babbitt was too languid this evening to pursue his duty of being a
-captivating (though strictly moral) male. He ambled back to the
-bridge-tables. He was not much thrilled when Mrs. Frink, a small
-twittering woman, proposed that they “try and do some spiritualism and
-table-tipping--you know Chum can make the spirits come--honest, he just
-scares me!”
-
-The ladies of the party had not emerged all evening, but now, as the sex
-given to things of the spirit while the men warred against base things
-material, they took command and cried, “Oh, let’s!” In the dimness the
-men were rather solemn and foolish, but the goodwives quivered and
-adored as they sat about the table. They laughed, “Now, you be good or
-I’ll tell!” when the men took their hands in the circle.
-
-Babbitt tingled with a slight return of interest in life as Louetta
-Swanson’s hand closed on his with quiet firmness.
-
-All of them hunched over, intent. They startled as some one drew a
-strained breath. In the dusty light from the hall they looked unreal,
-they felt disembodied. Mrs. Gunch squeaked, and they jumped with
-unnatural jocularity, but at Frink’s hiss they sank into subdued awe.
-Suddenly, incredibly, they heard a knocking. They stared at Frink’s
-half-revealed hands and found them lying still. They wriggled, and
-pretended not to be impressed.
-
-Frink spoke with gravity: “Is some one there?” A thud. “Is one knock to
-be the sign for ‘yes’?” A thud. “And two for ‘no’?” A thud.
-
-“Now, ladies and gentlemen, shall we ask the guide to put us into
-communication with the spirit of some great one passed over?” Frink
-mumbled.
-
-Mrs. Orville Jones begged, “Oh, let’s talk to Dante! We studied him at
-the Reading Circle. You know who he was, Orvy.”
-
-“Certainly I know who he was! The Wop poet. Where do you think I was
-raised?” from her insulted husband.
-
-“Sure--the fellow that took the Cook’s Tour to Hell. I’ve never waded
-through his po’try, but we learned about him in the U.,” said Babbitt.
-
-“Page Mr. Dannnnnty!” intoned Eddie Swanson.
-
-“You ought to get him easy, Mr. Frink, you and he being fellow-poets,”
-said Louetta Swanson.
-
-“Fellow-poets, rats! Where d’ you get that stuff?” protested Vergil
-Gunch. “I suppose Dante showed a lot of speed for an old-timer--not that
-I’ve actually read him, of course--but to come right down to hard facts,
-he wouldn’t stand one-two-three if he had to buckle down to practical
-literature and turn out a poem for the newspaper-syndicate every day,
-like Chum does!”
-
-“That’s so,” from Eddie Swanson. “Those old birds could take their time.
-Judas Priest, I could write poetry myself if I had a whole year for it,
-and just wrote about that old-fashioned junk like Dante wrote about.”
-
-Frink demanded, “Hush, now! I’ll call him.... O, Laughing Eyes, emerge
-forth into the, uh, the ultimates and bring hither the spirit of Dante,
-that we mortals may list to his words of wisdom.”
-
-“You forgot to give um the address: 1658 Brimstone Avenue, Fiery
-Heights, Hell,” Gunch chuckled, but the others felt that this was
-irreligious. And besides--“probably it was just Chum making the knocks,
-but still, if there did happen to be something to all this, be exciting
-to talk to an old fellow belonging to--way back in early times--”
-
-A thud. The spirit of Dante had come to the parlor of George F. Babbitt.
-
-He was, it seemed, quite ready to answer their questions. He was “glad
-to be with them, this evening.”
-
-Frink spelled out the messages by running through the alphabet till the
-spirit interpreter knocked at the right letter.
-
-Littlefield asked, in a learned tone, “Do you like it in the Paradiso,
-Messire?”
-
-“We are very happy on the higher plane, Signor. We are glad that you are
-studying this great truth of spiritualism,” Dante replied.
-
-The circle moved with an awed creaking of stays and shirtfronts.
-“Suppose--suppose there were something to this?”
-
-Babbitt had a different worry. “Suppose Chum Frink was really one of
-these spiritualists! Chum had, for a literary fellow, always seemed to
-be a Regular Guy; he belonged to the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church
-and went to the Boosters’ lunches and liked cigars and motors and racy
-stories. But suppose that secretly-- After all, you never could tell
-about these darn highbrows; and to be an out-and-out spiritualist would
-be almost like being a socialist!”
-
-No one could long be serious in the presence of Vergil Gunch. “Ask Dant’
-how Jack Shakespeare and old Verg’--the guy they named after me--are
-gettin’ along, and don’t they wish they could get into the movie game!”
-he blared, and instantly all was mirth. Mrs. Jones shrieked, and Eddie
-Swanson desired to know whether Dante didn’t catch cold with nothing on
-but his wreath.
-
-The pleased Dante made humble answer.
-
-But Babbitt--the curst discontent was torturing him again, and heavily,
-in the impersonal darkness, he pondered, “I don’t-- We’re all so flip
-and think we’re so smart. There’d be-- A fellow like Dante-- I wish I’d
-read some of his pieces. I don’t suppose I ever will, now.”
-
-He had, without explanation, the impression of a slaggy cliff and on it,
-in silhouette against menacing clouds, a lone and austere figure. He was
-dismayed by a sudden contempt for his surest friends. He grasped Louetta
-Swanson’s hand, and found the comfort of human warmth. Habit came, a
-veteran warrior; and he shook himself. “What the deuce is the matter
-with me, this evening?”
-
-He patted Louetta’s hand, to indicate that he hadn’t meant anything
-improper by squeezing it, and demanded of Frink, “Say, see if you can
-get old Dant’ to spiel us some of his poetry. Talk up to him. Tell him,
-‘_Buena giorna, señor, com sa va, wie geht’s? Keskersaykersa_ a little
-pome, _señor_?’”
-
-
-II
-
-The lights were switched on; the women sat on the fronts of their chairs
-in that determined suspense whereby a wife indicates that as soon as the
-present speaker has finished, she is going to remark brightly to her
-husband, “Well, dear, I think per-_haps_ it’s about time for us to be
-saying good-night.” For once Babbitt did not break out in blustering
-efforts to keep the party going. He had--there was something he wished
-to think out-- But the psychical research had started them off again.
-(“Why didn’t they go home! Why didn’t they go home!”) Though he was
-impressed by the profundity of the statement, he was only
-half-enthusiastic when Howard Littlefield lectured, “The United States
-is the only nation in which the government is a Moral Ideal and not just
-a social arrangement.” (“True--true--weren’t they _ever_ going home?”)
-He was usually delighted to have an “inside view” of the momentous world
-of motors but to-night he scarcely listened to Eddie Swanson’s
-revelation: “If you want to go above the Javelin class, the Zeeco is a
-mighty good buy. Couple weeks ago, and mind you, this was a fair,
-square test, they took a Zeeco stock touring-car and they slid up the
-Tonawanda hill on high, and fellow told me--” (“Zeeco--good boat
-but-- Were they planning to stay all night?”)
-
-They really were going, with a flutter of “We did have the best time!”
-
-Most aggressively friendly of all was Babbitt, yet as he burbled he was
-reflecting, “I got through it, but for a while there I didn’t hardly
-think I’d last out.” He prepared to taste that most delicate pleasure of
-the host: making fun of his guests in the relaxation of midnight. As the
-door closed he yawned voluptuously, chest out, shoulders wriggling, and
-turned cynically to his wife.
-
-She was beaming. “Oh, it was nice, wasn’t it! I know they enjoyed every
-minute of it. Don’t you think so?”
-
-He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t mock. It would have been like sneering at
-a happy child. He lied ponderously: “You bet! Best party this year, by a
-long shot.”
-
-“Wasn’t the dinner good! And honestly I thought the fried chicken was
-delicious!”
-
-“You bet! Fried to the Queen’s taste. Best fried chicken I’ve tasted for
-a coon’s age.”
-
-“Didn’t Matilda fry it beautifully! And don’t you think the soup was
-simply delicious?”
-
-“It certainly was! It was corking! Best soup I’ve tasted since Heck was
-a pup!” But his voice was seeping away. They stood in the hall, under
-the electric light in its square box-like shade of red glass bound with
-nickel. She stared at him.
-
-“Why, George, you don’t sound--you sound as if you hadn’t really enjoyed
-it.”
-
-“Sure I did! Course I did!”
-
-“George! What is it?”
-
-“Oh, I’m kind of tired, I guess. Been pounding pretty hard at the
-office. Need to get away and rest up a little.”
-
-“Well, we’re going to Maine in just a few weeks now, dear.”
-
-“Yuh--” Then he was pouring it out nakedly, robbed of reticence. “Myra:
-I think it’d be a good thing for me to get up there early.”
-
-“But you have this man you have to meet in New York about business.”
-
-“What man? Oh, sure. Him. Oh, that’s all off. But I want to hit Maine
-early--get in a little fishing, catch me a big trout, by golly!” A
-nervous, artificial laugh.
-
-“Well, why don’t we do it? Verona and Matilda can run the house between
-them, and you and I can go any time, if you think we can afford it.”
-
-“But that’s-- I’ve been feeling so jumpy lately, I thought maybe it might
-be a good thing if I kind of got off by myself and sweat it out of me.”
-
-“George! Don’t you _want_ me to go along?” She was too wretchedly in
-earnest to be tragic, or gloriously insulted, or anything save dumpy and
-defenseless and flushed to the red steaminess of a boiled beet.
-
-“Of course I do! I just meant--” Remembering that Paul Riesling had
-predicted this, he was as desperate as she. “I mean, sometimes it’s a
-good thing for an old grouch like me to go off and get it out of his
-system.” He tried to sound paternal. “Then when you and the kids
-arrive-- I figured maybe I might skip up to Maine just a few days ahead
-of you-- I’d be ready for a real bat, see how I mean?” He coaxed her with
-large booming sounds, with affable smiles, like a popular preacher
-blessing an Easter congregation, like a humorous lecturer completing his
-stint of eloquence, like all perpetrators of masculine wiles.
-
-She stared at him, the joy of festival drained from her face. “Do I
-bother you when we go on vacations? Don’t I add anything to your fun?”
-
-He broke. Suddenly, dreadfully, he was hysterical, he was a yelping
-baby. “Yes, yes, yes! Hell, yes! But can’t you understand I’m shot to
-pieces? I’m all in! I got to take care of myself! I tell you, I got
-to-- I’m sick of everything and everybody! I got to--”
-
-It was she who was mature and protective now. “Why, of course! You shall
-run off by yourself! Why don’t you get Paul to go along, and you boys
-just fish and have a good time?” She patted his shoulder--reaching up to
-it--while he shook with palsied helplessness, and in that moment was not
-merely by habit fond of her but clung to her strength.
-
-She cried cheerily, “Now up-stairs you go, and pop into bed. We’ll fix
-it all up. I’ll see to the doors. Now skip!”
-
-For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake,
-shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won
-freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so
-embarrassing as freedom.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-
-I
-
-No apartment-house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented in
-condensation than the Revelstoke Arms, in which Paul and Zilla Riesling
-had a flat. By sliding the beds into low closets the bedrooms were
-converted into living-rooms. The kitchens were cupboards each containing
-an electric range, a copper sink, a glass refrigerator, and, very
-intermittently, a Balkan maid. Everything about the Arms was excessively
-modern, and everything was compressed--except the garages.
-
-The Babbitts were calling on the Rieslings at the Arms. It was a
-speculative venture to call on the Rieslings; interesting and sometimes
-disconcerting. Zilla was an active, strident, full-blown, high-bosomed
-blonde. When she condescended to be good-humored she was nervously
-amusing. Her comments on people were saltily satiric and penetrative of
-accepted hypocrisies. “That’s so!” you said, and looked sheepish. She
-danced wildly, and called on the world to be merry, but in the midst of
-it she would turn indignant. She was always becoming indignant. Life was
-a plot against her, and she exposed it furiously.
-
-She was affable to-night. She merely hinted that Orville Jones wore a
-toupé, that Mrs. T. Cholmondeley Frink’s singing resembled a Ford going
-into high, and that the Hon. Otis Deeble, mayor of Zenith and candidate
-for Congress, was a flatulent fool (which was quite true). The Babbitts
-and Rieslings sat doubtfully on stone-hard brocade chairs in the small
-living-room of the flat, with its mantel unprovided with a fireplace,
-and its strip of heavy gilt fabric upon a glaring new player-piano, till
-Mrs. Riesling shrieked, “Come on! Let’s put some pep in it! Get out
-your fiddle, Paul, and I’ll try to make Georgie dance decently.”
-
-The Babbitts were in earnest. They were plotting for the escape to
-Maine. But when Mrs. Babbitt hinted with plump smilingness, “Does Paul
-get as tired after the winter’s work as Georgie does?” then Zilla
-remembered an injury; and when Zilla Riesling remembered an injury the
-world stopped till something had been done about it.
-
-“Does he get tired? No, he doesn’t get tired, he just goes crazy, that’s
-all! You think Paul is so reasonable, oh, yes, and he loves to make out
-he’s a little lamb, but he’s stubborn as a mule. Oh, if you had to live
-with him--! You’d find out how sweet he is! He just pretends to be meek
-so he can have his own way. And me, I get the credit for being a
-terrible old crank, but if I didn’t blow up once in a while and get
-something started, we’d die of dry-rot. He never wants to go any place
-and-- Why, last evening, just because the car was out of order--and that
-was his fault, too, because he ought to have taken it to the
-service-station and had the battery looked at--and he didn’t want to go
-down to the movies on the trolley. But we went, and then there was one
-of those impudent conductors, and Paul wouldn’t do a thing.
-
-“I was standing on the platform waiting for the people to let me into
-the car, and this beast, this conductor, hollered at me, ‘Come on, you,
-move up!’ Why, I’ve never had anybody speak to me that way in all my
-life! I was so astonished I just turned to him and said-- I thought there
-must be some mistake, and so I said to him, perfectly pleasant, ‘Were
-you speaking to me?’ and he went on and bellowed at me, ‘Yes, I was!
-You’re keeping the whole car from starting!’ he said, and then I saw he
-was one of these dirty ill-bred hogs that kindness is wasted on, and so
-I stopped and looked right at him, and I said, ‘I--beg--your--pardon, I
-am not doing anything of the kind,’ I said, ‘it’s the people ahead of
-me, who won’t move up,’ I said, ‘and furthermore, let me tell you,
-young man, that you’re a low-down, foul-mouthed, impertinent skunk,’ I
-said, ‘and you’re no gentleman! I certainly intend to report you, and
-we’ll see,’ I said, ‘whether a lady is to be insulted by any drunken bum
-that chooses to put on a ragged uniform, and I’d thank you,’ I said, ‘to
-keep your filthy abuse to yourself.’ And then I waited for Paul to show
-he was half a man and come to my defense, and he just stood there and
-pretended he hadn’t heard a word, and so I said to him, ‘Well,’ I
-said--”
-
-“Oh, cut it, cut it, Zill!” Paul groaned. “We all know I’m a
-mollycoddle, and you’re a tender bud, and let’s let it go at that.”
-
-“Let it go?” Zilla’s face was wrinkled like the Medusa, her voice was a
-dagger of corroded brass. She was full of the joy of righteousness and
-bad temper. She was a crusader and, like every crusader, she exulted in
-the opportunity to be vicious in the name of virtue. “Let it go? If
-people knew how many things I’ve let go--”
-
-“Oh, quit being such a bully.”
-
-“Yes, a fine figure you’d cut if I didn’t bully you! You’d lie abed till
-noon and play your idiotic fiddle till midnight! You’re born lazy, and
-you’re born shiftless, and you’re born cowardly, Paul Riesling--”
-
-“Oh, now, don’t say that, Zilla; you don’t mean a word of it!” protested
-Mrs. Babbitt.
-
-“I will say that, and I mean every single last word of it!”
-
-“Oh, now, Zilla, the idea!” Mrs. Babbitt was maternal and fussy. She was
-no older than Zilla, but she seemed so--at first. She was placid and
-puffy and mature, where Zilla, at forty-five, was so bleached and
-tight-corseted that you knew only that she was older than she looked.
-“The idea of talking to poor Paul like that!”
-
-“Poor Paul is right! We’d both be poor, we’d be in the poorhouse, if I
-didn’t jazz him up!”
-
-“Why, now, Zilla, Georgie and I were just saying how hard Paul’s been
-working all year, and we were thinking it would be lovely if the Boys
-could run off by themselves. I’ve been coaxing George to go up to Maine
-ahead of the rest of us, and get the tired out of his system before we
-come, and I think it would be lovely if Paul could manage to get away
-and join him.”
-
-At this exposure of his plot to escape, Paul was startled out of
-impassivity. He rubbed his fingers. His hands twitched.
-
-Zilla bayed, “Yes! You’re lucky! You can let George go, and not have to
-watch him. Fat old Georgie! Never peeps at another woman! Hasn’t got the
-spunk!”
-
-“The hell I haven’t!” Babbitt was fervently defending his priceless
-immorality when Paul interrupted him--and Paul looked dangerous. He rose
-quickly; he said gently to Zilla:
-
-“I suppose you imply I have a lot of sweethearts.”
-
-“Yes, I do!”
-
-“Well, then, my dear, since you ask for it-- There hasn’t been a time in
-the last ten years when I haven’t found some nice little girl to comfort
-me, and as long as you continue your amiability I shall probably
-continue to deceive you. It isn’t hard. You’re so stupid.”
-
-Zilla gibbered; she howled; words could not be distinguished in her
-slaver of abuse.
-
-Then the bland George F. Babbitt was transformed. If Paul was dangerous,
-if Zilla was a snake-locked fury, if the neat emotions suitable to the
-Revelstoke Arms had been slashed into raw hatreds, it was Babbitt who
-was the most formidable. He leaped up. He seemed very large. He seized
-Zilla’s shoulder. The cautions of the broker were wiped from his face,
-and his voice was cruel:
-
-“I’ve had enough of all this damn nonsense! I’ve known you for
-twenty-five years, Zil, and I never knew you to miss a chance to take
-your disappointments out on Paul. You’re not wicked. You’re worse.
-You’re a fool. And let me tell you that Paul is the finest boy God ever
-made. Every decent person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of
-being a woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of. Who
-the hell are you that a person like Paul should have to ask your
-_permission_ to go with me? You act like you were a combination of Queen
-Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool, can’t you see how people snicker at
-you, and sneer at you?”
-
-Zilla was sobbing, “I’ve never-- I’ve never--nobody ever talked to me
-like this in all my life!”
-
-“No, but that’s the way they talk behind your back! Always! They say
-you’re a scolding old woman. Old, by God!”
-
-That cowardly attack broke her. Her eyes were blank. She wept. But
-Babbitt glared stolidly. He felt that he was the all-powerful official
-in charge; that Paul and Mrs. Babbitt looked on him with awe; that he
-alone could handle this case.
-
-Zilla writhed. She begged, “Oh, they don’t!”
-
-“They certainly do!”
-
-“I’ve been a bad woman! I’m terribly sorry! I’ll kill myself! I’ll do
-anything. Oh, I’ll-- What do you want?”
-
-She abased herself completely. Also, she enjoyed it. To the connoisseur
-of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough, melodramatic,
-egoistic humility.
-
-“I want you to let Paul beat it off to Maine with me,” Babbitt demanded.
-
-“How can I help his going? You’ve just said I was an idiot and nobody
-paid any attention to me.”
-
-“Oh, you can help it, all right, all right! What you got to do is to cut
-out hinting that the minute he gets out of your sight, he’ll go chasing
-after some petticoat. Matter fact, that’s the way you start the boy off
-wrong. You ought to have more sense--”
-
-“Oh, I will, honestly, I will, George. I know I was bad. Oh, forgive me,
-all of you, forgive me--”
-
-She enjoyed it.
-
-So did Babbitt. He condemned magnificently and forgave piously, and as
-he went parading out with his wife he was grandly explanatory to her:
-
-“Kind of a shame to bully Zilla, but course it was the only way to
-handle her. Gosh, I certainly did have her crawling!”
-
-She said calmly, “Yes. You were horrid. You were showing off. You were
-having a lovely time thinking what a great fine person you were!”
-
-“Well, by golly! Can you beat it! Of course I might of expected you to
-not stand by me! I might of expected you’d stick up for your own sex!”
-
-“Yes. Poor Zilla, she’s so unhappy. She takes it out on Paul. She hasn’t
-a single thing to do, in that little flat. And she broods too much. And
-she used to be so pretty and gay, and she resents losing it. And you
-were just as nasty and mean as you could be. I’m not a bit proud of
-you--or of Paul, boasting about his horrid love-affairs!”
-
-He was sulkily silent; he maintained his bad temper at a high level of
-outraged nobility all the four blocks home. At the door he left her, in
-self-approving haughtiness, and tramped the lawn.
-
-With a shock it was revealed to him: “Gosh, I wonder if she was
-right--if she was partly right?” Overwork must have flayed him to
-abnormal sensitiveness; it was one of the few times in his life when he
-had queried his eternal excellence; and he perceived the summer night,
-smelled the wet grass. Then: “I don’t care! I’ve pulled it off. We’re
-going to have our spree. And for Paul, I’d do anything.”
-
-
-II
-
-They were buying their Maine tackle at Ijams Brothers’, the Sporting
-Goods Mart, with the help of Willis Ijams, fellow member of the
-Boosters’ Club. Babbitt was completely mad. He trumpeted and danced. He
-muttered to Paul, “Say, this is pretty good, eh? To be buying the stuff,
-eh? And good old Willis Ijams himself coming down on the floor to wait
-on us! Say, if those fellows that are getting their kit for the North
-Lakes knew we were going clear up to Maine, they’d have a fit, eh?...
-Well, come on, Brother Ijams--Willis, I mean. Here’s your chance! We’re
-a couple of easy marks! Whee! Let me at it! I’m going to buy out the
-store!”
-
-He gloated on fly-rods and gorgeous rubber hip-boots, on tents with
-celluloid windows and folding chairs and ice-boxes. He simple-heartedly
-wanted to buy all of them. It was the Paul whom he was always vaguely
-protecting who kept him from his drunken desires.
-
-But even Paul lightened when Willis Ijams, a salesman with poetry and
-diplomacy, discussed flies. “Now, of course, you boys know,” he said,
-“the great scrap is between dry flies and wet flies. Personally, I’m for
-dry flies. More sporting.”
-
-“That’s so. Lots more sporting,” fulminated Babbitt, who knew very
-little about flies either wet or dry.
-
-“Now if you’ll take my advice, Georgie, you’ll stock up well on these
-pale evening dims, and silver sedges, and red ants. Oh, boy, there’s a
-fly, that red ant!”
-
-“You bet! That’s what it is--a fly!” rejoiced Babbitt.
-
-“Yes, sir, that red ant,” said Ijams, “is a real honest-to-God _fly_!”
-
-“Oh, I guess ole Mr. Trout won’t come a-hustling when I drop one of
-those red ants on the water!” asserted Babbitt, and his thick wrists
-made a rapturous motion of casting.
-
-“Yes, and the landlocked salmon will take it, too,” said Ijams, who had
-never seen a landlocked salmon.
-
-“Salmon! Trout! Say, Paul, can you see Uncle George with his khaki pants
-on haulin’ ’em in, some morning ’bout seven? Whee!”
-
-
-III
-
-They were on the New York express, incredibly bound for Maine,
-incredibly without their families. They were free, in a man’s world, in
-the smoking-compartment of the Pullman.
-
-Outside the car window was a glaze of darkness stippled with the gold of
-infrequent mysterious lights. Babbitt was immensely conscious, in the
-sway and authoritative clatter of the train, of going, of going on.
-Leaning toward Paul he grunted, “Gosh, pretty nice to be hiking, eh?”
-
-The small room, with its walls of ocher-colored steel, was filled mostly
-with the sort of men he classified as the Best Fellows You’ll Ever
-Meet--Real Good Mixers. There were four of them on the long seat; a fat
-man with a shrewd fat face, a knife-edged man in a green velour hat, a
-very young young man with an imitation amber cigarette-holder, and
-Babbitt. Facing them, on two movable leather chairs, were Paul and a
-lanky, old-fashioned man, very cunning, with wrinkles bracketing his
-mouth. They all read newspapers or trade journals, boot-and-shoe
-journals, crockery journals, and waited for the joys of conversation. It
-was the very young man, now making his first journey by Pullman, who
-began it.
-
-“Say, gee, I had a wild old time in Zenith!” he gloried. “Say, if a
-fellow knows the ropes there he can have as wild a time as he can in New
-York!”
-
-“Yuh, I bet you simply raised the old Ned. I figured you were a bad man
-when I saw you get on the train!” chuckled the fat one.
-
-The others delightedly laid down their papers.
-
-“Well, that’s all right now! I guess I seen some things in the Arbor you
-never seen!” complained the boy.
-
-“Oh, I’ll bet you did! I bet you lapped up the malted milk like a
-reg’lar little devil!”
-
-Then, the boy having served as introduction, they ignored him and
-charged into real talk. Only Paul, sitting by himself, reading at a
-serial story in a newspaper, failed to join them, and all but Babbitt
-regarded him as a snob, an eccentric, a person of no spirit.
-
-Which of them said which has never been determined, and does not matter,
-since they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the
-same ponderous and brassy assurance. If it was not Babbitt who was
-delivering any given verdict, at least he was beaming on the chancellor
-who did deliver it.
-
-“At that, though,” announced the first, “they’re selling quite some booze
-in Zenith. Guess they are everywhere. I don’t know how you fellows feel
-about prohibition, but the way it strikes me is that it’s a mighty
-beneficial thing for the poor zob that hasn’t got any will-power but for
-fellows like us, it’s an infringement of personal liberty.”
-
-“That’s a fact. Congress has got no right to interfere with a fellow’s
-personal liberty,” contended the second.
-
-A man came in from the car, but as all the seats were full he stood up
-while he smoked his cigarette. He was an Outsider; he was not one of the
-Old Families of the smoking-compartment. They looked upon him bleakly
-and, after trying to appear at ease by examining his chin in the mirror,
-he gave it up and went out in silence.
-
-“Just been making a trip through the South. Business conditions not very
-good down there,” said one of the council.
-
-“Is that a fact! Not very good, eh?”
-
-“No, didn’t strike me they were up to normal.”
-
-“Not up to normal, eh?”
-
-“No, I wouldn’t hardly say they were.”
-
-The whole council nodded sagely and decided, “Yump, not hardly up to
-snuff.”
-
-“Well, business conditions ain’t what they ought to be out West,
-neither, not by a long shot.”
-
-“That’s a fact. And I guess the hotel business feels it. That’s one good
-thing, though: these hotels that’ve been charging five bucks a day--yes,
-and maybe six-seven!--for a rotten room are going to be darn glad to get
-four, and maybe give you a little service.”
-
-“That’s a fact. Say, uh, speaknubout hotels, I hit the St. Francis at
-San Francisco for the first time, the other day, and, say, it certainly
-is a first-class place.”
-
-“You’re right, brother! The St. Francis is a swell place--absolutely
-A1.”
-
-“That’s a fact. I’m right with you. It’s a first-class place.”
-
-“Yuh, but say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Rippleton, in
-Chicago? I don’t want to knock-- I believe in boosting wherever you
-can--but say, of all the rotten dumps that pass ’emselves off as
-first-class hotels, that’s the worst. I’m going to _get_ those guys, one
-of these days, and I told ’em so. You know how I am--well, maybe you
-don’t know, but I’m accustomed to first-class accommodations, and I’m
-perfectly willing to pay a reasonable price. I got into Chicago late the
-other night, and the Rippleton’s near the station-- I’d never been there
-before, but I says to the taxi-driver-- I always believe in taking a taxi
-when you get in late; may cost a little more money, but, gosh, it’s
-worth it when you got to be up early next morning and out selling a lot
-of crabs--and I said to him, ‘Oh, just drive me over to the Rippleton.’
-
-“Well, we got there, and I breezed up to the desk and said to the clerk,
-‘Well, brother, got a nice room with bath for Cousin Bill?’ Saaaay!
-You’d ’a’ thought I’d sold him a second, or asked him to work on Yom
-Kippur! He hands me the cold-boiled stare and yaps, ‘I dunno, friend,
-I’ll see,’ and he ducks behind the rigamajig they keep track of the
-rooms on. Well, I guess he called up the Credit Association and the
-American Security League to see if I was all right--he certainly took
-long enough--or maybe he just went to sleep; but finally he comes out
-and looks at me like it hurts him, and croaks, ‘I think I can let you
-have a room with bath.’ ‘Well, that’s awful nice of you--sorry to
-trouble you--how much’ll it set me back?’ I says, real sweet. ‘It’ll
-cost you seven bucks a day, friend,’ he says.
-
-“Well, it was late, and anyway, it went down on my
-expense-account--gosh, if I’d been paying it instead of the firm, I’d
-’a’ tramped the streets all night before I’d ’a’ let any hick tavern
-stick me seven great big round dollars, believe me! So I lets it go at
-that. Well, the clerk wakes a nice young bellhop--fine lad--not a day
-over seventy-nine years old--fought at the Battle of Gettysburg and
-doesn’t know it’s over yet--thought I was one of the Confederates, I
-guess, from the way he looked at me--and Rip van Winkle took me up to
-something-- I found out afterwards they called it a room, but first I
-thought there’d been some mistake-- I thought they were putting me in the
-Salvation Army collection-box! At seven _per_ each and every _diem_!
-Gosh!”
-
-“Yuh, I’ve heard the Rippleton was pretty cheesy. Now, when I go to
-Chicago I always stay at the Blackstone or the La Salle--first-class
-places.”
-
-“Say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Birchdale at Terre Haute? How
-is it?”
-
-“Oh, the Birchdale is a first-class hotel.”
-
-(Twelve minutes of conference on the state of hotels in South Bend,
-Flint, Dayton, Tulsa, Wichita, Fort Worth, Winona, Erie, Fargo, and
-Moose Jaw.)
-
-“Speaknubout prices,” the man in the velour hat observed, fingering the
-elk-tooth on his heavy watch-chain, “I’d like to know where they get
-this stuff about clothes coming down. Now, you take this suit I got on.”
-He pinched his trousers-leg. “Four years ago I paid forty-two fifty for
-it, and it was real sure-’nough value. Well, here the other day I went
-into a store back home and asked to see a suit, and the fellow yanks out
-some hand-me-downs that, honest, I wouldn’t put on a hired man. Just out
-of curiosity I asks him, ‘What you charging for that junk?’ ‘Junk,’ he
-says, ‘what d’ you mean junk? That’s a swell piece of goods, all wool--’
-Like hell! It was nice vegetable wool, right off the Ole Plantation!
-‘It’s all wool,’ he says, ‘and we get sixty-seven ninety for it.’ ‘Oh,
-you do, do you!’ I says. ‘Not from me you don’t,’ I says, and I walks
-right out on him. You bet! I says to the wife, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘as long
-as your strength holds out and you can go on putting a few more patches
-on papa’s pants, we’ll just pass up buying clothes.’”
-
-“That’s right, brother. And just look at collars, frinstance--”
-
-“Hey! Wait!” the fat man protested. “What’s the matter with collars? I’m
-selling collars! D’you realize the cost of labor on collars is still two
-hundred and seven per cent. above--”
-
-They voted that if their old friend the fat man sold collars, then the
-price of collars was exactly what it should be; but all other clothing
-was tragically too expensive. They admired and loved one another now.
-They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that
-the purpose of manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be
-sold. To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, the wandering
-poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young district
-attorney, but the great sales-manager, who had an Analysis of
-Merchandizing Problems on his glass-topped desk, whose title of nobility
-was “Go-getter,” and who devoted himself and all his young samurai to
-the cosmic purpose of Selling--not of selling anything in particular,
-for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling.
-
-The shop-talk roused Paul Riesling. Though he was a player of violins
-and an interestingly unhappy husband, he was also a very able salesman
-of tar-roofing. He listened to the fat man’s remarks on “the value of
-house-organs and bulletins as a method of jazzing-up the Boys out on the
-road;” and he himself offered one or two excellent thoughts on the use
-of two-cent stamps on circulars. Then he committed an offense against
-the holy law of the Clan of Good Fellows. He became highbrow.
-
-They were entering a city. On the outskirts they passed a steel-mill
-which flared in scarlet and orange flame that licked at the cadaverous
-stacks, at the iron-sheathed walls and sullen converters.
-
-“My Lord, look at that--beautiful!” said Paul.
-
-“You bet it’s beautiful, friend. That’s the Shelling-Horton Steel Plant,
-and they tell me old John Shelling made a good three million bones out
-of munitions during the war!” the man with the velour hat said
-reverently.
-
-“I didn’t mean-- I mean it’s lovely the way the light pulls that
-picturesque yard, all littered with junk, right out of the darkness,”
-said Paul.
-
-They stared at him, while Babbitt crowed, “Paul there has certainly got
-one great little eye for picturesque places and quaint sights and all
-that stuff. ’D of been an author or something if he hadn’t gone into the
-roofing line.”
-
-Paul looked annoyed. (Babbitt sometimes wondered if Paul appreciated his
-loyal boosting.) The man in the velour hat grunted, “Well, personally, I
-think Shelling-Horton keep their works awful dirty. Bum routing. But I
-don’t suppose there’s any law against calling ’em ‘picturesque’ if it
-gets you that way!”
-
-Paul sulkily returned to his newspaper and the conversation logically
-moved on to trains.
-
-“What time do we get into Pittsburg?” asked Babbitt.
-
-“Pittsburg? I think we get in at--no, that was last year’s
-schedule--wait a minute--let’s see--got a time-table right here.”
-
-“I wonder if we’re on time?”
-
-“Yuh, sure, we must be just about on time.”
-
-“No, we aren’t--we were seven minutes late, last station.”
-
-“Were we? Straight? Why, gosh, I thought we were right on time.”
-
-“No, we’re about seven minutes late.”
-
-“Yuh, that’s right; seven minutes late.”
-
-The porter entered--a negro in white jacket with brass buttons.
-
-“How late are we, George?” growled the fat man.
-
-“’Deed, I don’t know, sir. I think we’re about on time,” said the
-porter, folding towels and deftly tossing them up on the rack above the
-washbowls. The council stared at him gloomily and when he was gone they
-wailed:
-
-“I don’t know what’s come over these niggers, nowadays. They never give
-you a civil answer.”
-
-“That’s a fact. They’re getting so they don’t have a single bit of
-respect for you. The old-fashioned coon was a fine old cuss--he knew his
-place--but these young dinges don’t want to be porters or
-cotton-pickers. Oh, no! They got to be lawyers and professors and Lord
-knows what all! I tell you, it’s becoming a pretty serious problem. We
-ought to get together and show the black man, yes, and the yellow man,
-his place. Now, I haven’t got one particle of race-prejudice. I’m the
-first to be glad when a nigger succeeds--so long as he stays where he
-belongs and doesn’t try to usurp the rightful authority and business
-ability of the white man.”
-
-“That’s the i.! And another thing we got to do,” said the man with the
-velour hat (whose name was Koplinsky), “is to keep these damn foreigners
-out of the country. Thank the Lord, we’re putting a limit on
-immigration. These Dagoes and Hunkies have got to learn that this is a
-white man’s country, and they ain’t wanted here. When we’ve assimilated
-the foreigners we got here now and learned ’em the principles of
-Americanism and turned ’em into regular folks, why then maybe we’ll let
-in a few more.”
-
-“You bet. That’s a fact,” they observed, and passed on to lighter
-topics. They rapidly reviewed motor-car prices, tire-mileage,
-oil-stocks, fishing, and the prospects for the wheat-crop in Dakota.
-
-But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time. He was a veteran
-traveler and free of illusions. Already he had asserted that he was “an
-old he-one.” He leaned forward, gathered in their attention by his
-expression of sly humor, and grumbled, “Oh, hell, boys, let’s cut out
-the formality and get down to the stories!”
-
-They became very lively and intimate.
-
-Paul and the boy vanished. The others slid forward on the long seat,
-unbuttoned their vests, thrust their feet up on the chairs, pulled the
-stately brass cuspidors nearer, and ran the green window-shade down on
-its little trolley, to shut them in from the uncomfortable strangeness
-of night. After each bark of laughter they cried, “Say, jever hear the
-one about--” Babbitt was expansive and virile. When the train stopped at
-an important station, the four men walked up and down the cement
-platform, under the vast smoky train-shed roof, like a stormy sky, under
-the elevated footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of beef, in the
-mystery of an unknown city. They strolled abreast, old friends and well
-content. At the long-drawn “Alllll aboarrrrrd”--like a mountain call at
-dusk--they hastened back into the smoking-compartment, and till two of
-the morning continued the droll tales, their eyes damp with cigar-smoke
-and laughter. When they parted they shook hands, and chuckled, “Well,
-sir, it’s been a great session. Sorry to bust it up. Mighty glad to met
-you.”
-
-Babbitt lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman berth, shaking
-with remembrance of the fat man’s limerick about the lady who wished to
-be wild. He raised the shade; he lay with a puffy arm tucked between his
-head and the skimpy pillow, looking out on the sliding silhouettes of
-trees, and village lamps like exclamation-points. He was very happy.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-
-I
-
-They had four hours in New York between trains. The one thing Babbitt
-wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his
-last visit. He stared up at it, muttering, “Twenty-two hundred rooms and
-twenty-two hundred baths! That’s got everything in the world beat. Lord,
-their turnover must be--well, suppose price of rooms is four to eight
-dollars a day, and I suppose maybe some ten and--four times twenty-two
-hundred--say six times twenty-two hundred--well, anyway, with
-restaurants and everything, say summers between eight and fifteen
-thousand a day. Every day! I never thought I’d see a thing like that!
-Some town! Of course the average fellow in Zenith has got more
-Individual Initiative than the fourflushers here, but I got to hand it
-to New York. Yes, sir, town, you’re all right--some ways. Well, old
-Paulski, I guess we’ve seen everything that’s worth while. How’ll we
-kill the rest of the time? Movie?”
-
-But Paul desired to see a liner. “Always wanted to go to Europe--and, by
-thunder, I will, too, some day before I pass out,” he sighed.
-
-From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at the stern of the
-_Aquitania_ and her stacks and wireless antennæ lifted above the
-dock-house which shut her in.
-
-“By golly,” Babbitt droned, “wouldn’t be so bad to go over to the Old
-Country and take a squint at all these ruins, and the place where
-Shakespeare was born. And think of being able to order a drink whenever
-you wanted one! Just range up to a bar and holler out loud, ‘Gimme a
-cocktail, and darn the police!’ Not bad at all. What juh like to see,
-over there, Paulibus?”
-
-Paul did not answer. Babbitt turned. Paul was standing with clenched
-fists, head drooping, staring at the liner as in terror. His thin body,
-seen against the summer-glaring planks of the wharf, was childishly
-meager.
-
-Again, “What would you hit for on the other side, Paul?”
-
-Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Paul whispered, “Oh, my
-God!” While Babbitt watched him anxiously he snapped, “Come on, let’s
-get out of this,” and hastened down the wharf, not looking back.
-
-“That’s funny,” considered Babbitt. “The boy didn’t care for seeing the
-ocean boats after all. I thought he’d be interested in ’em.”
-
-
-II
-
-Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about locomotive
-horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine mountain-ridge and from
-the summit he looked down the shining way among the pines; though he
-remarked, “Well, by golly!” when he discovered that the station at
-Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car; Babbitt’s
-moment of impassioned release came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake
-Sunasquam, awaiting the launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down
-the lake; between the logs and the shore, the water was transparent,
-thin-looking, flashing with minnows. A guide in black felt hat with
-trout-flies in the band, and flannel shirt of a peculiarly daring blue,
-sat on a log and whittled and was silent. A dog, a good country dog,
-black and woolly gray, a dog rich in leisure and in meditation,
-scratched and grunted and slept. The thick sunlight was lavish on the
-bright water, on the rim of gold-green balsam boughs, the silver birches
-and tropic ferns, and across the lake it burned on the sturdy shoulders
-of the mountains. Over everything was a holy peace.
-
-Silent, they loafed on the edge of the wharf, swinging their legs above
-the water. The immense tenderness of the place sank into Babbitt, and
-he murmured, “I’d just like to sit here--the rest of my life--and
-whittle--and sit. And never hear a typewriter. Or Stan Graff fussing in
-the ’phone. Or Rone and Ted scrapping. Just sit. Gosh!”
-
-He patted Paul’s shoulder. “How does it strike you, old snoozer?”
-
-“Oh, it’s darn good, Georgie. There’s something sort of eternal about
-it.”
-
-For once, Babbitt understood him.
-
-
-III
-
-Their launch rounded the bend; at the head of the lake, under a mountain
-slope, they saw the little central dining-shack of their hotel and the
-crescent of squat log cottages which served as bedrooms. They landed,
-and endured the critical examination of the habitués who had been at the
-hotel for a whole week. In their cottage, with its high stone fireplace,
-they hastened, as Babbitt expressed it, to “get into some regular
-he-togs.” They came out; Paul in an old gray suit and soft white shirt;
-Babbitt in khaki shirt and vast and flapping khaki trousers. It was
-excessively new khaki; his rimless spectacles belonged to a city office;
-and his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a discordant noise
-in the place. But with infinite satisfaction he slapped his legs and
-crowed, “Say, this is getting back home, eh?”
-
-They stood on the wharf before the hotel. He winked at Paul and drew
-from his back pocket a plug of chewing-tobacco, a vulgarism forbidden in
-the Babbitt home. He took a chew, beaming and wagging his head as he
-tugged at it. “Um! Um! Maybe I haven’t been hungry for a wad of
-eating-tobacco! Have some?”
-
-They looked at each other in a grin of understanding. Paul took the
-plug, gnawed at it. They stood quiet, their jaws working. They solemnly
-spat, one after the other, into the placid water. They stretched
-voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs. From beyond the
-mountains came the shuffling sound of a far-off train. A trout leaped,
-and fell back in a silver circle. They sighed together.
-
-
-IV
-
-They had a week before their families came. Each evening they planned to
-get up early and fish before breakfast. Each morning they lay abed till
-the breakfast-bell, pleasantly conscious that there were no efficient
-wives to rouse them. The mornings were cold; the fire was kindly as they
-dressed.
-
-Paul was distressingly clean, but Babbitt reveled in a good sound
-dirtiness, in not having to shave till his spirit was moved to it. He
-treasured every grease spot and fish-scale on his new khaki trousers.
-
-All morning they fished unenergetically, or tramped the dim and
-aqueous-lighted trails among rank ferns and moss sprinkled with crimson
-bells. They slept all afternoon, and till midnight played stud-poker
-with the guides. Poker was a serious business to the guides. They did
-not gossip; they shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity
-menacing to the “sports;” and Joe Paradise, king of guides, was
-sarcastic to loiterers who halted the game even to scratch.
-
-At midnight, as Paul and he blundered to their cottage over the pungent
-wet grass, and pine-roots confusing in the darkness, Babbitt rejoiced
-that he did not have to explain to his wife where he had been all
-evening.
-
-They did not talk much. The nervous loquacity and opinionation of the
-Zenith Athletic Club dropped from them. But when they did talk they
-slipped into the naïve intimacy of college days. Once they drew their
-canoe up to the bank of Sunasquam Water, a stream walled in by the dense
-green of the hardhack. The sun roared on the green jungle but in the
-shade was sleepy peace, and the water was golden and rippling. Babbitt
-drew his hand through the cool flood, and mused:
-
-“We never thought we’d come to Maine together!”
-
-“No. We’ve never done anything the way we thought we would. I expected
-to live in Germany with my granddad’s people, and study the fiddle.”
-
-“That’s so. And remember how I wanted to be a lawyer and go into
-politics? I still think I might have made a go of it. I’ve kind of got
-the gift of the gab--anyway, I can think on my feet, and make some kind
-of a spiel on most anything, and of course that’s the thing you need in
-politics. By golly, Ted’s going to law-school, even if I didn’t! Well-- I
-guess it’s worked out all right. Myra’s been a fine wife. And Zilla
-means well, Paulibus.”
-
-“Yes. Up here, I figure out all sorts of plans to keep her amused. I
-kind of feel life is going to be different, now that we’re getting a
-good rest and can go back and start over again.”
-
-“I hope so, old boy.” Shyly: “Say, gosh, it’s been awful nice to sit
-around and loaf and gamble and act regular, with you along, you old
-horse-thief!”
-
-“Well, you know what it means to me, Georgie. Saved my life.”
-
-The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove
-they were good rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Babbitt whistling
-while Paul hummed, they paddled back to the hotel.
-
-
-V
-
-Though it was Paul who had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the
-protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry, while Babbitt
-sank into irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness.
-At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and for him sought
-amusements; by the end of the week Paul was nurse, and Babbitt accepted
-favors with the condescension one always shows a patient nurse.
-
-The day before their families arrived, the women guests at the hotel
-bubbled, “Oh, isn’t it nice! You must be so excited;” and the
-proprieties compelled Babbitt and Paul to look excited. But they went to
-bed early and grumpy.
-
-When Myra appeared she said at once, “Now, we want you boys to go on
-playing around just as if we weren’t here.”
-
-The first evening, he stayed out for poker with the guides, and she said
-in placid merriment, “My! You’re a regular bad one!” The second evening,
-she groaned sleepily, “Good heavens, are you going to be out every
-single night?” The third evening, he didn’t play poker.
-
-He was tired now in every cell. “Funny! Vacation doesn’t seem to have
-done me a bit of good,” he lamented. “Paul’s frisky as a colt, but I
-swear, I’m crankier and nervouser than when I came up here.”
-
-He had three weeks of Maine. At the end of the second week he began to
-feel calm, and interested in life. He planned an expedition to climb
-Sachem Mountain, and wanted to camp overnight at Box Car Pond. He was
-curiously weak, yet cheerful, as though he had cleansed his veins of
-poisonous energy and was filling them with wholesome blood.
-
-He ceased to be irritated by Ted’s infatuation with a waitress (his
-seventh tragic affair this year); he played catch with Ted, and with
-pride taught him to cast a fly in the pine-shadowed silence of Skowtuit
-Pond.
-
-At the end he sighed, “Hang it, I’m just beginning to enjoy my vacation.
-But, well, I feel a lot better. And it’s going to be one great year!
-Maybe the Real Estate Board will elect me president, instead of some
-fuzzy old-fashioned faker like Chan Mott.”
-
-On the way home, whenever he went into the smoking-compartment he felt
-guilty at deserting his wife and angry at being expected to feel guilty,
-but each time he triumphed, “Oh, this is going to be a great year, a
-great old year!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-
-I
-
-All the way home from Maine, Babbitt was certain that he was a changed
-man. He was converted to serenity. He was going to cease worrying about
-business. He was going to have more “interests”--theaters, public
-affairs, reading. And suddenly, as he finished an especially heavy
-cigar, he was going to stop smoking.
-
-He invented a new and perfect method. He would buy no tobacco; he would
-depend on borrowing it; and, of course, he would be ashamed to borrow
-often. In a spasm of righteousness he flung his cigar-case out of the
-smoking-compartment window. He went back and was kind to his wife about
-nothing in particular; he admired his own purity, and decided,
-“Absolutely simple. Just a matter of will-power.” He started a magazine
-serial about a scientific detective. Ten miles on, he was conscious that
-he desired to smoke. He ducked his head, like a turtle going into its
-shell; he appeared uneasy; he skipped two pages in his story and didn’t
-know it. Five miles later, he leaped up and sought the porter. “Say, uh,
-George, have you got a--” The porter looked patient. “Have you got a
-time-table?” Babbitt finished. At the next stop he went out and bought a
-cigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he finished
-it down to an inch stub.
-
-Four days later he again remembered that he had stopped smoking, but he
-was too busy catching up with his office-work to keep it remembered.
-
-
-II
-
-Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby. “No sense a man’s
-working his fool head off. I’m going out to the Game three times a
-week. Besides, fellow ought to support the home team.”
-
-He did go and support the team, and enhance the glory of Zenith, by
-yelling “Attaboy!” and “Rotten!” He performed the rite scrupulously. He
-wore a cotton handkerchief about his collar; he became sweaty; he opened
-his mouth in a wide loose grin; and drank lemon soda out of a bottle. He
-went to the Game three times a week, for one week. Then he compromised
-on watching the _Advocate-Times_ bulletin-board. He stood in the
-thickest and steamiest of the crowd, and as the boy up on the lofty
-platform recorded the achievements of Big Bill Bostwick, the pitcher,
-Babbitt remarked to complete strangers, “Pretty nice! Good work!” and
-hastened back to the office.
-
-He honestly believed that he loved baseball. It is true that he hadn’t,
-in twenty-five years, himself played any baseball except back-lot catch
-with Ted--very gentle, and strictly limited to ten minutes. But the game
-was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and
-sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called “patriotism” and “love of
-sport.”
-
-As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering,
-“Guess better hustle.” All about him the city was hustling, for
-hustling’s sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the
-hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another
-trolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across
-the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express
-elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food
-which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, “Jus’
-shave me once over. Gotta hustle.” Men were feverishly getting rid of
-visitors in offices adorned with the signs, “This Is My Busy Day” and
-“The Lord Created the World in Six Days--You Can Spiel All You Got to
-Say in Six Minutes.” Men who had made five thousand, year before last,
-and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and
-parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and
-the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty
-thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the
-vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered.
-
-Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down with nothing
-much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were
-hustling.
-
-
-III
-
-Every Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country club and hustled
-through nine holes of golf as a rest after the week’s hustle.
-
-In Zenith it was as necessary for a Successful Man to belong to a
-country club as it was to wear a linen collar. Babbitt’s was the Outing
-Golf and Country Club, a pleasant gray-shingled building with a broad
-porch, on a daisy-starred cliff above Lake Kennepoose. There was
-another, the Tonawanda Country Club, to which belonged Charles McKelvey,
-Horace Updike, and the other rich men who lunched not at the Athletic
-but at the Union Club. Babbitt explained with frequency, “You couldn’t
-hire me to join the Tonawanda, even if I did have a hundred and eighty
-bucks to throw away on the initiation fee. At the Outing we’ve got a
-bunch of real human fellows, and the finest lot of little women in
-town--just as good at joshing as the men--but at the Tonawanda there’s
-nothing but these would-be’s in New York get-ups, drinking tea! Too much
-dog altogether. Why, I wouldn’t join the Tonawanda even if they-- I
-wouldn’t join it on a bet!”
-
-When he had played four or five holes, he relaxed a bit, his
-tobacco-fluttering heart beat more normally, and his voice slowed to the
-drawling of his hundred generations of peasant ancestors.
-
-
-IV
-
-At least once a week Mr. and Mrs. Babbitt and Tinka went to the movies.
-Their favorite motion-picture theater was the Château, which held three
-thousand spectators and had an orchestra of fifty pieces which played
-Arrangements from the Operas and suites portraying a Day on the Farm, or
-a Four-alarm Fire. In the stone rotunda, decorated with
-crown-embroidered velvet chairs and almost medieval tapestries,
-parrakeets sat on gilded lotos columns.
-
-With exclamations of “Well, by golly!” and “You got to go some to beat
-this dump!” Babbitt admired the Château. As he stared across the
-thousands of heads, a gray plain in the dimness, as he smelled good
-clothes and mild perfume and chewing-gum, he felt as when he had first
-seen a mountain and realized how very, very much earth and rock there
-was in it.
-
-He liked three kinds of films: pretty bathing girls with bare legs;
-policemen or cowboys and an industrious shooting of revolvers; and funny
-fat men who ate spaghetti. He chuckled with immense, moist-eyed
-sentimentality at interludes portraying puppies, kittens, and chubby
-babies; and he wept at deathbeds and old mothers being patient in
-mortgaged cottages. Mrs. Babbitt preferred the pictures in which
-handsome young women in elaborate frocks moved through sets ticketed as
-the drawing-rooms of New York millionaires. As for Tinka, she preferred,
-or was believed to prefer, whatever her parents told her to.
-
-All his relaxations--baseball, golf, movies, bridge, motoring, long
-talks with Paul at the Athletic Club, or at the Good Red Beef and Old
-English Chop House--were necessary to Babbitt, for he was entering a
-year of such activity as he had never known.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-
-I
-
-It was by accident that Babbitt had his opportunity to address the S. A.
-R. E. B.
-
-The S. A. R. E. B., as its members called it, with the universal passion
-for mysterious and important-sounding initials, was the State
-Association of Real Estate Boards; the organization of brokers and
-operators. It was to hold its annual convention at Monarch, Zenith’s
-chief rival among the cities of the state. Babbitt was an official
-delegate; another was Cecil Rountree, whom Babbitt admired for his
-picaresque speculative building, and hated for his social position, for
-being present at the smartest dances on Royal Ridge. Rountree was
-chairman of the convention program-committee.
-
-Babbitt had growled to him, “Makes me tired the way these doctors and
-profs and preachers put on lugs about being ‘professional men.’ A good
-realtor has to have more knowledge and finesse than any of ’em.”
-
-“Right you are! I say: Why don’t you put that into a paper, and give it
-at the S. A. R. E. B.?” suggested Rountree.
-
-“Well, if it would help you in making up the program-- Tell you: the way
-I look at it is this: First place, we ought to insist that folks call us
-‘realtors’ and not ‘real-estate men.’ Sounds more like a reg’lar
-profession. Second place-- What is it distinguishes a profession from a
-mere trade, business, or occupation? What is it? Why, it’s the public
-service and the skill, the trained skill, and the knowledge and, uh, all
-that, whereas a fellow that merely goes out for the jack, he never
-considers the--public service and trained skill and so on. Now as a
-professional--”
-
-“Rather! That’s perfectly bully! Perfectly corking! Now you write it in
-a paper,” said Rountree, as he rapidly and firmly moved away.
-
-
-II
-
-However accustomed to the literary labors of advertisements and
-correspondence, Babbitt was dismayed on the evening when he sat down to
-prepare a paper which would take a whole ten minutes to read.
-
-He laid out a new fifteen-cent school exercise-book on his wife’s
-collapsible sewing-table, set up for the event in the living-room. The
-household had been bullied into silence; Verona and Ted requested to
-disappear, and Tinka threatened with “If I hear one sound out of you--if
-you holler for a glass of water one single solitary time-- You better
-not, that’s all!” Mrs. Babbitt sat over by the piano, making a nightgown
-and gazing with respect while Babbitt wrote in the exercise-book, to the
-rhythmical wiggling and squeaking of the sewing-table.
-
-When he rose, damp and jumpy, and his throat dusty from cigarettes, she
-marveled, “I don’t see how you can just sit down and make up things
-right out of your own head!”
-
-“Oh, it’s the training in constructive imagination that a fellow gets in
-modern business life.”
-
-He had written seven pages, whereof the first page set forth:
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The other six pages were rather like the first.
-
-For a week he went about looking important. Every morning, as he
-dressed, he thought aloud: “Jever stop to consider, Myra, that before a
-town can have buildings or prosperity or any of those things, some
-realtor has got to sell ’em the land? All civilization starts with him.
-Jever realize that?” At the Athletic Club he led unwilling men aside to
-inquire, “Say, if you had to read a paper before a big convention, would
-you start in with the funny stories or just kind of scatter ’em all
-through?” He asked Howard Littlefield for a “set of statistics about
-real-estate sales; something good and impressive,” and Littlefield
-provided something exceedingly good and impressive.
-
-But it was to T. Cholmondeley Frink that Babbitt most often turned. He
-caught Frink at the club every noon, and demanded, while Frink
-looked hunted and evasive, “Say, Chum--you’re a shark on this
-writing stuff--how would you put this sentence, see here in my
-manuscript--manuscript--now where the deuce is that?--oh, yes, here.
-Would you say ‘We ought not also to alone think?’ or ‘We ought also not
-to think alone?’ or--”
-
-One evening when his wife was away and he had no one to impress, Babbitt
-forgot about Style, Order, and the other mysteries, and scrawled off
-what he really thought about the real-estate business and about himself,
-and he found the paper written. When he read it to his wife she yearned,
-“Why, dear, it’s splendid; beautifully written, and so clear and
-interesting, and such splendid ideas! Why, it’s just--it’s just
-splendid!”
-
-Next day he cornered Chum Frink and crowed, “Well, old son, I finished
-it last evening! Just lammed it out! I used to think you writing-guys
-must have a hard job making up pieces, but Lord, it’s a cinch. Pretty
-soft for you fellows; you certainly earn your money easy! Some day when
-I get ready to retire, guess I’ll take to writing and show you boys how
-to do it. I always used to think I could write better stuff, and more
-punch and originality, than all this stuff you see printed, and now I’m
-doggone sure of it!”
-
-He had four copies of the paper typed in black with a gorgeous red
-title, had them bound in pale blue manilla, and affably presented one to
-old Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the _Advocate-Times_, who said
-yes, indeed yes, he was very glad to have it, and he certainly would
-read it all through--as soon as he could find time.
-
-Mrs. Babbitt could not go to Monarch. She had a women’s-club meeting.
-Babbitt said that he was very sorry.
-
-
-III
-
-Besides the five official delegates to the convention--Babbitt,
-Rountree, W. A. Rogers, Alvin Thayer, and Elbert Wing--there were fifty
-unofficial delegates, most of them with their wives.
-
-They met at the Union Station for the midnight train to Monarch. All of
-them, save Cecil Rountree, who was such a snob that he never wore
-badges, displayed celluloid buttons the size of dollars and lettered “We
-zoom for Zenith.” The official delegates were magnificent with silver
-and magenta ribbons. Martin Lumsen’s little boy Willy carried a tasseled
-banner inscribed “Zenith the Zip City--Zeal, Zest and Zowie--1,000,000
-in 1935.” As the delegates arrived, not in taxicabs but in the family
-automobile driven by the oldest son or by Cousin Fred, they formed
-impromptu processions through the station waiting-room.
-
-It was a new and enormous waiting-room, with marble pilasters, and
-frescoes depicting the exploration of the Chaloosa River Valley by Père
-Emile Fauthoux in 1740. The benches were shelves of ponderous mahogany;
-the news-stand a marble kiosk with a brass grill. Down the echoing
-spaces of the hall the delegates paraded after Willy Lumsen’s banner,
-the men waving their cigars, the women conscious of their new frocks
-and strings of beads, all singing to the tune of Auld Lang Syne the
-official City Song, written by Chum Frink:
-
-      Good old Zenith,
-      Our kin and kith,
-    Wherever we may be,
-      Hats in the ring,
-      We blithely sing
-    Of thy Prosperity.
-
-Warren Whitby, the broker, who had a gift of verse for banquets and
-birthdays, had added to Frink’s City Song a special verse for the
-realtors’ convention:
-
-      Oh, here we come,
-      The fellows from
-    Zenith, the Zip Citee.
-      We wish to state
-      In real estate
-    There’s none so live as we.
-
-Babbitt was stirred to hysteric patriotism. He leaped on a bench,
-shouting to the crowd:
-
-“What’s the matter with Zenith?”
-
-“She’s all right!”
-
-“What’s best ole town in the U. S. A.?”
-
-“Zeeeeeen-ith!”
-
-The patient poor people waiting for the midnight train stared in
-unenvious wonder--Italian women with shawls, old weary men with broken
-shoes, roving road-wise boys in suits which had been flashy when they
-were new but which were faded now and wrinkled.
-
-Babbitt perceived that as an official delegate he must be more
-dignified. With Wing and Rogers he tramped up and down the cement
-platform beside the waiting Pullmans. Motor-driven baggage-trucks and
-red-capped porters carrying bags sped down the platform with an
-agreeable effect of activity. Arc-lights glared and stammered overhead.
-The glossy yellow sleeping-cars shone impressively. Babbitt made his
-voice to be measured and lordly; he thrust out his abdomen and rumbled,
-“We got to see to it that the convention lets the Legislature understand
-just where they get off in this matter of taxing realty transfers.” Wing
-uttered approving grunts and Babbitt swelled--gloated--
-
-The blind of a Pullman compartment was raised, and Babbitt looked into
-an unfamiliar world. The occupant of the compartment was Lucile
-McKelvey, the pretty wife of the millionaire contractor. Possibly,
-Babbitt thrilled, she was going to Europe! On the seat beside her was a
-bunch of orchids and violets, and a yellow paper-bound book which seemed
-foreign. While he stared, she picked up the book, then glanced out of
-the window as though she was bored. She must have looked straight at
-him, and he had met her, but she gave no sign. She languidly pulled down
-the blind, and he stood still, a cold feeling of insignificance in his
-heart.
-
-But on the train his pride was restored by meeting delegates from
-Sparta, Pioneer, and other smaller cities of the state, who listened
-respectfully when, as a magnifico from the metropolis of Zenith, he
-explained politics and the value of a Good Sound Business
-Administration. They fell joyfully into shop-talk, the purest and most
-rapturous form of conversation:
-
-“How’d this fellow Rountree make out with this big apartment-hotel he
-was going to put up? Whadde do? Get out bonds to finance it?” asked a
-Sparta broker.
-
-“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Babbitt. “Now if I’d been handling it--”
-
-“So,” Elbert Wing was droning, “I hired this shop-window for a week, and
-put up a big sign, ‘Toy Town for Tiny Tots,’ and stuck in a lot of doll
-houses and some dinky little trees, and then down at the bottom, ‘Baby
-Likes This Dollydale, but Papa and Mama Will Prefer Our Beautiful
-Bungalows,’ and you know, that certainly got folks talking, and first
-week we sold--”
-
-The trucks sang “lickety-lick, lickety-lick” as the train ran through
-the factory district. Furnaces spurted flame, and power-hammers were
-clanging. Red lights, green lights, furious white lights rushed past,
-and Babbitt was important again, and eager.
-
-
-IV
-
-He did a voluptuous thing: he had his clothes pressed on the train. In
-the morning, half an hour before they reached Monarch, the porter came
-to his berth and whispered, “There’s a drawing-room vacant, sir. I put
-your suit in there.” In tan autumn overcoat over his pajamas, Babbitt
-slipped down the green-curtain-lined aisle to the glory of his first
-private compartment. The porter indicated that he knew Babbitt was used
-to a man-servant; he held the ends of Babbitt’s trousers, that the
-beautifully sponged garment might not be soiled, filled the bowl in the
-private washroom, and waited with a towel.
-
-To have a private washroom was luxurious. However enlivening a Pullman
-smoking-compartment was by night, even to Babbitt it was depressing in
-the morning, when it was jammed with fat men in woolen undershirts,
-every hook filled with wrinkled cottony shirts, the leather seat piled
-with dingy toilet-kits, and the air nauseating with the smell of soap
-and toothpaste. Babbitt did not ordinarily think much of privacy, but
-now he reveled in it, reveled in his valet, and purred with pleasure as
-he gave the man a tip of a dollar and a half.
-
-He rather hoped that he was being noticed as, in his newly pressed
-clothes, with the adoring porter carrying his suit-case, he disembarked
-at Monarch.
-
-He was to share a room at the Hotel Sedgwick with W. A. Rogers, that
-shrewd, rustic-looking Zenith dealer in farm-lands. Together they had a
-noble breakfast, with waffles, and coffee not in exiguous cups but in
-large pots. Babbitt grew expansive, and told Rogers about the art of
-writing; he gave a bellboy a quarter to fetch a morning newspaper from
-the lobby, and sent to Tinka a post-card: “Papa wishes you were here to
-bat round with him.”
-
-
-V
-
-The meetings of the convention were held in the ballroom of the Allen
-House. In an anteroom was the office of the chairman of the executive
-committee. He was the busiest man in the convention; he was so busy that
-he got nothing done whatever. He sat at a marquetry table, in a room
-littered with crumpled paper and, all day long, town-boosters and
-lobbyists and orators who wished to lead debates came and whispered to
-him, whereupon he looked vague, and said rapidly, “Yes, yes, that’s a
-fine idea; we’ll do that,” and instantly forgot all about it, lighted a
-cigar and forgot that too, while the telephone rang mercilessly and
-about him men kept beseeching, “Say, Mr. Chairman--say, Mr. Chairman!”
-without penetrating his exhausted hearing.
-
-In the exhibit-room were plans of the new suburbs of Sparta, pictures of
-the new state capitol, at Galop de Vache, and large ears of corn with
-the label, “Nature’s Gold, from Shelby County, the Garden Spot of God’s
-Own Country.”
-
-The real convention consisted of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in
-groups amid the badge-spotted crowd in the hotel-lobby, but there was a
-show of public meetings.
-
-The first of them opened with a welcome by the mayor of Monarch. The
-pastor of the First Christian Church of Monarch, a large man with a long
-damp frontal lock, informed God that the real-estate men were here now.
-
-The venerable Minnemagantic realtor, Major Carlton Tuke, read a paper in
-which he denounced coöperative stores. William A. Larkin of Eureka gave
-a comforting prognosis of “The Prospects for Increased Construction,”
-and reminded them that plate-glass prices were two points lower.
-
-The convention was on.
-
-The delegates were entertained, incessantly and firmly. The Monarch
-Chamber of Commerce gave them a banquet, and the Manufacturers’
-Association an afternoon reception, at which a chrysanthemum was
-presented to each of the ladies, and to each of the men a leather
-bill-fold inscribed “From Monarch the Mighty Motor Mart.”
-
-Mrs. Crosby Knowlton, wife of the manufacturer of Fleetwing Automobiles,
-opened her celebrated Italian garden and served tea. Six hundred
-real-estate men and wives ambled down the autumnal paths. Perhaps three
-hundred of them were quietly inconspicuous; perhaps three hundred
-vigorously exclaimed, “This is pretty slick, eh?” surreptitiously picked
-the late asters and concealed them in their pockets, and tried to get
-near enough to Mrs. Knowlton to shake her lovely hand. Without request,
-the Zenith delegates (except Rountree) gathered round a marble dancing
-nymph and sang “Here we come, the fellows from Zenith, the Zip Citee.”
-
-It chanced that all the delegates from Pioneer belonged to the Brotherly
-and Protective Order of Elks, and they produced an enormous banner
-lettered: “B. P. O. E.--Best People on Earth--Boost Pioneer, Oh Eddie.”
-Nor was Galop de Vache, the state capital, to be slighted. The leader of
-the Galop de Vache delegation was a large, reddish, roundish man, but
-active. He took off his coat, hurled his broad black felt hat on the
-ground, rolled up his sleeves, climbed upon the sundial, spat, and
-bellowed:
-
-“We’ll tell the world, and the good lady who’s giving the show this
-afternoon, that the bonniest burg in this man’s state is Galop de Vache.
-You boys can talk about your zip, but jus’ lemme murmur that old Galop
-has the largest proportion of home-owning citizens in the state; and
-when folks own their homes, they ain’t starting labor-troubles, and
-they’re raising kids instead of raising hell! Galop de Vache! The town
-for homey folks! The town that eats ’em alive oh, Bosco!
-We’ll--tell--the--world!”
-
-The guests drove off; the garden shivered into quiet. But Mrs. Crosby
-Knowlton sighed as she looked at a marble seat warm from five hundred
-summers of Amalfi. On the face of a winged sphinx which supported it
-some one had drawn a mustache in lead-pencil. Crumpled paper napkins
-were dumped among the Michaelmas daisies. On the walk, like shredded
-lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose. Cigarette stubs
-floated in the goldfish pool, trailing an evil stain as they swelled and
-disintegrated, and beneath the marble seat, the fragments carefully put
-together, was a smashed teacup.
-
-
-VI
-
-As he rode back to the hotel Babbitt reflected, “Myra would have enjoyed
-all this social agony.” For himself he cared less for the garden party
-than for the motor tours which the Monarch Chamber of Commerce had
-arranged. Indefatigably he viewed water-reservoirs, suburban
-trolley-stations, and tanneries. He devoured the statistics which were
-given to him, and marveled to his roommate, W. A. Rogers, “Of course
-this town isn’t a patch on Zenith; it hasn’t got our outlook and natural
-resources; but did you know--I nev’ did till to-day--that they
-manufactured seven hundred and sixty-three million feet of lumber last
-year? What d’ you think of that!”
-
-He was nervous as the time for reading his paper approached. When he
-stood on the low platform before the convention, he trembled and saw
-only a purple haze. But he was in earnest, and when he had finished the
-formal paper he talked to them, his hands in his pockets, his spectacled
-face a flashing disk, like a plate set up on edge in the lamplight. They
-shouted “That’s the stuff!” and in the discussion afterward they
-referred with impressiveness to “our friend and brother, Mr. George F.
-Babbitt.” He had in fifteen minutes changed from a minor delegate to a
-personage almost as well known as that diplomat of business, Cecil
-Rountree. After the meeting, delegates from all over the state said,
-“Hower you, Brother Babbitt?” Sixteen complete strangers called him
-“George,” and three men took him into corners to confide, “Mighty glad
-you had the courage to stand up and give the Profession a real boost.
-Now I’ve always maintained--”
-
-Next morning, with tremendous casualness, Babbitt asked the girl at the
-hotel news-stand for the newspapers from Zenith. There was nothing in
-the _Press_, but in the _Advocate-Times_, on the third page-- He gasped.
-They had printed his picture and a half-column account. The heading was
-“Sensation at Annual Land-men’s Convention. G. F. Babbitt, Prominent
-Ziptown Realtor, Keynoter in Fine Address.”
-
-He murmured reverently, “I guess some of the folks on Floral Heights
-will sit up and take notice now, and pay a little attention to old
-Georgie!”
-
-
-VII
-
-It was the last meeting. The delegations were presenting the claims of
-their several cities to the next year’s convention. Orators were
-announcing that “Galop de Vache, the Capital City, the site of Kremer
-College and of the Upholtz Knitting Works, is the recognized center of
-culture and high-class enterprise;” and that “Hamburg, the Big Little
-City with the Logical Location, where every man is open-handed and every
-woman a heaven-born hostess, throws wide to you her hospitable gates.”
-
-In the midst of these more diffident invitations, the golden doors of
-the ballroom opened with a blatting of trumpets, and a circus parade
-rolled in. It was composed of the Zenith brokers, dressed as
-cowpunchers, bareback riders, Japanese jugglers. At the head was big
-Warren Whitby, in the bearskin and gold-and-crimson coat of a
-drum-major. Behind him, as a clown, beating a bass drum, extraordinarily
-happy and noisy, was Babbitt.
-
-Warren Whitby leaped on the platform, made merry play with his baton,
-and observed, “Boyses and girlses, the time has came to get down to
-cases. A dyed-in-the-wool Zenithite sure loves his neighbors, but we’ve
-made up our minds to grab this convention off our neighbor burgs like
-we’ve grabbed the condensed-milk business and the paper-box business
-and--”
-
-J. Harry Barmhill, the convention chairman, hinted, “We’re grateful to
-you, Mr. Uh, but you must give the other boys a chance to hand in their
-bids now.”
-
-A fog-horn voice blared, “In Eureka we’ll promise free motor rides
-through the prettiest country--”
-
-Running down the aisle, clapping his hands, a lean bald young man cried,
-“I’m from Sparta! Our Chamber of Commerce has wired me they’ve set aside
-eight thousand dollars, in real money, for the entertainment of the
-convention!”
-
-A clerical-looking man rose to clamor, “Money talks! Move we accept the
-bid from Sparta!”
-
-It was accepted.
-
-
-VIII
-
-The Committee on Resolutions was reporting. They said that Whereas
-Almighty God in his beneficent mercy had seen fit to remove to a sphere
-of higher usefulness some thirty-six realtors of the state the past
-year, Therefore it was the sentiment of this convention assembled that
-they were sorry God had done it, and the secretary should be, and hereby
-was, instructed to spread these resolutions on the minutes, and to
-console the bereaved families by sending them each a copy.
-
-A second resolution authorized the president of the S.A.R.E.B. to spend
-fifteen thousand dollars in lobbying for sane tax measures in the State
-Legislature. This resolution had a good deal to say about Menaces to
-Sound Business and clearing the Wheels of Progress from ill-advised and
-short-sighted obstacles.
-
-The Committee on Committees reported, and with startled awe Babbitt
-learned that he had been appointed a member of the Committee on Torrens
-Titles.
-
-He rejoiced, “I said it was going to be a great year! Georgie, old son,
-you got big things ahead of you! You’re a natural-born orator and a good
-mixer and-- Zowie!”
-
-
-IX
-
-There was no formal entertainment provided for the last evening. Babbitt
-had planned to go home, but that afternoon the Jered Sassburgers of
-Pioneer suggested that Babbitt and W. A. Rogers have tea with them at
-the Catalpa Inn.
-
-Teas were not unknown to Babbitt--his wife and he earnestly attended
-them at least twice a year--but they were sufficiently exotic to make
-him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of
-the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and
-waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce
-sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as
-smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met two
-days before, so they were calling each other “Georgie” and “Sassy.”
-
-Sassburger said prayerfully, “Say, boys, before you go, seeing this is
-the last chance, I’ve _got it_, up in my room, and Miriam here is the
-best little mixologist in the Stati Unidos, like us Italians say.”
-
-With wide flowing gestures, Babbitt and Rogers followed the Sassburgers
-to their room. Mrs. Sassburger shrieked, “Oh, how terrible!” when she
-saw that she had left a chemise of sheer lavender crêpe on the bed. She
-tucked it into a bag, while Babbitt giggled, “Don’t mind us; we’re a
-couple o’ little divvils!”
-
-Sassburger telephoned for ice, and the bell-boy who brought it said,
-prosaically and unprompted, “Highball glasses or cocktail?” Miriam
-Sassburger mixed the cocktails in one of those dismal, nakedly white
-water-pitchers which exist only in hotels. When they had finished the
-first round she proved by intoning “Think you boys could stand
-another--you got a dividend coming” that, though she was but a woman,
-she knew the complete and perfect rite of cocktail-drinking.
-
-Outside, Babbitt hinted to Rogers, “Say, W. A., old rooster, it comes
-over me that I could stand it if we didn’t go back to the lovin’ wives,
-this handsome _Abend_, but just kind of stayed in Monarch and threw a
-party, heh?”
-
-“George, you speak with the tongue of wisdom and sagashiteriferousness.
-El Wing’s wife has gone on to Pittsburg. Let’s see if we can’t gather
-him in.”
-
-At half-past seven they sat in their room, with Elbert Wing and two
-up-state delegates. Their coats were off, their vests open, their faces
-red, their voices emphatic. They were finishing a bottle of corrosive
-bootlegged whisky and imploring the bell-boy, “Say, son, can you get us
-some more of this embalming fluid?” They were smoking large cigars and
-dropping ashes and stubs on the carpet. With windy guffaws they were
-telling stories. They were, in fact, males in a happy state of nature.
-
-Babbitt sighed, “I don’t know how it strikes you hellions, but
-personally I like this busting loose for a change, and kicking over a
-couple of mountains and climbing up on the North Pole and waving the
-aurora borealis around.”
-
-The man from Sparta, a grave, intense youngster, babbled, “Say! I guess
-I’m as good a husband as the run of the mill, but God, I do get so tired
-of going home every evening, and nothing to see but the movies. That’s
-why I go out and drill with the National Guard. I guess I got the
-nicest little wife in my burg, but-- Say! Know what I wanted to do as a
-kid? Know what I wanted to do? Wanted to be a big chemist. Tha’s what I
-wanted to do. But Dad chased me out on the road selling kitchenware, and
-here I’m settled down--settled for _life_--not a chance! Oh, who the
-devil started this funeral talk? How ’bout ’nother lil drink? ‘And
-a-noth-er drink wouldn’ do ’s ’ny harmmmmmmm.’”
-
-“Yea. Cut the sob-stuff,” said W. A. Rogers genially. “You boys know I’m
-the village songster? Come on now--sing up:
-
-    Said the old Obadiah to the young Obadiah,
-    ‘I am dry, Obadiah, I am dry.’
-    Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah,
-    ‘So am I, Obadiah, so am I.’”
-
-
-X
-
-They had dinner in the Moorish Grillroom of the Hotel Sedgwick.
-Somewhere, somehow, they seemed to have gathered in two other comrades:
-a manufacturer of fly-paper and a dentist. They all drank whisky from
-tea-cups, and they were humorous, and never listened to one another,
-except when W. A. Rogers “kidded” the Italian waiter.
-
-“Say, Gooseppy,” he said innocently, “I want a couple o’ fried
-elephants’ ears.”
-
-“Sorry, sir, we haven’t any.”
-
-“Huh? No elephants’ ears? What do you know about that!” Rogers turned to
-Babbitt. “Pedro says the elephants’ ears are all out!”
-
-“Well, I’ll be switched!” said the man from Sparta, with difficulty
-hiding his laughter.
-
-“Well, in that case, Carlo, just bring me a hunk o’ steak and a couple
-o’ bushels o’ French fried potatoes and some peas,” Rogers went on. “I
-suppose back in dear old sunny It’ the Eyetalians get their fresh
-garden peas out of the can.”
-
-“No, sir, we have very nice peas in Italy.”
-
-“Is that a fact! Georgie, do you hear that? They get their fresh garden
-peas out of the garden, in Italy! By golly, you live and learn, don’t
-you, Antonio, you certainly do live and learn, if you live long enough
-and keep your strength. All right, Garibaldi, just shoot me in that
-steak, with about two printers’-reams of French fried spuds on the
-promenade deck, _comprehenez-vous_, Michelovitch Angeloni?”
-
-Afterward Elbert Wing admired, “Gee, you certainly did have that poor
-Dago going, W. A. He couldn’t make you out at all!”
-
-In the _Monarch Herald_, Babbitt found an advertisement which he read
-aloud, to applause and laughter:
-
-                          Old Colony Theatre
-
-                       Shake the Old Dogs to the
-                           WROLLICKING WRENS
-                    The bonniest bevy of beauteous
-                      bathing babes in burlesque.
-                         Pete Menutti and his
-                            Oh, Gee, Kids.
-
-     This is the straight steer, Benny, the painless chicklets of the
-     Wrollicking Wrens are the cuddlingest bunch that ever hit town.
-     Steer the feet, get the card board, and twist the pupils to the
-     PDQest show ever. You will get 111% on your kale in this fun-fest.
-     The Calroza Sisters are sure some lookers and will give you a run
-     for your gelt. Jock Silbersteen is one of the pepper lads and slips
-     you a dose of real laughter. Shoot the up and down to Jackson and
-     West for graceful tappers. They run 1-2 under the wire. Provin and
-     Adams will blow the blues in their laugh skit “Hootch Mon!”
-     Something doing, boys. Listen to what the Hep Bird twitters.
-
-“Sounds like a juicy show to me. Let’s all take it in,” said Babbitt.
-
-But they put off departure as long as they could. They were safe while
-they sat here, legs firmly crossed under the table, but they felt
-unsteady; they were afraid of navigating the long and slippery floor of
-the grillroom under the eyes of the other guests and the too-attentive
-waiters.
-
-When they did venture, tables got in their way, and they sought to cover
-embarrassment by heavy jocularity at the coatroom. As the girl handed
-out their hats, they smiled at her, and hoped that she, a cool and
-expert judge, would feel that they were gentlemen. They croaked at one
-another, “Who owns the bum lid?” and “You take a good one, George; I’ll
-take what’s left,” and to the check-girl they stammered, “Better come
-along, sister! High, wide, and fancy evening ahead!” All of them tried
-to tip her, urging one another, “No! Wait! Here! I got it right here!”
-Among them, they gave her three dollars.
-
-
-XI
-
-Flamboyantly smoking cigars they sat in a box at the burlesque show,
-their feet up on the rail, while a chorus of twenty daubed, worried, and
-inextinguishably respectable grandams swung their legs in the more
-elementary chorus-evolutions, and a Jewish comedian made vicious fun of
-Jews. In the entr’actes they met other lone delegates. A dozen of them
-went in taxicabs out to Bright Blossom Inn, where the blossoms were made
-of dusty paper festooned along a room low and stinking, like a
-cow-stable no longer wisely used.
-
-Here, whisky was served openly, in glasses. Two or three clerks, who on
-pay-day longed to be taken for millionaires, sheepishly danced with
-telephone-girls and manicure-girls in the narrow space between the
-tables. Fantastically whirled the professionals, a young man in sleek
-evening-clothes and a slim mad girl in emerald silk, with amber hair
-flung up as jaggedly as flames. Babbitt tried to dance with her. He
-shuffled along the floor, too bulky to be guided, his steps unrelated to
-the rhythm of the jungle music, and in his staggering he would have
-fallen, had she not held him with supple kindly strength. He was blind
-and deaf from prohibition-era alcohol; he could not see the tables, the
-faces. But he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant warmth.
-
-When she had firmly returned him to his group, he remembered, by a
-connection quite untraceable, that his mother’s mother had been Scotch,
-and with head thrown back, eyes closed, wide mouth indicating ecstasy,
-he sang, very slowly and richly, “Loch Lomond.”
-
-But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly companionship. The man
-from Sparta said he was a “bum singer,” and for ten minutes Babbitt
-quarreled with him, in a loud, unsteady, heroic indignation. They called
-for drinks till the manager insisted that the place was closed. All the
-while Babbitt felt a hot raw desire for more brutal amusements. When W.
-A. Rogers drawled, “What say we go down the line and look over the
-girls?” he agreed savagely. Before they went, three of them secretly
-made appointments with the professional dancing girl, who agreed “Yes,
-yes, sure, darling” to everything they said, and amiably forgot them.
-
-As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch, down streets of
-small brown wooden cottages of workmen, characterless as cells, as they
-rattled across warehouse-districts which by drunken night seemed vast
-and perilous, as they were borne toward the red lights and violent
-automatic pianos and the stocky women who simpered, Babbitt was
-frightened. He wanted to leap from the taxicab, but all his body was a
-murky fire, and he groaned, “Too late to quit now,” and knew that he did
-not want to quit.
-
-There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on the way. A broker
-from Minnemagantic said, “Monarch is a lot sportier than Zenith. You
-Zenith tightwads haven’t got any joints like these here.” Babbitt raged,
-“That’s a dirty lie! Snothin’ you can’t find in Zenith. Believe me, we
-got more houses and hootch-parlors an’ all kinds o’ dives than any burg
-in the state.”
-
-He realized they were laughing at him; he desired to fight; and forgot
-it in such musty unsatisfying experiments as he had not known since
-college.
-
-In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his desire for rebellion was
-partly satisfied. He had retrograded to a shame-faced contentment. He
-was irritable. He did not smile when W. A. Rogers complained, “Ow, what
-a head! I certainly do feel like the wrath of God this morning. Say! I
-know what was the trouble! Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze
-last night.”
-
-Babbitt’s excursion was never known to his family, nor to any one in
-Zenith save Rogers and Wing. It was not officially recognized even by
-himself. If it had any consequences, they have not been discovered.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-
-I
-
-This autumn a Mr. W. G. Harding, of Marion, Ohio, was appointed
-President of the United States, but Zenith was less interested in the
-national campaign than in the local election. Seneca Doane, though he
-was a lawyer and a graduate of the State University, was candidate for
-mayor of Zenith on an alarming labor ticket. To oppose him the Democrats
-and Republicans united on Lucas Prout, a mattress-manufacturer with a
-perfect record for sanity. Mr. Prout was supported by the banks, the
-Chamber of Commerce, all the decent newspapers, and George F. Babbitt.
-
-Babbitt was precinct-leader on Floral Heights, but his district was safe
-and he longed for stouter battling. His convention paper had given him
-the beginning of a reputation for oratory, so the Republican-Democratic
-Central Committee sent him to the Seventh Ward and South Zenith, to
-address small audiences of workmen and clerks, and wives uneasy with
-their new votes. He acquired a fame enduring for weeks. Now and then a
-reporter was present at one of his meetings, and the headlines (though
-they were not very large) indicated that George F. Babbitt had addressed
-Cheering Throng, and Distinguished Man of Affairs had pointed out the
-Fallacies of Doane. Once, in the rotogravure section of the Sunday
-_Advocate-Times_, there was a photograph of Babbitt and a dozen other
-business men, with the caption “Leaders of Zenith Finance and Commerce
-Who Back Prout.”
-
-He deserved his glory. He was an excellent campaigner. He had faith; he
-was certain that if Lincoln were alive, he would be electioneering for
-Mr. W. G. Harding--unless he came to Zenith and electioneered for Lucas
-Prout. He did not confuse audiences by silly subtleties; Prout
-represented honest industry, Seneca Doane represented whining laziness,
-and you could take your choice. With his broad shoulders and vigorous
-voice, he was obviously a Good Fellow; and, rarest of all, he really
-liked people. He almost liked common workmen. He wanted them to be well
-paid, and able to afford high rents--though, naturally, they must not
-interfere with the reasonable profits of stockholders. Thus nobly
-endowed, and keyed high by the discovery that he was a natural orator,
-he was popular with audiences, and he raged through the campaign,
-renowned not only in the Seventh and Eighth Wards but even in parts of
-the Sixteenth.
-
-
-II
-
-Crowded in his car, they came driving up to Turnverein Hall, South
-Zenith-- Babbitt, his wife, Verona, Ted, and Paul and Zilla Riesling. The
-hall was over a delicatessen shop, in a street banging with trolleys and
-smelling of onions and gasoline and fried fish. A new appreciation of
-Babbitt filled all of them, including Babbitt.
-
-“Don’t know how you keep it up, talking to three bunches in one evening.
-Wish I had your strength,” said Paul; and Ted exclaimed to Verona, “The
-old man certainly does know how to kid these roughnecks along!”
-
-Men in black sateen shirts, their faces new-washed but with a hint of
-grime under their eyes, were loitering on the broad stairs up to the
-hall. Babbitt’s party politely edged through them and into the
-whitewashed room, at the front of which was a dais with a red-plush
-throne and a pine altar painted watery blue, as used nightly by the
-Grand Masters and Supreme Potentates of innumerable lodges. The hall was
-full. As Babbitt pushed through the fringe standing at the back, he
-heard the precious tribute, “That’s him!” The chairman bustled down the
-center aisle with an impressive, “The speaker? All ready, sir! Uh--let’s
-see--what was the name, sir?”
-
-Then Babbitt slid into a sea of eloquence:
-
-“Ladies and gentlemen of the Sixteenth Ward, there is one who cannot be
-with us here to-night, a man than whom there is no more stalwart Trojan
-in all the political arena-- I refer to our leader, the Honorable Lucas
-Prout, standard-bearer of the city and county of Zenith. Since he is not
-here, I trust that you will bear with me if, as a friend and neighbor,
-as one who is proud to share with you the common blessing of being a
-resident of the great city of Zenith, I tell you in all candor, honesty,
-and sincerity how the issues of this critical campaign appear to one
-plain man of business--to one who, brought up to the blessings of
-poverty and of manual labor, has, even when Fate condemned him to sit at
-a desk, yet never forgotten how it feels, by heck, to be up at
-five-thirty and at the factory with the ole dinner-pail in his hardened
-mitt when the whistle blew at seven, unless the owner sneaked in ten
-minutes on us and blew it early! (Laughter.) To come down to the basic
-and fundamental issues of this campaign, the great error, insincerely
-promulgated by Seneca Doane--”
-
-There were workmen who jeered--young cynical workmen, for the most part
-foreigners, Jews, Swedes, Irishmen, Italians--but the older men, the
-patient, bleached, stooped carpenters and mechanics, cheered him; and
-when he worked up to his anecdote of Lincoln their eyes were wet.
-
-Modestly, busily, he hurried out of the hall on delicious applause, and
-sped off to his third audience of the evening. “Ted, you better drive,”
-he said. “Kind of all in after that spiel. Well, Paul, how’d it go? Did
-I get ’em?”
-
-“Bully! Corking! You had a lot of pep.”
-
-Mrs. Babbitt worshiped, “Oh, it was fine! So clear and interesting, and
-such nice ideas. When I hear you orating I realize I don’t appreciate
-how profoundly you think and what a splendid brain and vocabulary you
-have. Just--splendid.”
-
-But Verona was irritating. “Dad,” she worried, “how do you know that
-public ownership of utilities and so on and so forth will always be a
-failure?”
-
-Mrs. Babbitt reproved, “Rone, I should think you could see and realize
-that when your father’s all worn out with orating, it’s no time to
-expect him to explain these complicated subjects. I’m sure when he’s
-rested he’ll be glad to explain it to you. Now let’s all be quiet and
-give Papa a chance to get ready for his next speech. Just think! Right
-now they’re gathering in Maccabee Temple, and _waiting_ for us!”
-
-
-III
-
-Mr. Lucas Prout and Sound Business defeated Mr. Seneca Doane and Class
-Rule, and Zenith was again saved. Babbitt was offered several minor
-appointments to distribute among poor relations, but he preferred
-advance information about the extension of paved highways, and this a
-grateful administration gave to him. Also, he was one of only nineteen
-speakers at the dinner with which the Chamber of Commerce celebrated the
-victory of righteousness.
-
-His reputation for oratory established, at the dinner of the Zenith Real
-Estate Board he made the Annual Address. The _Advocate-Times_ reported
-this speech with unusual fullness:
-
-“One of the livest banquets that has recently been pulled off occurred
-last night in the annual Get-Together Fest of the Zenith Real Estate
-Board, held in the Venetian Ball Room of the O’Hearn House. Mine host
-Gil O’Hearn had as usual done himself proud and those assembled feasted
-on such an assemblage of plates as could be rivaled nowhere west of New
-York, if there, and washed down the plenteous feed with the cup which
-inspired but did not inebriate in the shape of cider from the farm of
-Chandler Mott, president of the board and who acted as witty and
-efficient chairman.
-
-“As Mr. Mott was suffering from slight infection and sore throat, G. F.
-Babbitt made the principal talk. Besides outlining the progress of
-Torrensing real estate titles, Mr. Babbitt spoke in part as follows:
-
-“‘In rising to address you, with my impromptu speech carefully tucked
-into my vest pocket, I am reminded of the story of the two Irishmen,
-Mike and Pat, who were riding on the Pullman. Both of them, I forgot to
-say, were sailors in the Navy. It seems Mike had the lower berth and by
-and by he heard a terrible racket from the upper, and when he yelled up
-to find out what the trouble was, Pat answered, “Shure an’ bedad an’ how
-can I ever get a night’s sleep at all, at all? I been trying to get into
-this darned little hammock ever since eight bells!”
-
-“‘Now, gentlemen, standing up here before you, I feel a good deal like
-Pat, and maybe after I’ve spieled along for a while, I may feel so darn
-small that I’ll be able to crawl into a Pullman hammock with no trouble
-at all, at all!
-
-“‘Gentlemen, it strikes me that each year at this annual occasion when
-friend and foe get together and lay down the battle-ax and let the waves
-of good-fellowship waft them up the flowery slopes of amity, it behooves
-us, standing together eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder as
-fellow-citizens of the best city in the world, to consider where we are
-both as regards ourselves and the common weal.
-
-“‘It is true that even with our 361,000, or practically 362,000,
-population, there are, by the last census, almost a score of larger
-cities in the United States. But, gentlemen, if by the next census we do
-not stand at least tenth, then I’ll be the first to request any knocker
-to remove my shirt and to eat the same, with the compliments of G. F.
-Babbitt, Esquire! It may be true that New York, Chicago, and
-Philadelphia will continue to keep ahead of us in size. But aside from
-these three cities, which are notoriously so overgrown that no decent
-white man, nobody who loves his wife and kiddies and God’s good
-out-o’-doors and likes to shake the hand of his neighbor in greeting,
-would want to live in them--and let me tell you right here and now, I
-wouldn’t trade a high-class Zenith acreage development for the whole
-length and breadth of Broadway or State Street!--aside from these three,
-it’s evident to any one with a head for facts that Zenith is the finest
-example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere.
-
-“‘I don’t mean to say we’re perfect. We’ve got a lot to do in the way of
-extending the paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it’s the
-fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a
-nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the
-wheels of progress go round!
-
-“‘That’s the type of fellow that’s ruling America to-day; in fact, it’s
-the ideal type to which the entire world must tend, if there’s to be a
-decent, well-balanced, Christian, go-ahead future for this little old
-planet! Once in a while I just naturally sit back and size up this Solid
-American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction.
-
-“‘Our Ideal Citizen-- I picture him first and foremost as being busier
-than a bird-dog, not wasting a lot of good time in day-dreaming or going
-to sassiety teas or kicking about things that are none of his business,
-but putting the zip into some store or profession or art. At night he
-lights up a good cigar, and climbs into the little old ’bus, and maybe
-cusses the carburetor, and shoots out home. He mows the lawn, or sneaks
-in some practice putting, and then he’s ready for dinner. After dinner
-he tells the kiddies a story, or takes the family to the movies, or
-plays a few fists of bridge, or reads the evening paper, and a chapter
-or two of some good lively Western novel if he has a taste for
-literature, and maybe the folks next-door drop in and they sit and visit
-about their friends and the topics of the day. Then he goes happily to
-bed, his conscience clear, having contributed his mite to the
-prosperity of the city and to his own bank-account.
-
-“‘In politics and religion this Sane Citizen is the canniest man on
-earth; and in the arts he invariably has a natural taste which makes him
-pick out the best, every time. In no country in the world will you find
-so many reproductions of the Old Masters and of well-known paintings on
-parlor walls as in these United States. No country has anything like our
-number of phonographs, with not only dance records and comic but also
-the best operas, such as Verdi, rendered by the world’s highest-paid
-singers.
-
-“‘In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby
-bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America
-the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any
-other decent business man; and I, for one, am only too glad that the man
-who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reading
-matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares
-has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year, to mingle
-with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality, and to show as
-big a house and as swell a car as any Captain of Industry! But, mind
-you, it’s the appreciation of the Regular Guy who I have been depicting
-which has made this possible, and you got to hand as much credit to him
-as to the authors themselves.
-
-“‘Finally, but most important, our Standardized Citizen, even if he is a
-bachelor, is a lover of the Little Ones, a supporter of the hearthstone
-which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all
-the time, and the thing that most distinguishes us from the decayed
-nations of Europe.
-
-“‘I have never yet toured Europe--and as a matter of fact, I don’t know
-that I care to such an awful lot, as long as there’s our own mighty
-cities and mountains to be seen--but, the way I figure it out, there
-must be a good many of our own sort of folks abroad. Indeed, one of the
-most enthusiastic Rotarians I ever met boosted the tenets of
-one-hundred-per-cent pep in a burr that smacked o’ bonny Scutlond and
-all ye bonny braes o’ Bobby Burns. But same time, one thing that
-distinguishes us from our good brothers, the hustlers over there, is
-that they’re willing to take a lot off the snobs and journalists and
-politicians, while the modern American business man knows how to talk
-right up for himself, knows how to make it good and plenty clear that he
-intends to run the works. He doesn’t have to call in some highbrow
-hired-man when it’s necessary for him to answer the crooked critics of
-the sane and efficient life. He’s not dumb, like the old-fashioned
-merchant. He’s got a vocabulary and a punch.
-
-“‘With all modesty, I want to stand up here as a representative business
-man and gently whisper, “Here’s our kind of folks! Here’s the
-specifications of the Standardized American Citizen! Here’s the new
-generation of Americans: fellows with hair on their chests and smiles in
-their eyes and adding-machines in their offices. We’re not doing any
-boasting, but we like ourselves first-rate, and if you don’t like us,
-look out--better get under cover before the cyclone hits town!”
-
-“‘So! In my clumsy way I have tried to sketch the Real He-man, the
-fellow with Zip and Bang. And it’s because Zenith has so large a
-proportion of such men that it’s the most stable, the greatest of our
-cities. New York also has its thousands of Real Folks, but New York is
-cursed with unnumbered foreigners. So are Chicago and San Francisco. Oh,
-we have a golden roster of cities--Detroit and Cleveland with their
-renowned factories, Cincinnati with its great machine-tool and soap
-products, Pittsburg and Birmingham with their steel, Kansas City and
-Minneapolis and Omaha that open their bountiful gates on the bosom of
-the ocean-like wheatlands, and countless other magnificent
-sister-cities, for, by the last census, there were no less than
-sixty-eight glorious American burgs with a population of over one
-hundred thousand! And all these cities stand together for power and
-purity, and against foreign ideas and communism--Atlanta with Hartford,
-Rochester with Denver, Milwaukee with Indianapolis, Los Angeles with
-Scranton, Portland, Maine, with Portland, Oregon. A good live wire from
-Baltimore or Seattle or Duluth is the twin-brother of every like fellow
-booster from Buffalo or Akron, Fort Worth or Oskaloosa!
-
-“‘But it’s here in Zenith, the home for manly men and womanly women and
-bright kids, that you find the largest proportion of these Regular Guys,
-and that’s what sets it in a class by itself; that’s why Zenith will be
-remembered in history as having set the pace for a civilization that
-shall endure when the old time-killing ways are gone forever and the day
-of earnest efficient endeavor shall have dawned all round the world!
-
-“‘Some time I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of
-moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper
-credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to
-win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every
-land and clime, wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons are
-known! Believe me, the world has fallen too long for these worn-out
-countries that aren’t producing anything but bootblacks and scenery and
-booze, that haven’t got one bathroom per hundred people, and that don’t
-know a loose-leaf ledger from a slip-cover; and it’s just about time for
-some Zenithite to get his back up and holler for a show-down!
-
-“‘I tell you, Zenith and her sister-cities are producing a new type of
-civilization. There are many resemblances between Zenith and these other
-burgs, and I’m darn glad of it! The extraordinary, growing, and sane
-standardization of stores, offices, streets, hotels, clothes, and
-newspapers throughout the United States shows how strong and enduring a
-type is ours.
-
-“‘I always like to remember a piece that Chum Frink wrote for the
-newspapers about his lecture-tours. It is doubtless familiar to many of
-you, but if you will permit me, I’ll take a chance and read it. It’s
-one of the classic poems, like “If” by Kipling, or Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s
-“The Man Worth While”; and I always carry this clipping of it in my
-note-book:
-
-     _When I am out upon the road, a poet with a pedler’s load, I mostly
-     sing a hearty song, and take a chew and hike along, a-handing out
-     my samples fine of Cheero Brand of sweet sun-shine, and peddling
-     optimistic pokes and stable lines of japes and jokes to Lyceums and
-     other folks, to Rotarys, Kiwanis’ Clubs, and feel I ain’t like
-     other dubs. And then old Major Silas Satan, a brainy cuss who’s
-     always waitin’, he gives his tail a lively quirk, and gets in quick
-     his dirty work. He fills me up with mullygrubs; my hair the
-     backward way he rubs; he makes me lonelier than a hound, on Sunday
-     when the folks ain’t round. And then b’gosh, I would prefer to
-     never be a lecturer, a-ridin’ round in classy cars and smoking
-     fifty-cent cigars, and never more I want to roam; I simply want to
-     be back home, a-eatin’ flap-jacks, hash, and ham, with folks who
-     savvy whom I am!_
-
-     _But when I get that lonely spell, I simply seek the best hotel, no
-     matter in what town I be--St. Paul, Toledo, or K.C., in Washington,
-     Schenectady, in Louisville or Albany. And at that inn it hits my
-     dome that I again am right at home. If I should stand a lengthy
-     spell in front of that first-class hotel, that to the drummers
-     loves to cater, across from some big film theayter; if I should
-     look around and buzz, and wonder in what town I was, I swear that I
-     could never tell! For all the crowd would be so swell, in just the
-     same fine sort of jeans they wear at home, and all the queens with
-     spiffy bonnets on their beans, and all the fellows standing round
-     a-talkin’ always, I’ll be bound, the same good jolly kind of guff,
-     ’bout autos, politics and stuff and baseball players of renown that
-     Nice Guys talk in my home town!_
-
-     _Then when I entered that hotel, I’d look around and say, “Well,
-     well!” For there would be the same news-stand, same_ _magazines
-     and candies grand, same smokes of famous standard brand, I’d find
-     at home, I’ll tell! And when I saw the jolly bunch come waltzing in
-     for eats at lunch, and squaring up in natty duds to platters large
-     of French Fried spuds, why then I’d stand right up and bawl, “I’ve
-     never left my home at all!” And all replete I’d sit me down beside
-     some guy in derby brown upon a lobby chair of plush, and murmur to
-     him in a rush, “Hello, Bill, tell me, good old scout, how is your
-     stock a-holdin’ out?” Then we’d be off, two solid pals,
-     a-chatterin’ like giddy gals of flivvers, weather, home, and wives,
-     lodge-brothers then for all our lives! So when Sam Satan makes you
-     blue, good friend, that’s what I’d up and do, for in these States
-     where’er you roam, you never leave your home sweet home._
-
-“‘Yes, sir, these other burgs are our true partners in the great game of
-vital living. But let’s not have any mistake about this. I claim that
-Zenith is the best partner and the fastest-growing partner of the whole
-caboodle. I trust I may be pardoned if I give a few statistics to back
-up my claims. If they are old stuff to any of you, yet the tidings of
-prosperity, like the good news of the Bible, never become tedious to the
-ears of a real hustler, no matter how oft the sweet story is told! Every
-intelligent person knows that Zenith manufactures more condensed milk
-and evaporated cream, more paper boxes, and more lighting-fixtures, than
-any other city in the United States, if not in the world. But it is not
-so universally known that we also stand second in the manufacture of
-package-butter, sixth in the giant realm of motors and automobiles, and
-somewhere about third in cheese, leather findings, tar roofing,
-breakfast food, and overalls!
-
-“‘Our greatness, however, lies not alone in punchful prosperity but
-equally in that public spirit, that forward-looking idealism and
-brotherhood, which has marked Zenith ever since its foundation by the
-Fathers. We have a right, indeed we have a duty toward our fair city, to
-announce broadcast the facts about our high schools, characterized by
-their complete plants and the finest school-ventilating systems in the
-country, bar none; our magnificent new hotels and banks and the
-paintings and carved marble in their lobbies; and the Second National
-Tower, the second highest business building in any inland city in the
-entire country. When I add that we have an unparalleled number of miles
-of paved streets, bathrooms, vacuum cleaners, and all the other signs of
-civilization; that our library and art museum are well supported and
-housed in convenient and roomy buildings; that our park-system is more
-than up to par, with its handsome driveways adorned with grass, shrubs,
-and statuary, then I give but a hint of the all-round unlimited
-greatness of Zenith!
-
-“‘I believe, however, in keeping the best to the last. When I remind you
-that we have one motor car for every five and seven-eighths persons in
-the city, then I give a rock-ribbed practical indication of the kind of
-progress and braininess which is synonymous with the name Zenith!
-
-“‘But the way of the righteous is not all roses. Before I close I must
-call your attention to a problem we have to face, this coming year. The
-worst menace to sound government is not the avowed socialists but a lot
-of cowards who work under cover--the long-haired gentry who call
-themselves “liberals” and “radicals” and “non-partisan” and
-“intelligentsia” and God only knows how many other trick names!
-Irresponsible teachers and professors constitute the worst of this whole
-gang, and I am ashamed to say that several of them are on the faculty of
-our great State University! The U. is my own Alma Mater, and I am proud
-to be known as an alumni, but there are certain instructors there who
-seem to think we ought to turn the conduct of the nation over to hoboes
-and roustabouts.
-
-“‘Those profs are the snakes to be scotched--they and all their
-milk-and-water ilk! The American business man is generous to a fault,
-but one thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers and
-journalists: if we’re going to pay them our good money, they’ve got to
-help us by selling efficiency and whooping it up for rational
-prosperity! And when it comes to these blab-mouth, fault-finding,
-pessimistic, cynical University teachers, let me tell you that during
-this golden coming year it’s just as much our duty to bring influence to
-have those cusses fired as it is to sell all the real estate and gather
-in all the good shekels we can.
-
-“‘Not till that is done will our sons and daughters see that the ideal
-of American manhood and culture isn’t a lot of cranks sitting around
-chewing the rag about their Rights and their Wrongs, but a God-fearing,
-hustling, successful, two-fisted Regular Guy, who belongs to some church
-with pep and piety to it, who belongs to the Boosters or the Rotarians
-or the Kiwanis, to the Elks or Moose or Red Men or Knights of Columbus
-or any one of a score of organizations of good, jolly, kidding,
-laughing, sweating, upstanding, lend-a-handing Royal Good Fellows, who
-plays hard and works hard, and whose answer to his critics is a
-square-toed boot that’ll teach the grouches and smart alecks to respect
-the He-man and get out and root for Uncle Samuel, U.S.A.!’”
-
-
-IV
-
-Babbitt promised to become a recognized orator. He entertained a Smoker
-of the Men’s Club of the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church with Irish,
-Jewish, and Chinese dialect stories.
-
-But in nothing was he more clearly revealed as the Prominent Citizen
-than in his lecture on “Brass Tacks Facts on Real Estate,” as delivered
-before the class in Sales Methods at the Zenith Y.M.C.A.
-
-The _Advocate-Times_ reported the lecture so fully that Vergil Gunch
-said to Babbitt, “You’re getting to be one of the classiest spellbinders
-in town. Seems ’s if I couldn’t pick up a paper without reading about
-your well-known eloquence. All this guff ought to bring a lot of
-business into your office. Good work! Keep it up!”
-
-“Go on, quit your kidding,” said Babbitt feebly, but at this tribute
-from Gunch, himself a man of no mean oratorical fame, he expanded with
-delight and wondered how, before his vacation, he could have questioned
-the joys of being a solid citizen.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-
-I
-
-His march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling.
-
-Fame did not bring the social advancement which the Babbitts deserved.
-They were not asked to join the Tonawanda Country Club nor invited to
-the dances at the Union. Himself, Babbitt fretted, he didn’t “care a fat
-hoot for all these highrollers, but the wife would kind of like to be
-Among Those Present.” He nervously awaited his university class-dinner
-and an evening of furious intimacy with such social leaders as Charles
-McKelvey the millionaire contractor, Max Kruger the banker, Irving Tate
-the tool-manufacturer, and Adelbert Dobson the fashionable interior
-decorator. Theoretically he was their friend, as he had been in college,
-and when he encountered them they still called him “Georgie,” but he
-didn’t seem to encounter them often, and they never invited him to
-dinner (with champagne and a butler) at their houses on Royal Ridge.
-
-All the week before the class-dinner he thought of them. “No reason why
-we shouldn’t become real chummy now!”
-
-
-II
-
-Like all true American diversions and spiritual outpourings, the dinner
-of the men of the Class of 1896 was thoroughly organized. The
-dinner-committee hammered like a sales-corporation. Once a week they
-sent out reminders:
-
-                             TICKLER NO. 3
-
-     Old man, are you going to be with us at the livest Friendship Feed
-     the alumni of the good old U have ever known? The alumnæ of ’08
-     turned out 60% strong. Are we boys going to be beaten by a bunch of
-     skirts? Come on, fellows, let’s work up some real genuine
-     enthusiasm and all boost together for the snappiest dinner yet!
-     Elegant eats, short ginger-talks, and memories shared together of
-     the brightest, gladdest days of life.
-
-The dinner was held in a private room at the Union Club. The club was a
-dingy building, three pretentious old dwellings knocked together, and
-the entrance-hall resembled a potato cellar, yet the Babbitt who was
-free of the magnificence of the Athletic Club entered with
-embarrassment. He nodded to the doorman, an ancient proud negro with
-brass buttons and a blue tail-coat, and paraded through the hall, trying
-to look like a member.
-
-Sixty men had come to the dinner. They made islands and eddies in the
-hall; they packed the elevator and the corners of the private
-dining-room. They tried to be intimate and enthusiastic. They appeared
-to one another exactly as they had in college--as raw youngsters whose
-present mustaches, baldnesses, paunches, and wrinkles were but jovial
-disguises put on for the evening. “You haven’t changed a particle!” they
-marveled. The men whom they could not recall they addressed, “Well,
-well, great to see you again, old man. What are you-- Still doing the
-same thing?”
-
-Some one was always starting a cheer or a college song, and it was
-always thinning into silence. Despite their resolution to be democratic
-they divided into two sets: the men with dress-clothes and the men
-without. Babbitt (extremely in dress-clothes) went from one group to the
-other. Though he was, almost frankly, out for social conquest, he sought
-Paul Riesling first. He found him alone, neat and silent.
-
-Paul sighed, “I’m no good at this handshaking and ‘well, look who’s
-here’ bunk.”
-
-“Rats now, Paulibus, loosen up and be a mixer! Finest bunch of boys on
-earth! Say, you seem kind of glum. What’s matter?”
-
-“Oh, the usual. Run-in with Zilla.”
-
-“Come on! Let’s wade in and forget our troubles.”
-
-He kept Paul beside him, but worked toward the spot where Charles
-McKelvey stood warming his admirers like a furnace.
-
-McKelvey had been the hero of the Class of ’96; not only football
-captain and hammer-thrower but debater, and passable in what the State
-University considered scholarship. He had gone on, had captured the
-construction-company once owned by the Dodsworths, best-known pioneer
-family of Zenith. He built state capitols, skyscrapers, railway
-terminals. He was a heavy-shouldered, big-chested man, but not sluggish.
-There was a quiet humor in his eyes, a syrup-smooth quickness in his
-speech, which intimidated politicians and warned reporters; and in his
-presence the most intelligent scientist or the most sensitive artist
-felt thin-blooded, unworldly, and a little shabby. He was, particularly
-when he was influencing legislatures or hiring labor-spies, very easy
-and lovable and gorgeous. He was baronial; he was a peer in the rapidly
-crystallizing American aristocracy, inferior only to the haughty Old
-Families. (In Zenith, an Old Family is one which came to town before
-1840.) His power was the greater because he was not hindered by
-scruples, by either the vice or the virtue of the older Puritan
-tradition.
-
-McKelvey was being placidly merry now with the great, the manufacturers
-and bankers, the land-owners and lawyers and surgeons who had chauffeurs
-and went to Europe. Babbitt squeezed among them. He liked McKelvey’s
-smile as much as the social advancement to be had from his favor. If in
-Paul’s company he felt ponderous and protective, with McKelvey he felt
-slight and adoring.
-
-He heard McKelvey say to Max Kruger, the banker, “Yes, we’ll put up Sir
-Gerald Doak.” Babbitt’s democratic love for titles became a rich relish.
-“You know, he’s one of the biggest iron-men in England, Max. Horribly
-well-off.... Why, hello, old Georgie! Say, Max, George Babbitt is
-getting fatter than I am!”
-
-The chairman shouted, “Take your seats, fellows!”
-
-“Shall we make a move, Charley?” Babbitt said casually to McKelvey.
-
-“Right. Hello, Paul! How’s the old fiddler? Planning to sit anywhere
-special, George? Come on, let’s grab some seats. Come on, Max. Georgie,
-I read about your speeches in the campaign. Bully work!”
-
-After that, Babbitt would have followed him through fire. He was
-enormously busy during the dinner, now bumblingly cheering Paul, now
-approaching McKelvey with “Hear, you’re going to build some piers in
-Brooklyn,” now noting how enviously the failures of the class, sitting
-by themselves in a weedy group, looked up to him in his association with
-the nobility, now warming himself in the Society Talk of McKelvey and
-Max Kruger. They spoke of a “jungle dance” for which Mona Dodsworth had
-decorated her house with thousands of orchids. They spoke, with an
-excellent imitation of casualness, of a dinner in Washington at which
-McKelvey had met a Senator, a Balkan princess, and an English
-major-general. McKelvey called the princess “Jenny,” and let it be known
-that he had danced with her.
-
-Babbitt was thrilled, but not so weighted with awe as to be silent. If
-he was not invited by them to dinner, he was yet accustomed to talking
-with bank-presidents, congressmen, and clubwomen who entertained poets.
-He was bright and referential with McKelvey:
-
-“Say, Charley, juh remember in Junior year how we chartered a sea-going
-hack and chased down to Riverdale, to the big show Madame Brown used to
-put on? Remember how you beat up that hick constabule that tried to run
-us in, and we pinched the pants-pressing sign and took and hung it on
-Prof. Morrison’s door? Oh, gosh, those were the days!”
-
-Those, McKelvey agreed, were the days.
-
-Babbitt had reached “It isn’t the books you study in college but the
-friendships you make that counts” when the men at head of the table
-broke into song. He attacked McKelvey:
-
-“It’s a shame, uh, shame to drift apart because our, uh, business
-activities lie in different fields. I’ve enjoyed talking over the good
-old days. You and Mrs. McKelvey must come to dinner some night.”
-
-Vaguely, “Yes, indeed--”
-
-“Like to talk to you about the growth of real estate out beyond your
-Grantsville warehouse. I might be able to tip you off to a thing or two,
-possibly.”
-
-“Splendid! We must have dinner together, Georgie. Just let me know. And
-it will be a great pleasure to have your wife and you at the house,”
-said McKelvey, much less vaguely.
-
-Then the chairman’s voice, that prodigious voice which once had roused
-them to cheer defiance at rooters from Ohio or Michigan or Indiana,
-whooped, “Come on, you wombats! All together in the long yell!” Babbitt
-felt that life would never be sweeter than now, when he joined with Paul
-Riesling and the newly recovered hero, McKelvey, in:
-
-    Baaaaaattle-ax
-    Get an ax,
-    Bal-ax,
-    Get-nax,
-    Who, who? The U.!
-    Hooroo!
-
-
-III
-
-The Babbitts invited the McKelveys to dinner, in early December, and the
-McKelveys not only accepted but, after changing the date once or twice,
-actually came.
-
-The Babbitts somewhat thoroughly discussed the details of the dinner,
-from the purchase of a bottle of champagne to the number of salted
-almonds to be placed before each person. Especially did they mention the
-matter of the other guests. To the last Babbitt held out for giving Paul
-Riesling the benefit of being with the McKelveys. “Good old Charley
-would like Paul and Verg Gunch better than some highfalutin’ Willy boy,”
-he insisted, but Mrs. Babbitt interrupted his observations with,
-“Yes--perhaps-- I think I’ll try to get some Lynnhaven oysters,” and when
-she was quite ready she invited Dr. J. T. Angus, the oculist, and a
-dismally respectable lawyer named Maxwell, with their glittering wives.
-
-Neither Angus nor Maxwell belonged to the Elks or to the Athletic Club;
-neither of them had ever called Babbitt “brother” or asked his opinions
-on carburetors. The only “human people” whom she invited, Babbitt raged,
-were the Littlefields; and Howard Littlefield at times became so
-statistical that Babbitt longed for the refreshment of Gunch’s, “Well,
-old lemon-pie-face, what’s the good word?”
-
-Immediately after lunch Mrs. Babbitt began to set the table for the
-seven-thirty dinner to the McKelveys, and Babbitt was, by order, home at
-four. But they didn’t find anything for him to do, and three times Mrs.
-Babbitt scolded, “Do please try to keep out of the way!” He stood in the
-door of the garage, his lips drooping, and wished that Littlefield or
-Sam Doppelbrau or somebody would come along and talk to him. He saw Ted
-sneaking about the corner of the house.
-
-“What’s the matter, old man?” said Babbitt.
-
-“Is that you, thin, owld one? Gee, Ma certainly is on the warpath! I
-told her Rone and I would jus’ soon not be let in on the fiesta
-to-night, and she bit me. She says I got to take a bath, too. But, say,
-the Babbitt men will be some lookers to-night! Little Theodore in a
-dress-suit!”
-
-“The Babbitt men!” Babbitt liked the sound of it. He put his arm about
-the boy’s shoulder. He wished that Paul Riesling had a daughter, so that
-Ted might marry her. “Yes, your mother is kind of rouncing round, all
-right,” he said, and they laughed together, and sighed together, and
-dutifully went in to dress.
-
-The McKelveys were less than fifteen minutes late.
-
-Babbitt hoped that the Doppelbraus would see the McKelveys’ limousine,
-and their uniformed chauffeur, waiting in front.
-
-The dinner was well cooked and incredibly plentiful, and Mrs. Babbitt
-had brought out her grandmother’s silver candlesticks. Babbitt worked
-hard. He was good. He told none of the jokes he wanted to tell. He
-listened to the others. He started Maxwell off with a resounding, “Let’s
-hear about your trip to the Yellowstone.” He was laudatory, extremely
-laudatory. He found opportunities to remark that Dr. Angus was a
-benefactor to humanity, Maxwell and Howard Littlefield profound
-scholars, Charles McKelvey an inspiration to ambitious youth, and Mrs.
-McKelvey an adornment to the social circles of Zenith, Washington, New
-York, Paris, and numbers of other places.
-
-But he could not stir them. It was a dinner without a soul. For no
-reason that was clear to Babbitt, heaviness was over them and they spoke
-laboriously and unwillingly.
-
-He concentrated on Lucile McKelvey, carefully not looking at her
-blanched lovely shoulder and the tawny silken band which supported her
-frock.
-
-“I suppose you’ll be going to Europe pretty soon again, won’t you?” he
-invited.
-
-“I’d like awfully to run over to Rome for a few weeks.”
-
-“I suppose you see a lot of pictures and music and curios and everything
-there.”
-
-“No, what I really go for is: there’s a little _trattoria_ on the Via
-della Scrofa where you get the best _fettuccine_ in the world.”
-
-“Oh, I-- Yes. That must be nice to try that. Yes.”
-
-At a quarter to ten McKelvey discovered with profound regret that his
-wife had a headache. He said blithely, as Babbitt helped him with his
-coat, “We must lunch together some time and talk over the old days.”
-
-When the others had labored out, at half-past ten, Babbitt turned to his
-wife, pleading, “Charley said he had a corking time and we must
-lunch--said they wanted to have us up to the house for dinner before
-long.”
-
-She achieved, “Oh, it’s just been one of those quiet evenings that are
-often so much more enjoyable than noisy parties where everybody talks at
-once and doesn’t really settle down to--nice quiet enjoyment.”
-
-But from his cot on the sleeping-porch he heard her weeping, slowly,
-without hope.
-
-
-IV
-
-For a month they watched the social columns, and waited for a return
-dinner-invitation.
-
-As the hosts of Sir Gerald Doak, the McKelveys were headlined all the
-week after the Babbitts’ dinner. Zenith ardently received Sir Gerald
-(who had come to America to buy coal). The newspapers interviewed him on
-prohibition, Ireland, unemployment, naval aviation, the rate of
-exchange, tea-drinking _versus_ whisky-drinking, the psychology of
-American women, and daily life as lived by English county families. Sir
-Gerald seemed to have heard of all those topics. The McKelveys gave him
-a Singhalese dinner, and Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, society editor of the
-_Advocate-Times_, rose to her highest larknote. Babbitt read aloud at
-breakfast-table:
-
-     ’Twixt the original and Oriental decorations, the strange and
-     delicious food, and the personalities both of the distinguished
-     guests, the charming hostess and the noted host, never has Zenith
-     seen a more recherche affair than the Ceylon dinner-dance given
-     last evening by Mr. and Mrs. Charles McKelvey to Sir Gerald Doak.
-     Methought as we--fortunate one!--were privileged to view that fairy
-     and foreign scene, nothing at Monte Carlo or the choicest
-     ambassadorial sets of foreign capitals could be more lovely. It is
-     not for nothing that Zenith is in matters social rapidly becoming
-     known as the choosiest inland city in the country.
-
-     Though he is too modest to admit it, Lord Doak gives a cachet to
-     our smart quartier such as it has not received since the
-     ever-memorable visit of the Earl of Sittingbourne. Not only is he
-     of the British peerage, but he is also, on dit, a leader of the
-     British metal industries. As he comes from Nottingham, a favorite
-     haunt of Robin Hood, though now, we are informed by Lord Doak, a
-     live modern city of 275,573 inhabitants, and important lace as well
-     as other industries, we like to think that perhaps through his
-     veins runs some of the blood, both virile red and bonny blue, of
-     that earlier lord o’ the good greenwood, the roguish Robin.
-
-     The lovely Mrs. McKelvey never was more fascinating than last
-     evening in her black net gown relieved by dainty bands of silver
-     and at her exquisite waist a glowing cluster of Aaron Ward roses.
-
-Babbitt said bravely, “I hope they don’t invite us to meet this Lord
-Doak guy. Darn sight rather just have a nice quiet little dinner with
-Charley and the Missus.”
-
-At the Zenith Athletic Club they discussed it amply. “I s’pose we’ll
-have to call McKelvey ‘Lord Chaz’ from now on,” said Sidney Finkelstein.
-
-“It beats all get-out,” meditated that man of data, Howard Littlefield,
-“how hard it is for some people to get things straight. Here they call
-this fellow ‘Lord Doak’ when it ought to be ‘Sir Gerald.’”
-
-Babbitt marvelled, “Is that a fact! Well, well! ‘Sir Gerald,’ eh? That’s
-what you call um, eh? Well, sir, I’m glad to know that.”
-
-Later he informed his salesmen, “It’s funnier ’n a goat the way some
-folks that, just because they happen to lay up a big wad, go
-entertaining famous foreigners, don’t have any more idea ’n a rabbit how
-to address ’em so’s to make ’em feel at home!”
-
-That evening, as he was driving home, he passed McKelvey’s limousine and
-saw Sir Gerald, a large, ruddy, pop-eyed, Teutonic Englishman whose
-dribble of yellow mustache gave him an aspect sad and doubtful. Babbitt
-drove on slowly, oppressed by futility. He had a sudden, unexplained,
-and horrible conviction that the McKelveys were laughing at him.
-
-He betrayed his depression by the violence with which he informed his
-wife, “Folks that really tend to business haven’t got the time to waste
-on a bunch like the McKelveys. This society stuff is like any other
-hobby; if you devote yourself to it, you get on. But I like to have a
-chance to visit with you and the children instead of all this idiotic
-chasing round.”
-
-They did not speak of the McKelveys again.
-
-
-V
-
-It was a shame, at this worried time, to have to think about the
-Overbrooks.
-
-Ed Overbrook was a classmate of Babbitt who had been a failure. He had a
-large family and a feeble insurance business out in the suburb of
-Dorchester. He was gray and thin and unimportant. He had always been
-gray and thin and unimportant. He was the person whom, in any group, you
-forgot to introduce, then introduced with extra enthusiasm. He had
-admired Babbitt’s good-fellowship in college, had admired ever since his
-power in real estate, his beautiful house and wonderful clothes. It
-pleased Babbitt, though it bothered him with a sense of responsibility.
-At the class-dinner he had seen poor Overbrook, in a shiny blue serge
-business-suit, being diffident in a corner with three other failures. He
-had gone over and been cordial: “Why, hello, young Ed! I hear you’re
-writing all the insurance in Dorchester now. Bully work!”
-
-They recalled the good old days when Overbrook used to write poetry.
-Overbrook embarrassed him by blurting, “Say, Georgie, I hate to think of
-how we been drifting apart. I wish you and Mrs. Babbitt would come to
-dinner some night.”
-
-Babbitt boomed, “Fine! Sure! Just let me know. And the wife and I want
-to have you at the house.” He forgot it, but unfortunately Ed Overbrook
-did not. Repeatedly he telephoned to Babbitt, inviting him to dinner.
-“Might as well go and get it over,” Babbitt groaned to his wife. “But
-don’t it simply amaze you the way the poor fish doesn’t know the first
-thing about social etiquette? Think of him ’phoning me, instead of his
-wife sitting down and writing us a regular bid! Well, I guess we’re
-stuck for it. That’s the trouble with all this class-brother
-hooptedoodle.”
-
-He accepted Overbrook’s next plaintive invitation, for an evening two
-weeks off. A dinner two weeks off, even a family dinner, never seems so
-appalling, till the two weeks have astoundingly disappeared and one
-comes dismayed to the ambushed hour. They had to change the date,
-because of their own dinner to the McKelveys, but at last they gloomily
-drove out to the Overbrooks’ house in Dorchester.
-
-It was miserable from the beginning. The Overbrooks had dinner at
-six-thirty, while the Babbitts never dined before seven. Babbitt
-permitted himself to be ten minutes late. “Let’s make it as short as
-possible. I think we’ll duck out quick. I’ll say I have to be at the
-office extra early to-morrow,” he planned.
-
-The Overbrook house was depressing. It was the second story of a wooden
-two-family dwelling; a place of baby-carriages, old hats hung in the
-hall, cabbage-smell, and a Family Bible on the parlor table. Ed
-Overbrook and his wife were as awkward and threadbare as usual, and the
-other guests were two dreadful families whose names Babbitt never caught
-and never desired to catch. But he was touched, and disconcerted, by the
-tactless way in which Overbrook praised him: “We’re mighty proud to have
-old George here to-night! Of course you’ve all read about his speeches
-and oratory in the papers--and the boy’s good-looking, too, eh?--but
-what I always think of is back in college, and what a great old mixer
-he was, and one of the best swimmers in the class.”
-
-Babbitt tried to be jovial; he worked at it; but he could find nothing
-to interest him in Overbrook’s timorousness, the blankness of the other
-guests, or the drained stupidity of Mrs. Overbrook, with her spectacles,
-drab skin, and tight-drawn hair. He told his best Irish story, but it
-sank like soggy cake. Most bleary moment of all was when Mrs. Overbrook,
-peering out of her fog of nursing eight children and cooking and
-scrubbing, tried to be conversational.
-
-“I suppose you go to Chicago and New York right along, Mr. Babbitt,” she
-prodded.
-
-“Well, I get to Chicago fairly often.”
-
-“It must be awfully interesting. I suppose you take in all the
-theaters.”
-
-“Well, to tell the truth, Mrs. Overbrook, thing that hits me best is a
-great big beefsteak at a Dutch restaurant in the Loop!”
-
-They had nothing more to say. Babbitt was sorry, but there was no hope;
-the dinner was a failure. At ten, rousing out of the stupor of
-meaningless talk, he said as cheerily as he could, “’Fraid we got to be
-starting, Ed. I’ve got a fellow coming to see me early to-morrow.” As
-Overbrook helped him with his coat, Babbitt said, “Nice to rub up on the
-old days! We must have lunch together, P.D.Q.”
-
-Mrs. Babbitt sighed, on their drive home, “It was pretty terrible. But
-how Mr. Overbrook does admire you!”
-
-“Yep. Poor cuss! Seems to think I’m a little tin archangel, and the
-best-looking man in Zenith.”
-
-“Well, you’re certainly not that but-- Oh, Georgie, you don’t suppose we
-have to invite them to dinner at our house now, do we?”
-
-“Ouch! Gaw, I hope not!”
-
-“See here, now, George! You didn’t say anything about it to Mr.
-Overbrook, did you?”
-
-“No! Gee! No! Honest, I didn’t! Just made a bluff about having him to
-lunch some time.”
-
-“Well.... Oh, dear.... I don’t want to hurt their feelings. But I don’t
-see how I could stand another evening like this one. And suppose
-somebody like Dr. and Mrs. Angus came in when we had the Overbrooks
-there, and thought they were friends of ours!”
-
-For a week they worried, “We really ought to invite Ed and his wife,
-poor devils!” But as they never saw the Overbrooks, they forgot them,
-and after a month or two they said, “That really was the best way, just
-to let it slide. It wouldn’t be kind to _them_ to have them here. They’d
-feel so out of place and hard-up in our home.”
-
-They did not speak of the Overbrooks again.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-
-I
-
-The certainty that he was not going to be accepted by the McKelveys made
-Babbitt feel guilty and a little absurd. But he went more regularly to
-the Elks; at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon he was oratorical regarding
-the wickedness of strikes; and again he saw himself as a Prominent
-Citizen.
-
-His clubs and associations were food comfortable to his spirit.
-
-Of a decent man in Zenith it was required that he should belong to one,
-preferably two or three, of the innumerous “lodges” and
-prosperity-boosting lunch-clubs; to the Rotarians, the Kiwanis, or the
-Boosters; to the Oddfellows, Moose, Masons, Red Men, Woodmen, Owls,
-Eagles, Maccabees, Knights of Pythias, Knights of Columbus, and other
-secret orders characterized by a high degree of heartiness, sound
-morals, and reverence for the Constitution. There were four reasons for
-joining these orders: It was the thing to do. It was good for business,
-since lodge-brothers frequently became customers. It gave to Americans
-unable to become Geheimräte or Commendatori such unctuous honorifics as
-High Worthy Recording Scribe and Grand Hoogow to add to the commonplace
-distinctions of Colonel, Judge, and Professor. And it permitted the
-swaddled American husband to stay away from home for one evening a week.
-The lodge was his piazza, his pavement café. He could shoot pool and
-talk man-talk and be obscene and valiant.
-
-Babbitt was what he called a “joiner” for all these reasons.
-
-Behind the gold and scarlet banner of his public achievements was the
-dun background of office-routine: leases, sales-contracts, lists of
-properties to rent. The evenings of oratory and committees and lodges
-stimulated him like brandy, but every morning he was sandy-tongued. Week
-by week he accumulated nervousness. He was in open disagreement with his
-outside salesman, Stanley Graff; and once, though her charms had always
-kept him nickeringly polite to her, he snarled at Miss McGoun for
-changing his letters.
-
-But in the presence of Paul Riesling he relaxed. At least once a week
-they fled from maturity. On Saturday they played golf, jeering, “As a
-golfer, you’re a fine tennis-player,” or they motored all Sunday
-afternoon, stopping at village lunchrooms to sit on high stools at a
-counter and drink coffee from thick cups. Sometimes Paul came over in
-the evening with his violin, and even Zilla was silent as the lonely man
-who had lost his way and forever crept down unfamiliar roads spun out
-his dark soul in music.
-
-
-II
-
-Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for
-the Sunday School.
-
-His church, the Chatham Road Presbyterian, was one of the largest and
-richest, one of the most oaken and velvety, in Zenith. The pastor was
-the Reverend John Jennison Drew, M.A., D.D., LL.D. (The M.A. and the
-D.D. were from Elbert University, Nebraska, the LL.D. from Waterbury
-College, Oklahoma.) He was eloquent, efficient, and versatile. He
-presided at meetings for the denunciation of unions or the elevation of
-domestic service, and confided to the audiences that as a poor boy he
-had carried newspapers. For the Saturday edition of the _Evening
-Advocate_ he wrote editorials on “The Manly Man’s Religion” and “The
-Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity,” which were printed in bold
-type surrounded by a wiggly border. He often said that he was “proud to
-be known as primarily a business man” and that he certainly was not
-going to “permit the old Satan to monopolize all the pep and punch.” He
-was a thin, rustic-faced young man with gold spectacles and a bang of
-dull brown hair, but when he hurled himself into oratory he glowed with
-power. He admitted that he was too much the scholar and poet to imitate
-the evangelist, Mike Monday, yet he had once awakened his fold to new
-life, and to larger collections, by the challenge, “My brethren, the
-real cheap skate is the man who won’t lend to the Lord!”
-
-He had made his church a true community center. It contained everything
-but a bar. It had a nursery, a Thursday evening supper with a short
-bright missionary lecture afterward, a gymnasium, a fortnightly
-motion-picture show, a library of technical books for young
-workmen--though, unfortunately, no young workman ever entered the church
-except to wash the windows or repair the furnace--and a sewing-circle
-which made short little pants for the children of the poor while Mrs.
-Drew read aloud from earnest novels.
-
-Though Dr. Drew’s theology was Presbyterian, his church-building was
-gracefully Episcopalian. As he said, it had the “most perdurable
-features of those noble ecclesiastical monuments of grand Old England
-which stand as symbols of the eternity of faith, religious and civil.”
-It was built of cheery iron-spot brick in an improved Gothic style, and
-the main auditorium had indirect lighting from electric globes in lavish
-alabaster bowls.
-
-On a December morning when the Babbitts went to church, Dr. John
-Jennison Drew was unusually eloquent. The crowd was immense. Ten brisk
-young ushers, in morning coats with white roses, were bringing folding
-chairs up from the basement. There was an impressive musical program,
-conducted by Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A., who
-also sang the offertory. Babbitt cared less for this, because some
-misguided person had taught young Mr. Smeeth to smile, smile, smile
-while he was singing, but with all the appreciation of a fellow-orator
-he admired Dr. Drew’s sermon. It had the intellectual quality which
-distinguished the Chatham Road congregation from the grubby chapels on
-Smith Street.
-
-“At this abundant harvest-time of all the year,” Dr. Drew chanted,
-“when, though stormy the sky and laborious the path to the drudging
-wayfarer, yet the hovering and bodiless spirit swoops back o’er all the
-labors and desires of the past twelve months, oh, then it seems to me
-there sounds behind all our apparent failures the golden chorus of
-greeting from those passed happily on; and lo! on the dim horizon we see
-behind dolorous clouds the mighty mass of mountains--mountains of
-melody, mountains of mirth, mountains of might!”
-
-“I certainly do like a sermon with culture and thought in it,” meditated
-Babbitt.
-
-At the end of the service he was delighted when the pastor, actively
-shaking hands at the door, twittered, “Oh, Brother Babbitt, can you wait
-a jiffy? Want your advice.”
-
-“Sure, doctor! You bet!”
-
-“Drop into my office. I think you’ll like the cigars there.” Babbitt did
-like the cigars. He also liked the office, which was distinguished from
-other offices only by the spirited change of the familiar wall-placard
-to “This is the Lord’s Busy Day.” Chum Frink came in, then William W.
-Eathorne.
-
-Mr. Eathorne was the seventy-year-old president of the First State Bank
-of Zenith. He still wore the delicate patches of side-whiskers which had
-been the uniform of bankers in 1870. If Babbitt was envious of the Smart
-Set of the McKelveys, before William Washington Eathorne he was
-reverent. Mr. Eathorne had nothing to do with the Smart Set. He was
-above it. He was the great-grandson of one of the five men who founded
-Zenith, in 1792, and he was of the third generation of bankers. He could
-examine credits, make loans, promote or injure a man’s business. In his
-presence Babbitt breathed quickly and felt young.
-
-The Reverend Dr. Drew bounced into the room and flowered into speech:
-
-“I’ve asked you gentlemen to stay so I can put a proposition before you.
-The Sunday School needs bucking up. It’s the fourth largest in Zenith,
-but there’s no reason why we should take anybody’s dust. We ought to be
-first. I want to request you, if you will, to form a committee of advice
-and publicity for the Sunday School; look it over and make any
-suggestions for its betterment, and then, perhaps, see that the press
-gives us some attention--give the public some really helpful and
-constructive news instead of all these murders and divorces.”
-
-“Excellent,” said the banker.
-
-Babbitt and Frink were enchanted to join him.
-
-
-III
-
-If you had asked Babbitt what his religion was, he would have answered
-in sonorous Boosters’-Club rhetoric, “My religion is to serve my fellow
-men, to honor my brother as myself, and to do my bit to make life
-happier for one and all.” If you had pressed him for more detail, he
-would have announced, “I’m a member of the Presbyterian Church, and
-naturally, I accept its doctrines.” If you had been so brutal as to go
-on, he would have protested, “There’s no use discussing and arguing
-about religion; it just stirs up bad feeling.”
-
-Actually, the content of his theology was that there was a supreme being
-who had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that if one
-was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven (Babbitt
-unconsciously pictured it as rather like an excellent hotel with a
-private garden), but if one was a Bad Man, that is, if he murdered or
-committed burglary or used cocaine or had mistresses or sold
-non-existent real estate, he would be punished. Babbitt was uncertain,
-however, about what he called “this business of Hell.” He explained to
-Ted, “Of course I’m pretty liberal; I don’t exactly believe in a
-fire-and-brimstone Hell. Stands to reason, though, that a fellow can’t
-get away with all sorts of Vice and not get nicked for it, see how I
-mean?”
-
-Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical
-religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one’s business,
-to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements
-from being still worse; and that the pastor’s sermons, however dull they
-might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which “did
-a fellow good--kept him in touch with Higher Things.”
-
-His first investigations for the Sunday School Advisory Committee did
-not inspire him.
-
-He liked the Busy Folks’ Bible Class, composed of mature men and women
-and addressed by the old-school physician, Dr. T. Atkins Jordan, in a
-sparkling style comparable to that of the more refined humorous
-after-dinner speakers, but when he went down to the junior classes he
-was disconcerted. He heard Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the
-Y.M.C.A. and leader of the church-choir, a pale but strenuous young man
-with curly hair and a smile, teaching a class of sixteen-year-old boys.
-Smeeth lovingly admonished them, “Now, fellows, I’m going to have a
-Heart to Heart Talk Evening at my house next Thursday. We’ll get off by
-ourselves and be frank about our Secret Worries. You can just tell old
-Sheldy anything, like all the fellows do at the Y. I’m going to explain
-frankly about the horrible practises a kiddy falls into unless he’s
-guided by a Big Brother, and about the perils and glory of Sex.” Old
-Sheldy beamed damply; the boys looked ashamed; and Babbitt didn’t know
-which way to turn his embarrassed eyes.
-
-Less annoying but also much duller were the minor classes which were
-being instructed in philosophy and Oriental ethnology by earnest
-spinsters. Most of them met in the highly varnished Sunday School room,
-but there was an overflow to the basement, which was decorated with
-varicose water-pipes and lighted by small windows high up in the oozing
-wall. What Babbitt saw, however, was the First Congregational Church of
-Catawba. He was back in the Sunday School of his boyhood. He smelled
-again that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors; he
-recalled the case of drab Sunday School books: “Hetty, a Humble Heroine”
-and “Josephus, a Lad of Palestine;” he thumbed once more the
-high-colored text-cards which no boy wanted but no boy liked to throw
-away, because they were somehow sacred; he was tortured by the stumbling
-rote of thirty-five years ago, as in the vast Zenith church he listened
-to:
-
-“Now, Edgar, you read the next verse. What does it mean when it says
-it’s easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye? What does this
-teach us? Clarence! Please don’t wiggle so! If you had studied your
-lesson you wouldn’t be so fidgety. Now, Earl, what is the lesson Jesus
-was trying to teach his disciples? The one thing I want you to
-especially remember, boys, is the words, ‘With God all things are
-possible.’ Just think of that always--Clarence, _please_ pay
-attention--just say ‘With God all things are possible’ whenever you feel
-discouraged, and, Alec, will you read the next verse; if you’d pay
-attention you wouldn’t lose your place!”
-
-Drone--drone--drone--gigantic bees that boomed in a cavern of
-drowsiness--
-
-Babbitt started from his open-eyed nap, thanked the teacher for “the
-privilege of listening to her splendid teaching,” and staggered on to
-the next circle.
-
-After two weeks of this he had no suggestions whatever for the Reverend
-Dr. Drew.
-
-Then he discovered a world of Sunday School journals, an enormous and
-busy domain of weeklies and monthlies which were as technical, as
-practical and forward-looking, as the real-estate columns or the
-shoe-trade magazines. He bought half a dozen of them at a religious
-book-shop and till after midnight he read them and admired.
-
-He found many lucrative tips on “Focusing Appeals,” “Scouting for New
-Members,” and “Getting Prospects to Sign up with the Sunday School.” He
-particularly liked the word “prospects,” and he was moved by the rubric:
-
-“The moral springs of the community’s life lie deep in its Sunday
-Schools--its schools of religious instruction and inspiration. Neglect
-now means loss of spiritual vigor and moral power in years to come....
-Facts like the above, followed by a straight-arm appeal, will reach
-folks who can never be laughed or jollied into doing their part.”
-
-Babbitt admitted, “That’s so. I used to skin out of the ole Sunday
-School at Catawba every chance I got, but same time, I wouldn’t be where
-I am to-day, maybe, if it hadn’t been for its training in--in moral
-power. And all about the Bible. Great literature. Have to read some of
-it again, one of these days.”
-
-How scientifically the Sunday School could be organized he learned from
-an article in the _Westminster Adult Bible Class_:
-
-“The second vice-president looks after the fellowship of the class. She
-chooses a group to help her. These become ushers. Every one who comes
-gets a glad hand. No one goes away a stranger. One member of the group
-stands on the doorstep and invites passers-by to come in.”
-
-Perhaps most of all Babbitt appreciated the remarks by William H.
-Ridgway in the _Sunday School Times_:
-
-“If you have a Sunday School class without any pep and get-up-and-go in
-it, that is, without interest, that is uncertain in attendance, that
-acts like a fellow with the spring fever, let old Dr. Ridgway write you
-a prescription. Rx. Invite the Bunch for Supper.”
-
-The Sunday School journals were as well rounded as they were practical.
-They neglected none of the arts. As to music the _Sunday School Times_
-advertised that C. Harold Lowden, “known to thousands through his sacred
-compositions,” had written a new masterpiece, “entitled ‘Yearning for
-You.’ The poem, by Harry D. Kerr, is one of the daintiest you could
-imagine and the music is indescribably beautiful. Critics are agreed
-that it will sweep the country. May be made into a charming sacred song
-by substituting the hymn words, ‘I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.’”
-
-Even manual training was adequately considered. Babbitt noted an
-ingenious way of illustrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
-
-“Model for Pupils to Make. Tomb with Rolling Door.--Use a square covered
-box turned upside down. Pull the cover forward a little to form a groove
-at the bottom. Cut a square door, also cut a circle of cardboard to more
-than cover the door. Cover the circular door and the tomb thickly with
-stiff mixture of sand, flour and water and let it dry. It was the heavy
-circular stone over the door the women found ‘rolled away’ on Easter
-morning. This is the story we are to ‘Go--tell.’”
-
-In their advertisements the Sunday School journals were thoroughly
-efficient. Babbitt was interested in a preparation which “takes the
-place of exercise for sedentary men by building up depleted nerve
-tissue, nourishing the brain and the digestive system.” He was edified
-to learn that the selling of Bibles was a hustling and strictly
-competitive industry, and as an expert on hygiene he was pleased by the
-Sanitary Communion Outfit Company’s announcement of “an improved and
-satisfactory outfit throughout, including highly polished beautiful
-mahogany tray. This tray eliminates all noise, is lighter and more
-easily handled than others and is more in keeping with the furniture of
-the church than a tray of any other material.”
-
-
-IV
-
-He dropped the pile of Sunday School journals.
-
-He pondered, “Now, there’s a real he-world. Corking!
-
-“Ashamed I haven’t sat in more. Fellow that’s an influence in the
-community--shame if he doesn’t take part in a real virile hustling
-religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated, you might say.
-
-“But with all reverence.
-
-“Some folks might claim these Sunday School fans are undignified and
-unspiritual and so on. Sure! Always some skunk to spring things like
-that! Knocking and sneering and tearing-down--so much easier than
-building up. But me, I certainly hand it to these magazines. They’ve
-brought ole George F. Babbitt into camp, and that’s the answer to the
-critics!
-
-“The more manly and practical a fellow is, the more he ought to lead the
-enterprising Christian life. Me for it! Cut out this carelessness and
-boozing and-- Rone! Where the devil you been? This is a fine time o’
-night to be coming in!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-
-I
-
-There are but three or four old houses in Floral Heights, and in Floral
-Heights an old house is one which was built before 1880. The largest of
-these is the residence of William Washington Eathorne, president of the
-First State Bank.
-
-The Eathorne Mansion preserves the memory of the “nice parts” of Zenith
-as they appeared from 1860 to 1900. It is a red brick immensity with
-gray sandstone lintels and a roof of slate in courses of red, green, and
-dyspeptic yellow. There are two anemic towers, one roofed with copper,
-the other crowned with castiron ferns. The porch is like an open tomb;
-it is supported by squat granite pillars above which hang frozen
-cascades of brick. At one side of the house is a huge stained-glass
-window in the shape of a keyhole.
-
-But the house has an effect not at all humorous. It embodies the heavy
-dignity of those Victorian financiers who ruled the generation between
-the pioneers and the brisk “sales-engineers” and created a somber
-oligarchy by gaining control of banks, mills, land, railroads, mines.
-Out of the dozen contradictory Zeniths which together make up the true
-and complete Zenith, none is so powerful and enduring yet none so
-unfamiliar to the citizens as the small, still, dry, polite, cruel
-Zenith of the William Eathornes; and for that tiny hierarchy the other
-Zeniths unwittingly labor and insignificantly die.
-
-Most of the castles of the testy Victorian tetrarchs are gone now or
-decayed into boarding-houses, but the Eathorne Mansion remains virtuous
-and aloof, reminiscent of London, Back Bay, Rittenhouse Square. Its
-marble steps are scrubbed daily, the brass plate is reverently polished,
-and the lace curtains are as prim and superior as William Washington
-Eathorne himself.
-
-With a certain awe Babbitt and Chum Frink called on Eathorne for a
-meeting of the Sunday School Advisory Committee; with uneasy stillness
-they followed a uniformed maid through catacombs of reception-rooms to
-the library. It was as unmistakably the library of a solid old banker as
-Eathorne’s side-whiskers were the side-whiskers of a solid old banker.
-The books were most of them Standard Sets, with the correct and
-traditional touch of dim blue, dim gold, and glossy calf-skin. The fire
-was exactly correct and traditional; a small, quiet, steady fire,
-reflected by polished fire-irons. The oak desk was dark and old and
-altogether perfect; the chairs were gently supercilious.
-
-Eathorne’s inquiries as to the healths of Mrs. Babbitt, Miss Babbitt,
-and the Other Children were softly paternal, but Babbitt had nothing
-with which to answer him. It was indecent to think of using the “How’s
-tricks, ole socks?” which gratified Vergil Gunch and Frink and Howard
-Littlefield--men who till now had seemed successful and urbane. Babbitt
-and Frink sat politely, and politely did Eathorne observe, opening his
-thin lips just wide enough to dismiss the words, “Gentlemen, before we
-begin our conference--you may have felt the cold in coming here--so good
-of you to save an old man the journey--shall we perhaps have a whisky
-toddy?”
-
-So well trained was Babbitt in all the conversation that befits a Good
-Fellow that he almost disgraced himself with “Rather than make trouble,
-and always providin’ there ain’t any enforcement officers hiding in the
-waste-basket--” The words died choking in his throat. He bowed in
-flustered obedience. So did Chum Frink.
-
-Eathorne rang for the maid.
-
-The modern and luxurious Babbitt had never seen any one ring for a
-servant in a private house, except during meals. Himself, in hotels, had
-rung for bell-boys, but in the house you didn’t hurt Matilda’s
-feelings; you went out in the hall and shouted for her. Nor had he,
-since prohibition, known any one to be casual about drinking. It was
-extraordinary merely to sip his toddy and not cry, “Oh, maaaaan, this
-hits me right where I live!” And always, with the ecstasy of youth
-meeting greatness, he marveled, “That little fuzzy-face there, why, he
-could make me or break me! If he told my banker to call my loans--!
-Gosh! That quarter-sized squirt! And looking like he hadn’t got a single
-bit of hustle to him! I wonder-- Do we Boosters throw too many fits about
-pep?”
-
-From this thought he shuddered away, and listened devoutly to Eathorne’s
-ideas on the advancement of the Sunday School, which were very clear and
-very bad.
-
-Diffidently Babbitt outlined his own suggestions:
-
-“I think if you analyze the needs of the school, in fact, going right at
-it as if it was a merchandizing problem, of course the one basic and
-fundamental need is growth. I presume we’re all agreed we won’t be
-satisfied till we build up the biggest darn Sunday School in the whole
-state, so the Chatham Road Presbyterian won’t have to take anything off
-anybody. Now about jazzing up the campaign for prospects: they’ve
-already used contesting teams, and given prizes to the kids that bring
-in the most members. And they made a mistake there: the prizes were a
-lot of folderols and doodads like poetry books and illustrated
-Testaments, instead of something a real live kid would want to work for,
-like real cash or a speedometer for his motor cycle. Course I suppose
-it’s all fine and dandy to illustrate the lessons with these decorated
-book-marks and blackboard drawings and so on, but when it comes down to
-real he-hustling, getting out and drumming up customers--or members, I
-mean, why, you got to make it worth a fellow’s while.
-
-“Now, I want to propose two stunts: First, divide the Sunday School into
-four armies, depending on age. Everybody gets a military rank in his own
-army according to how many members he brings in, and the duffers that
-lie down on us and don’t bring in any, they remain privates. The pastor
-and superintendent rank as generals. And everybody has got to give
-salutes and all the rest of that junk, just like a regular army, to make
-’em feel it’s worth while to get rank.
-
-“Then, second: Course the school has its advertising committee, but,
-Lord, nobody ever really works good--nobody works well just for the love
-of it. The thing to do is to be practical and up-to-date, and hire a
-real paid press-agent for the Sunday School--some newspaper fellow who
-can give part of his time.”
-
-“Sure, you bet!” said Chum Frink.
-
-“Think of the nice juicy bits he could get in!” Babbitt crowed. “Not
-only the big, salient, vital facts, about how fast the Sunday
-School--and the collection--is growing, but a lot of humorous gossip and
-kidding: about how some blowhard fell down on his pledge to get new
-members, or the good time the Sacred Trinity class of girls had at their
-wieniewurst party. And on the side, if he had time, the press-agent
-might even boost the lessons themselves--do a little advertising for all
-the Sunday Schools in town, in fact. No use being hoggish toward the
-rest of ’em, providing we can keep the bulge on ’em in membership.
-Frinstance, he might get the papers to-- Course I haven’t got a literary
-training like Frink here, and I’m just guessing how the pieces ought to
-be written, but take frinstance, suppose the week’s lesson is about
-Jacob; well, the press-agent might get in something that would have a
-fine moral, and yet with a trick headline that’d get folks to read
-it--say like: _Jake Fools the Old Man; Makes Getaway with Girl and
-Bankroll_. See how I mean? That’d get their interest! Now, course, Mr.
-Eathorne, you’re conservative, and maybe you feel these stunts would be
-undignified, but honestly, I believe they’d bring home the bacon.”
-
-Eathorne folded his hands on his comfortable little belly and purred
-like an aged pussy:
-
-“May I say, first, that I have been very much pleased by your analysis
-of the situation, Mr. Babbitt. As you surmise, it’s necessary in My
-Position to be conservative, and perhaps endeavor to maintain a certain
-standard of dignity. Yet I think you’ll find me somewhat progressive. In
-our bank, for example, I hope I may say that we have as modern a method
-of publicity and advertising as any in the city. Yes, I fancy you’ll
-find us oldsters quite cognizant of the shifting spiritual values of the
-age. Yes, oh yes. And so, in fact, it pleases me to be able to say that
-though personally I might prefer the sterner Presbyterianism of an
-earlier era--”
-
-Babbitt finally gathered that Eathorne was willing.
-
-Chum Frink suggested as part-time press-agent one Kenneth Escott,
-reporter on the _Advocate-Times_.
-
-They parted on a high plane of amity and Christian helpfulness.
-
-Babbitt did not drive home, but toward the center of the city. He wished
-to be by himself and exult over the beauty of intimacy with William
-Washington Eathorne.
-
-
-II
-
-A snow-blanched evening of ringing pavements and eager lights.
-
-Great golden lights of trolley-cars sliding along the packed snow of the
-roadway. Demure lights of little houses. The belching glare of a distant
-foundry, wiping out the sharp-edged stars. Lights of neighborhood drug
-stores where friends gossiped, well pleased, after the day’s work.
-
-The green light of a police-station, and greener radiance on the snow;
-the drama of a patrol-wagon--gong beating like a terrified heart,
-headlights scorching the crystal-sparkling street, driver not a
-chauffeur but a policeman proud in uniform, another policeman perilously
-dangling on the step at the back, and a glimpse of the prisoner. A
-murderer, a burglar, a coiner cleverly trapped?
-
-An enormous graystone church with a rigid spire; dim light in the
-Parlors, and cheerful droning of choir-practise. The quivering green
-mercury-vapor light of a photo-engraver’s loft. Then the storming lights
-of down-town; parked cars with ruby tail-lights; white arched entrances
-to movie theaters, like frosty mouths of winter caves; electric
-signs--serpents and little dancing men of fire; pink-shaded globes and
-scarlet jazz music in a cheap up-stairs dance-hall; lights of Chinese
-restaurants, lanterns painted with cherry-blossoms and with pagodas,
-hung against lattices of lustrous gold and black. Small dirty lamps in
-small stinking lunchrooms. The smart shopping-district, with rich and
-quiet light on crystal pendants and furs and suave surfaces of polished
-wood in velvet-hung reticent windows. High above the street, an
-unexpected square hanging in the darkness, the window of an office where
-some one was working late, for a reason unknown and stimulating. A man
-meshed in bankruptcy, an ambitious boy, an oil-man suddenly become rich?
-
-The air was shrewd, the snow was deep in uncleared alleys, and beyond
-the city, Babbitt knew, were hillsides of snow-drift among wintry oaks,
-and the curving ice-enchanted river.
-
-He loved his city with passionate wonder. He lost the accumulated
-weariness of business-worry and expansive oratory; he felt young and
-potential. He was ambitious. It was not enough to be a Vergil Gunch, an
-Orville Jones. No. “They’re bully fellows, simply lovely, but they
-haven’t got any finesse.” No. He was going to be an Eathorne; delicately
-rigorous, coldly powerful.
-
-“That’s the stuff. The wallop in the velvet mitt. Not let anybody get
-fresh with you. Been getting careless about my diction. Slang.
-Colloquial. Cut it out. I was first-rate at rhetoric in college. Themes
-on-- Anyway, not bad. Had too much of this hooptedoodle and good-fellow
-stuff. I-- Why couldn’t I organize a bank of my own some day? And Ted
-succeed me!”
-
-He drove happily home, and to Mrs. Babbitt he was a William Washington
-Eathorne, but she did not notice it.
-
-
-III
-
-Young Kenneth Escott, reporter on the _Advocate-Times_, was appointed
-press-agent of the Chatham Road Presbyterian Sunday School. He gave six
-hours a week to it. At least he was paid for giving six hours a week. He
-had friends on the _Press_ and the _Gazette_ and he was not (officially)
-known as a press-agent. He procured a trickle of insinuating items about
-neighborliness and the Bible, about class-suppers, jolly but
-educational, and the value of the Prayer-life in attaining financial
-success.
-
-The Sunday School adopted Babbitt’s system of military ranks. Quickened
-by this spiritual refreshment, it had a boom. It did not become the
-largest school in Zenith--the Central Methodist Church kept ahead of it
-by methods which Dr. Drew scored as “unfair, undignified, un-American,
-ungentlemanly, and unchristian”--but it climbed from fourth place to
-second, and there was rejoicing in heaven, or at least in that portion
-of heaven included in the parsonage of Dr. Drew, while Babbitt had much
-praise and good repute.
-
-He had received the rank of colonel on the general staff of the school.
-He was plumply pleased by salutes on the street from unknown small boys;
-his ears were tickled to ruddy ecstasy by hearing himself called
-“Colonel;” and if he did not attend Sunday School merely to be thus
-exalted, certainly he thought about it all the way there.
-
-He was particularly pleasant to the press-agent, Kenneth Escott; he took
-him to lunch at the Athletic Club and had him at the house for dinner.
-
-Like many of the cocksure young men who forage about cities in apparent
-contentment and who express their cynicism in supercilious slang, Escott
-was shy and lonely. His shrewd starveling face broadened with joy at
-dinner, and he blurted, “Gee whillikins, Mrs. Babbitt, if you knew how
-good it is to have home eats again!”
-
-Escott and Verona liked each other. All evening they “talked about
-ideas.” They discovered that they were Radicals. True, they were
-sensible about it. They agreed that all communists were criminals; that
-this _vers libre_ was tommyrot; and that while there ought to be
-universal disarmament, of course Great Britain and the United States
-must, on behalf of oppressed small nations, keep a navy equal to the
-tonnage of all the rest of the world. But they were so revolutionary
-that they predicted (to Babbitt’s irritation) that there would some day
-be a Third Party which would give trouble to the Republicans and
-Democrats.
-
-Escott shook hands with Babbitt three times, at parting.
-
-Babbitt mentioned his extreme fondness for Eathorne.
-
-Within a week three newspapers presented accounts of Babbitt’s sterling
-labors for religion, and all of them tactfully mentioned William
-Washington Eathorne as his collaborator.
-
-Nothing had brought Babbitt quite so much credit at the Elks, the
-Athletic Club, and the Boosters’. His friends had always congratulated
-him on his oratory, but in their praise was doubt, for even in speeches
-advertising the city there was something highbrow and degenerate, like
-writing poetry. But now Orville Jones shouted across the Athletic
-dining-room, “Here’s the new director of the First State Bank!” Grover
-Butterbaugh, the eminent wholesaler of plumbers’ supplies, chuckled,
-“Wonder you mix with common folks, after holding Eathorne’s hand!” And
-Emil Wengert, the jeweler, was at last willing to discuss buying a house
-in Dorchester.
-
-
-IV
-
-When the Sunday School campaign was finished, Babbitt suggested to
-Kenneth Escott, “Say, how about doing a little boosting for Doc Drew
-personally?”
-
-Escott grinned. “You trust the doc to do a little boosting for himself,
-Mr. Babbitt! There’s hardly a week goes by without his ringing up the
-paper to say if we’ll chase a reporter up to his Study, he’ll let us in
-on the story about the swell sermon he’s going to preach on the
-wickedness of short skirts, or the authorship of the Pentateuch. Don’t
-you worry about him. There’s just one better publicity-grabber in town,
-and that’s this Dora Gibson Tucker that runs the Child Welfare and the
-Americanization League, and the only reason she’s got Drew beaten is
-because she has got _some_ brains!”
-
-“Well, now Kenneth, I don’t think you ought to talk that way about the
-doctor. A preacher has to watch his interests, hasn’t he? You remember
-that in the Bible about--about being diligent in the Lord’s business, or
-something?”
-
-“All right, I’ll get something in if you want me to, Mr. Babbitt, but
-I’ll have to wait till the managing editor is out of town, and then
-blackjack the city editor.”
-
-Thus it came to pass that in the Sunday _Advocate-Times_, under a
-picture of Dr. Drew at his earnestest, with eyes alert, jaw as granite,
-and rustic lock flamboyant, appeared an inscription--a wood-pulp tablet
-conferring twenty-four hours’ immortality:
-
-     The Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew, M.A., pastor of the beautiful
-     Chatham Road Presbyterian Church in lovely Floral Heights, is a
-     wizard soul-winner. He holds the local record for conversions.
-     During his shepherdhood an average of almost a hundred sin-weary
-     persons per year have declared their resolve to lead a new life and
-     have found a harbor of refuge and peace.
-
-     Everything zips at the Chatham Road Church. The subsidiary
-     organizations are keyed to the top-notch of efficiency. Dr. Drew is
-     especially keen on good congregational singing. Bright cheerful
-     hymns are used at every meeting, and the special Sing Services
-     attract lovers of music and professionals from all parts of the
-     city.
-
-     On the popular lecture platform as well as in the pulpit Dr. Drew
-     is a renowned word-painter, and during the course of the year he
-     receives literally scores of invitations to speak at varied
-     functions both here and elsewhere.
-
-
-V
-
-Babbitt let Dr. Drew know that he was responsible for this tribute. Dr.
-Drew called him “brother,” and shook his hand a great many times.
-
-During the meetings of the Advisory Committee, Babbitt had hinted that
-he would be charmed to invite Eathorne to dinner, but Eathorne had
-murmured, “So nice of you--old man, now--almost never go out.” Surely
-Eathorne would not refuse his own pastor. Babbitt said boyishly to Drew:
-
-“Say, doctor, now we’ve put this thing over, strikes me it’s up to the
-dominie to blow the three of us to a dinner!”
-
-“Bully! You bet! Delighted!” cried Dr. Drew, in his manliest way. (Some
-one had once told him that he talked like the late President Roosevelt.)
-
-“And, uh, say, doctor, be sure and get Mr. Eathorne to come. Insist on
-it. It’s, uh-- I think he sticks around home too much for his own
-health.”
-
-Eathorne came.
-
-It was a friendly dinner. Babbitt spoke gracefully of the stabilizing
-and educational value of bankers to the community. They were, he said,
-the pastors of the fold of commerce. For the first time Eathorne
-departed from the topic of Sunday Schools, and asked Babbitt about the
-progress of his business. Babbitt answered modestly, almost filially.
-
-A few months later, when he had a chance to take part in the Street
-Traction Company’s terminal deal, Babbitt did not care to go to his own
-bank for a loan. It was rather a quiet sort of deal and, if it had come
-out, the Public might not have understood. He went to his friend Mr.
-Eathorne; he was welcomed, and received the loan as a private venture;
-and they both profited in their pleasant new association.
-
-After that, Babbitt went to church regularly, except on spring Sunday
-mornings which were obviously meant for motoring. He announced to Ted,
-“I tell you, boy, there’s no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than
-the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who’ll help
-you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own
-church-home!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-
-I
-
-Though he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every
-detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbitt was no more
-conscious of his children than of the buttons on his coat-sleeves.
-
-The admiration of Kenneth Escott made him aware of Verona.
-
-She had become secretary to Mr. Gruensberg of the Gruensberg Leather
-Company; she did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres
-details and never quite understands them; but she was one of the people
-who give an agitating impression of being on the point of doing
-something desperate--of leaving a job or a husband--without ever doing
-it. Babbitt was so hopeful about Escott’s hesitant ardors that he became
-the playful parent. When he returned from the Elks he peered coyly into
-the living-room and gurgled, “Has our Kenny been here to-night?” He
-never credited Verona’s protest, “Why, Ken and I are just good friends,
-and we only talk about Ideas. I won’t have all this sentimental
-nonsense, that would spoil everything.”
-
-It was Ted who most worried Babbitt.
-
-With conditions in Latin and English but with a triumphant record in
-manual training, basket-ball, and the organization of dances, Ted was
-struggling through his Senior year in the East Side High School. At home
-he was interested only when he was asked to trace some subtle ill in the
-ignition system of the car. He repeated to his tut-tutting father that
-he did not wish to go to college or law-school, and Babbitt was equally
-disturbed by this “shiftlessness” and by Ted’s relations with Eunice
-Littlefield, next door.
-
-Though she was the daughter of Howard Littlefield, that wrought-iron
-fact-mill, that horse-faced priest of private ownership, Eunice was a
-midge in the sun. She danced into the house, she flung herself into
-Babbitt’s lap when he was reading, she crumpled his paper, and laughed
-at him when he adequately explained that he hated a crumpled newspaper
-as he hated a broken sales-contract. She was seventeen now. Her ambition
-was to be a cinema actress. She did not merely attend the showing of
-every “feature film;” she also read the motion-picture magazines, those
-extraordinary symptoms of the Age of Pep--monthlies and weeklies
-gorgeously illustrated with portraits of young women who had recently
-been manicure girls, not very skilful manicure girls, and who, unless
-their every grimace had been arranged by a director, could not have
-acted in the Easter cantata of the Central Methodist Church; magazines
-reporting, quite seriously, in “interviews” plastered with pictures of
-riding-breeches and California bungalows, the views on sculpture and
-international politics of blankly beautiful, suspiciously beautiful
-young men; outlining the plots of films about pure prostitutes and
-kind-hearted train-robbers; and giving directions for making bootblacks
-into Celebrated Scenario Authors overnight.
-
-These authorities Eunice studied. She could, she frequently did, tell
-whether it was in November or December, 1905, that Mack Harker, the
-renowned screen cowpuncher and badman, began his public career, as
-chorus man in “Oh, You Naughty Girlie.” On the wall of her room, her
-father reported, she had pinned up twenty-one photographs of actors. But
-the signed portrait of the most graceful of the movie heroes she carried
-in her young bosom.
-
-Babbitt was bewildered by this worship of new gods, and he suspected
-that Eunice smoked cigarettes. He smelled the cloying reek from
-up-stairs, and heard her giggling with Ted. He never inquired. The
-agreeable child dismayed him. Her thin and charming face was sharpened
-by bobbed hair; her skirts were short, her stockings were rolled, and,
-as she flew after Ted, above the caressing silk were glimpses of soft
-knees which made Babbitt uneasy, and wretched that she should consider
-him old. Sometimes, in the veiled life of his dreams, when the fairy
-child came running to him she took on the semblance of Eunice
-Littlefield.
-
-Ted was motor-mad as Eunice was movie-mad.
-
-A thousand sarcastic refusals did not check his teasing for a car of his
-own. However lax he might be about early rising and the prosody of
-Vergil, he was tireless in tinkering. With three other boys he bought a
-rheumatic Ford chassis, built an amazing racer-body out of tin and pine,
-went skidding round corners in the perilous craft, and sold it at a
-profit. Babbitt gave him a motor-cycle, and every Saturday afternoon,
-with seven sandwiches and a bottle of Coca-Cola in his pockets, and
-Eunice perched eerily on the rumble seat, he went roaring off to distant
-towns.
-
-Usually Eunice and he were merely neighborhood chums, and quarreled with
-a wholesome and violent lack of delicacy; but now and then, after the
-color and scent of a dance, they were silent together and a little
-furtive, and Babbitt was worried.
-
-Babbitt was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying,
-opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents, he enjoyed
-the game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong, then virtuously
-pouncing. He justified himself by croaking, “Well, Ted’s mother spoils
-him. Got to be somebody who tells him what’s what, and me, I’m elected
-the goat. Because I try to bring him up to be a real, decent, human
-being and not one of these sapheads and lounge-lizards, of course they
-all call me a grouch!”
-
-Throughout, with the eternal human genius for arriving by the worst
-possible routes at surprisingly tolerable goals, Babbitt loved his son
-and warmed to his companionship and would have sacrificed everything for
-him--if he could have been sure of proper credit.
-
-
-II
-
-Ted was planning a party for his set in the Senior Class.
-
-Babbitt meant to be helpful and jolly about it. From his memory of
-high-school pleasures back in Catawba he suggested the nicest games:
-Going to Boston, and charades with stewpans for helmets, and word-games
-in which you were an Adjective or a Quality. When he was most
-enthusiastic he discovered that they weren’t paying attention; they were
-only tolerating him. As for the party, it was as fixed and standardized
-as a Union Club Hop. There was to be dancing in the living-room, a noble
-collation in the dining-room, and in the hall two tables of bridge for
-what Ted called “the poor old dumb-bells that you can’t get to dance
-hardly more ’n half the time.”
-
-Every breakfast was monopolized by conferences on the affair. No one
-listened to Babbitt’s bulletins about the February weather or to his
-throat-clearing comments on the headlines. He said furiously, “If I may
-be _permitted_ to interrupt your engrossing private _conversation_-- Juh
-hear what I _said_?”
-
-“Oh, don’t be a spoiled baby! Ted and I have just as much right to talk
-as you have!” flared Mrs. Babbitt.
-
-On the night of the party he was permitted to look on, when he was not
-helping Matilda with the Vecchia ice cream and the _petits fours_. He
-was deeply disquieted. Eight years ago, when Verona had given a
-high-school party, the children had been featureless babies. Now they
-were men and women of the world, very supercilious men and women; the
-boys condescended to Babbitt, they wore evening-clothes, and with
-hauteur they accepted cigarettes from silver cases. Babbitt had heard
-stories of what the Athletic Club called “goings-on” at young parties;
-of girls “parking” their corsets in the dressing-room, of “cuddling” and
-“petting,” and a presumable increase in what was known as Immorality.
-To-night he believed the stories. These children seemed bold to him, and
-cold. The girls wore misty chiffon, coral velvet, or cloth of gold, and
-around their dipping bobbed hair were shining wreaths. He had it, upon
-urgent and secret inquiry, that no corsets were known to be parked
-upstairs; but certainly these eager bodies were not stiff with steel.
-Their stockings were of lustrous silk, their slippers costly and
-unnatural, their lips carmined and their eyebrows penciled. They danced
-cheek to cheek with the boys, and Babbitt sickened with apprehension and
-unconscious envy.
-
-Worst of them all was Eunice Littlefield, and maddest of all the boys
-was Ted. Eunice was a flying demon. She slid the length of the room; her
-tender shoulders swayed; her feet were deft as a weaver’s shuttle; she
-laughed, and enticed Babbitt to dance with her.
-
-Then he discovered the annex to the party.
-
-The boys and girls disappeared occasionally, and he remembered rumors of
-their drinking together from hip-pocket flasks. He tiptoed round the
-house, and in each of the dozen cars waiting in the street he saw the
-points of light from cigarettes, from each of them heard high giggles.
-He wanted to denounce them but (standing in the snow, peering round the
-dark corner) he did not dare. He tried to be tactful. When he had
-returned to the front hall he coaxed the boys, “Say, if any of you
-fellows are thirsty, there’s some dandy ginger ale.”
-
-“Oh! Thanks!” they condescended.
-
-He sought his wife, in the pantry, and exploded, “I’d like to go in
-there and throw some of those young pups out of the house! They talk
-down to me like I was the butler! I’d like to--”
-
-“I know,” she sighed; “only everybody says, all the mothers tell me,
-unless you stand for them, if you get angry because they go out to their
-cars to have a drink, they won’t come to your house any more, and we
-wouldn’t want Ted left out of things, would we?”
-
-He announced that he would be enchanted to have Ted left out of things,
-and hurried in to be polite, lest Ted be left out of things.
-
-But, he resolved, if he found that the boys were drinking, he
-would--well, he’d “hand ’em something that would surprise ’em.” While he
-was trying to be agreeable to large-shouldered young bullies he was
-earnestly sniffing at them. Twice he caught the reek of prohibition-time
-whisky, but then, it was only twice--
-
-Dr. Howard Littlefield lumbered in.
-
-He had come, in a mood of solemn parental patronage, to look on. Ted and
-Eunice were dancing, moving together like one body. Littlefield gasped.
-He called Eunice. There was a whispered duologue, and Littlefield
-explained to Babbitt that Eunice’s mother had a headache and needed her.
-She went off in tears. Babbitt looked after them furiously. “That little
-devil! Getting Ted into trouble! And Littlefield, the conceited old
-gas-bag, acting like it was Ted that was the bad influence!”
-
-Later he smelled whisky on Ted’s breath.
-
-After the civil farewell to the guests, the row was terrific, a thorough
-Family Scene, like an avalanche, devastating and without reticences.
-Babbitt thundered, Mrs. Babbitt wept, Ted was unconvincingly defiant,
-and Verona in confusion as to whose side she was taking.
-
-For several months there was coolness between the Babbitts and the
-Littlefields, each family sheltering their lamb from the wolf-cub next
-door. Babbitt and Littlefield still spoke in pontifical periods about
-motors and the senate, but they kept bleakly away from mention of their
-families. Whenever Eunice came to the house she discussed with pleasant
-intimacy the fact that she had been forbidden to come to the house; and
-Babbitt tried, with no success whatever, to be fatherly and advisory
-with her.
-
-
-III
-
-“Gosh all fishhooks!” Ted wailed to Eunice, as they wolfed hot
-chocolate, lumps of nougat, and an assortment of glacé nuts, in the
-mosaic splendor of the Royal Drug Store, “it gets me why Dad doesn’t
-just pass out from being so poky. Every evening he sits there, about
-half-asleep, and if Rone or I say, ‘Oh, come on, let’s do something,’ he
-doesn’t even take the trouble to think about it. He just yawns and says,
-‘Naw, this suits me right here.’ He doesn’t know there’s any fun going
-on anywhere. I suppose he must do some thinking, same as you and I do,
-but gosh, there’s no way of telling it. I don’t believe that outside of
-the office and playing a little bum golf on Saturday he knows there’s
-anything in the world to do except just keep sitting there--sitting
-there every night--not wanting to go anywhere--not wanting to do
-anything--thinking us kids are crazy--sitting there--Lord!”
-
-
-IV
-
-If he was frightened by Ted’s slackness, Babbitt was not sufficiently
-frightened by Verona. She was too safe. She lived too much in the neat
-little airless room of her mind. Kenneth Escott and she were always
-under foot. When they were not at home, conducting their cautiously
-radical courtship over sheets of statistics, they were trudging off to
-lectures by authors and Hindu philosophers and Swedish lieutenants.
-
-“Gosh,” Babbitt wailed to his wife, as they walked home from the
-Fogartys’ bridge-party, “it gets me how Rone and that fellow can be so
-poky. They sit there night after night, whenever he isn’t working, and
-they don’t know there’s any fun in the world. All talk and
-discussion--Lord! Sitting there--sitting there--night after night--not
-wanting to do anything--thinking I’m crazy because I like to go out and
-play a fist of cards--sitting there--gosh!”
-
-Then round the swimmer, bored by struggling through the perpetual surf
-of family life, new combers swelled.
-
-
-V
-
-Babbitt’s father-and mother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Henry T. Thompson,
-rented their old house in the Bellevue district and moved to the Hotel
-Hatton, that glorified boarding-house filled with widows, red-plush
-furniture, and the sound of ice-water pitchers. They were lonely there,
-and every other Sunday evening the Babbitts had to dine with them, on
-fricasseed chicken, discouraged celery, and cornstarch ice cream, and
-afterward sit, polite and restrained, in the hotel lounge, while a young
-woman violinist played songs from the German via Broadway.
-
-Then Babbitt’s own mother came down from Catawba to spend three weeks.
-
-She was a kind woman and magnificently uncomprehending. She
-congratulated the convention-defying Verona on being a “nice, loyal
-home-body without all these Ideas that so many girls seem to have
-nowadays;” and when Ted filled the differential with grease, out of pure
-love of mechanics and filthiness, she rejoiced that he was “so handy
-around the house and helping his father and all, and not going out with
-the girls all the time and trying to pretend he was a society fellow.”
-
-Babbitt loved his mother, and sometimes he rather liked her, but he was
-annoyed by her Christian Patience, and he was reduced to pulpiness when
-she discoursed about a quite mythical hero called “Your Father”:
-
-“You won’t remember it, Georgie, you were such a little fellow at the
-time--my, I remember just how you looked that day, with your goldy
-brown curls and your lace collar, you always were such a dainty child,
-and kind of puny and sickly, and you loved pretty things so much and the
-red tassels on your little bootees and all--and Your Father was taking
-us to church and a man stopped us and said ‘Major’--so many of the
-neighbors used to call Your Father ‘Major;’ of course he was only a
-private in The War but everybody knew that was because of the jealousy
-of his captain and he ought to have been a high-ranking officer, he had
-that natural ability to command that so very, very few men have--and
-this man came out into the road and held up his hand and stopped the
-buggy and said, ‘Major,’ he said, ‘there’s a lot of the folks around
-here that have decided to support Colonel Scanell for congress, and we
-want you to join us. Meeting people the way you do in the store, you
-could help us a lot.’
-
-“Well, Your Father just looked at him and said, ‘I certainly shall do
-nothing of the sort. I don’t like his politics,’ he said. Well, the
-man--Captain Smith they used to call him, and heaven only knows why,
-because he hadn’t the shadow or vestige of a right to be called
-‘Captain’ or any other title--this Captain Smith said, ‘We’ll make it
-hot for you if you don’t stick by your friends, Major.’ Well, you know
-how Your Father was, and this Smith knew it too; he knew what a Real Man
-he was, and he knew Your Father knew the political situation from A to
-Z, and he ought to have seen that here was one man he couldn’t impose
-on, but he went on trying to and hinting and trying till Your Father
-spoke up and said to him, ‘Captain Smith,’ he said, ‘I have a reputation
-around these parts for being one who is amply qualified to mind his own
-business and let other folks mind theirs!’ and with that he drove on and
-left the fellow standing there in the road like a bump on a log!”
-
-Babbitt was most exasperated when she revealed his boyhood to the
-children. He had, it seemed, been fond of barley-sugar; had worn the
-“loveliest little pink bow in his curls” and corrupted his own name to
-“Goo-goo.” He heard (though he did not officially hear) Ted admonishing
-Tinka, “Come on now, kid; stick the lovely pink bow in your curls and
-beat it down to breakfast, or Goo-goo will jaw your head off.”
-
-Babbitt’s half-brother, Martin, with his wife and youngest baby, came
-down from Catawba for two days. Martin bred cattle and ran the dusty
-general-store. He was proud of being a freeborn independent American of
-the good old Yankee stock; he was proud of being honest, blunt, ugly,
-and disagreeable. His favorite remark was “How much did you pay for
-that?” He regarded Verona’s books, Babbitt’s silver pencil, and flowers
-on the table as citified extravagances, and said so. Babbitt would have
-quarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the baby, whom Babbitt
-teased and poked fingers at and addressed:
-
-“I think this baby’s a bum, yes, sir, I think this little baby’s a bum,
-he’s a bum, yes, sir, he’s a bum, that’s what he is, he’s a bum, this
-baby’s a bum, he’s nothing but an old bum, that’s what he is--a bum!”
-
-All the while Verona and Kenneth Escott held long inquiries into
-epistemology; Ted was a disgraced rebel; and Tinka, aged eleven, was
-demanding that she be allowed to go to the movies thrice a week, “like
-all the girls.”
-
-Babbitt raged, “I’m sick of it! Having to carry three generations. Whole
-damn bunch lean on me. Pay half of mother’s income, listen to Henry T.,
-listen to Myra’s worrying, be polite to Mart, and get called an old
-grouch for trying to help the children. All of ’em depending on me and
-picking on me and not a damn one of ’em grateful! No relief, and no
-credit, and no help from anybody. And to keep it up for--good Lord, how
-long?”
-
-He enjoyed being sick in February; he was delighted by their
-consternation that he, the rock, should give way.
-
-He had eaten a questionable clam. For two days he was languorous and
-petted and esteemed. He was allowed to snarl “Oh, let me alone!”
-without reprisals. He lay on the sleeping-porch and watched the winter
-sun slide along the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale
-blood red. The shadow of the draw-rope was dense black, in an enticing
-ripple on the canvas. He found pleasure in the curve of it, sighed as
-the fading light blurred it. He was conscious of life, and a little sad.
-With no Vergil Gunches before whom to set his face in resolute optimism,
-he beheld, and half admitted that he beheld, his way of life as
-incredibly mechanical. Mechanical business--a brisk selling of badly
-built houses. Mechanical religion--a dry, hard church, shut off from the
-real life of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat. Mechanical
-golf and dinner-parties and bridge and conversation. Save with Paul
-Riesling, mechanical friendships--back-slapping and jocular, never
-daring to essay the test of quietness.
-
-He turned uneasily in bed.
-
-He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweet
-afternoons which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittle
-pretentiousness. He thought of telephoning about leases, of cajoling men
-he hated, of making business calls and waiting in dirty anterooms--hat
-on knee, yawning at fly-specked calendars, being polite to office-boys.
-
-“I don’t hardly want to go back to work,” he prayed. “I’d like to-- I
-don’t know.”
-
-But he was back next day, busy and of doubtful temper.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-
-I
-
-The Zenith Street Traction Company planned to build car-repair shops in
-the suburb of Dorchester, but when they came to buy the land they found
-it held, on options, by the Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company. The
-purchasing-agent, the first vice-president, and even the president of
-the Traction Company protested against the Babbitt price. They mentioned
-their duty toward stockholders, they threatened an appeal to the courts,
-though somehow the appeal to the courts was never carried out and the
-officials found it wiser to compromise with Babbitt. Carbon copies of
-the correspondence are in the company’s files, where they may be viewed
-by any public commission.
-
-Just after this Babbitt deposited three thousand dollars in the bank,
-the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company bought a five
-thousand dollar car, the first vice-president built a home in Devon
-Woods, and the president was appointed minister to a foreign country.
-
-To obtain the options, to tie up one man’s land without letting his
-neighbor know, had been an unusual strain on Babbitt. It was necessary
-to introduce rumors about planning garages and stores, to pretend that
-he wasn’t taking any more options, to wait and look as bored as a
-poker-player at a time when the failure to secure a key-lot threatened
-his whole plan. To all this was added a nerve-jabbing quarrel with his
-secret associates in the deal. They did not wish Babbitt and Thompson to
-have any share in the deal except as brokers. Babbitt rather agreed.
-“Ethics of the business--broker ought to strictly represent his
-principles and not get in on the buying,” he said to Thompson.
-
-“Ethics, rats! Think I’m going to see that bunch of holy grafters get
-away with the swag and us not climb in?” snorted old Henry.
-
-“Well, I don’t like to do it. Kind of double-crossing.”
-
-“It ain’t. It’s triple-crossing. It’s the public that gets
-double-crossed. Well, now we’ve been ethical and got it out of our
-systems, the question is where we can raise a loan to handle some of the
-property for ourselves, on the Q. T. We can’t go to our bank for it.
-Might come out.”
-
-“I could see old Eathorne. He’s close as the tomb.”
-
-“That’s the stuff.”
-
-Eathorne was glad, he said, to “invest in character,” to make Babbitt
-the loan and see to it that the loan did not appear on the books of the
-bank. Thus certain of the options which Babbitt and Thompson obtained
-were on parcels of real estate which they themselves owned, though the
-property did not appear in their names.
-
-In the midst of closing this splendid deal, which stimulated business
-and public confidence by giving an example of increased real-estate
-activity, Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person
-working for him.
-
-The dishonest one was Stanley Graff, the outside salesman.
-
-For some time Babbitt had been worried about Graff. He did not keep his
-word to tenants. In order to rent a house he would promise repairs which
-the owner had not authorized. It was suspected that he juggled
-inventories of furnished houses so that when the tenant left he had to
-pay for articles which had never been in the house and the price of
-which Graff put into his pocket. Babbitt had not been able to prove
-these suspicions, and though he had rather planned to discharge Graff he
-had never quite found time for it.
-
-Now into Babbitt’s private room charged a red-faced man, panting, “Look
-here! I’ve come to raise particular merry hell, and unless you have that
-fellow pinched, I will!”
-
-“What’s-- Calm down, o’ man. What’s trouble?”
-
-“Trouble! Huh! Here’s the trouble--”
-
-“Sit down and take it easy! They can hear you all over the building!”
-
-“This fellow Graff you got working for you, he leases me a house. I was
-in yesterday and signs the lease, all O.K., and he was to get the
-owner’s signature and mail me the lease last night. Well, and he did.
-This morning I comes down to breakfast and the girl says a fellow had
-come to the house right after the early delivery and told her he wanted
-an envelope that had been mailed by mistake, big long envelope with
-‘Babbitt-Thompson’ in the corner of it. Sure enough, there it was, so
-she lets him have it. And she describes the fellow to me, and it was
-this Graff. So I ’phones to him and he, the poor fool, he admits it! He
-says after my lease was all signed he got a better offer from another
-fellow and he wanted my lease back. Now what you going to do about it?”
-
-“Your name is--?”
-
-“William Varney--W. K. Varney.”
-
-“Oh, yes. That was the Garrison house.” Babbitt sounded the buzzer. When
-Miss McGoun came in, he demanded, “Graff gone out?”
-
-“Yes, sir.”
-
-“Will you look through his desk and see if there is a lease made out to
-Mr. Varney on the Garrison house?” To Varney: “Can’t tell you how sorry
-I am this happened. Needless to say, I’ll fire Graff the minute he comes
-in. And of course your lease stands. But there’s one other thing I’d
-like to do. I’ll tell the owner not to pay us the commission but apply
-it to your rent. No! Straight! I want to. To be frank, this thing shakes
-me up bad. I suppose I’ve always been a Practical Business Man. Probably
-I’ve told one or two fairy stories in my time, when the occasion called
-for it--you know: sometimes you have to lay things on thick, to impress
-boneheads. But this is the first time I’ve ever had to accuse one of my
-own employees of anything more dishonest than pinching a few stamps.
-Honest, it would hurt me if we profited by it. So you’ll let me hand you
-the commission? Good!”
-
-
-II
-
-He walked through the February city, where trucks flung up a spattering
-of slush and the sky was dark above dark brick cornices. He came back
-miserable. He, who respected the law, had broken it by concealing the
-Federal crime of interception of the mails. But he could not see Graff
-go to jail and his wife suffer. Worse, he had to discharge Graff, and
-this was a part of office routine which he feared. He liked people so
-much, he so much wanted them to like him, that he could not bear
-insulting them.
-
-Miss McGoun dashed in to whisper, with the excitement of an approaching
-scene, “He’s here!”
-
-“Mr. Graff? Ask him to come in.”
-
-He tried to make himself heavy and calm in his chair, and to keep his
-eyes expressionless. Graff stalked in--a man of thirty-five, dapper,
-eye-glassed, with a foppish mustache.
-
-“Want me?” said Graff.
-
-“Yes. Sit down.”
-
-Graff continued to stand, grunting, “I suppose that old nut Varney has
-been in to see you. Let me explain about him. He’s a regular tightwad,
-and he sticks out for every cent, and he practically lied to me about
-his ability to pay the rent-- I found that out just after we signed up.
-And then another fellow comes along with a better offer for the house,
-and I felt it was my duty to the firm to get rid of Varney, and I was so
-worried about it I skun up there and got back the lease. Honest, Mr.
-Babbitt, I didn’t intend to pull anything crooked. I just wanted the
-firm to have all the commis--”
-
-“Wait now, Stan. This may all be true, but I’ve been having a lot of
-complaints about you. Now I don’t s’pose you ever mean to do wrong, and
-I think if you just get a good lesson that’ll jog you up a little,
-you’ll turn out a first-class realtor yet. But I don’t see how I can
-keep you on.”
-
-Graff leaned against the filing-cabinet, his hands in his pockets, and
-laughed. “So I’m fired! Well, old Vision and Ethics, I’m tickled to
-death! But I don’t want you to think you can get away with any
-holier-than-thou stuff. Sure I’ve pulled some raw stuff--a little of
-it--but how could I help it, in this office?”
-
-“Now, by God, young man--”
-
-“Tut, tut! Keep the naughty temper down, and don’t holler, because
-everybody in the outside office will hear you. They’re probably
-listening right now. Babbitt, old dear, you’re crooked in the first
-place and a damn skinflint in the second. If you paid me a decent salary
-I wouldn’t have to steal pennies off a blind man to keep my wife from
-starving. Us married just five months, and her the nicest girl living,
-and you keeping us flat broke all the time, you damned old thief, so you
-can put money away for your saphead of a son and your wishywashy fool of
-a daughter! Wait, now! You’ll by God take it, or I’ll bellow so the
-whole office will hear it! And crooked-- Say, if I told the prosecuting
-attorney what I know about this last Street Traction option steal, both
-you and me would go to jail, along with some nice, clean, pious, high-up
-traction guns!”
-
-“Well, Stan, looks like we were coming down to cases. That deal-- There
-was nothing crooked about it. The only way you can get progress is for
-the broad-gauged men to get things done; and they got to be rewarded--”
-
-“Oh, for Pete’s sake, don’t get virtuous on me! As I gather it, I’m
-fired. All right. It’s a good thing for me. And if I catch you knocking
-me to any other firm, I’ll squeal all I know about you and Henry T. and
-the dirty little lickspittle deals that you corporals of industry pull
-off for the bigger and brainier crooks, and you’ll get chased out of
-town. And me--you’re right, Babbitt, I’ve been going crooked, but now
-I’m going straight, and the first step will be to get a job in some
-office where the boss doesn’t talk about Ideals. Bad luck, old dear, and
-you can stick your job up the sewer!”
-
-Babbitt sat for a long time, alternately raging, “I’ll have him
-arrested,” and yearning “I wonder-- No, I’ve never done anything that
-wasn’t necessary to keep the Wheels of Progress moving.”
-
-Next day he hired in Graff’s place Fritz Weilinger, the salesman of his
-most injurious rival, the East Side Homes and Development Company, and
-thus at once annoyed his competitor and acquired an excellent man. Young
-Fritz was a curly-headed, merry, tennis-playing youngster. He made
-customers welcome to the office. Babbitt thought of him as a son, and in
-him had much comfort.
-
-
-III
-
-An abandoned race-track on the outskirts of Chicago, a plot excellent
-for factory sites, was to be sold, and Jake Offut asked Babbitt to bid
-on it for him. The strain of the Street Traction deal and his
-disappointment in Stanley Graff had so shaken Babbitt that he found it
-hard to sit at his desk and concentrate. He proposed to his family,
-“Look here, folks! Do you know who’s going to trot up to Chicago for a
-couple of days--just week-end; won’t lose but one day of school--know
-who’s going with that celebrated business-ambassador, George F. Babbitt?
-Why, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt!”
-
-“Hurray!” Ted shouted, and “Oh, maybe the Babbitt men won’t paint that
-lil ole town red!”
-
-And, once away from the familiar implications of home, they were two men
-together. Ted was young only in his assumption of oldness, and the only
-realms, apparently, in which Babbitt had a larger and more grown-up
-knowledge than Ted’s were the details of real estate and the phrases of
-politics. When the other sages of the Pullman smoking-compartment had
-left them to themselves, Babbitt’s voice did not drop into the playful
-and otherwise offensive tone in which one addresses children but
-continued its overwhelming and monotonous rumble, and Ted tried to
-imitate it in his strident tenor:
-
-“Gee, dad, you certainly did show up that poor boot when he got flip
-about the League of Nations!”
-
-“Well, the trouble with a lot of these fellows is, they simply don’t
-know what they’re talking about. They don’t get down to facts.... What
-do you think of Ken Escott?”
-
-“I’ll tell you, dad: it strikes me Ken is a nice lad; no special faults
-except he smokes too much; but slow, Lord! Why, if we don’t give him a
-shove the poor dumb-bell never will propose! And Rone just as bad.
-Slow.”
-
-“Yes, I guess you’re right. They’re slow. They haven’t either one of ’em
-got our pep.”
-
-“That’s right. They’re slow. I swear, dad, I don’t know how Rone got
-into our family! I’ll bet, if the truth were known, you were a bad old
-egg when you were a kid!”
-
-“Well, I wasn’t so slow!”
-
-“I’ll bet you weren’t! I’ll bet you didn’t miss many tricks!”
-
-“Well, when I was out with the girls I didn’t spend all the time telling
-’em about the strike in the knitting industry!”
-
-They roared together, and together lighted cigars.
-
-“What are we going to do with ’em?” Babbitt consulted.
-
-“Gosh, I don’t know. I swear, sometimes I feel like taking Ken aside and
-putting him over the jumps and saying to him, ‘Young fella me lad, are
-you going to marry young Rone, or are you going to talk her to death?
-Here you are getting on toward thirty, and you’re only making twenty or
-twenty-five a week. When you going to develop a sense of responsibility
-and get a raise? If there’s anything that George F. or I can do to help
-you, call on us, but show a little speed, anyway!’”
-
-“Well, at that, it might not be so bad if you or I talked to him, except
-he might not understand. He’s one of these highbrows. He can’t come
-down to cases and lay his cards on the table and talk straight out from
-the shoulder, like you or I can.”
-
-“That’s right, he’s like all these highbrows.”
-
-“That’s so, like all of ’em.”
-
-“That’s a fact.”
-
-They sighed, and were silent and thoughtful and happy.
-
-The conductor came in. He had once called at Babbitt’s office, to ask
-about houses. “H’ are you, Mr. Babbitt! We going to have you with us to
-Chicago? This your boy?”
-
-“Yes, this is my son Ted.”
-
-“Well now, what do you know about that! Here I been thinking you were a
-youngster yourself, not a day over forty, hardly, and you with this
-great big fellow!”
-
-“Forty? Why, brother, I’ll never see forty-five again!”
-
-“Is that a fact! Wouldn’t hardly ’a’ thought it!”
-
-“Yes, sir, it’s a bad give-away for the old man when he has to travel
-with a young whale like Ted here!”
-
-“You’re right, it is.” To Ted: “I suppose you’re in college now.”
-
-Proudly, “No, not till next fall. I’m just kind of giving the diff’rent
-colleges the once-over now.”
-
-As the conductor went on his affable way, huge watch-chain jingling
-against his blue chest, Babbitt and Ted gravely considered colleges.
-They arrived at Chicago late at night; they lay abed in the morning,
-rejoicing, “Pretty nice not to have to get up and get down to breakfast,
-heh?” They were staying at the modest Eden Hotel, because Zenith
-business men always stayed at the Eden, but they had dinner in the
-brocade and crystal Versailles Room of the Regency Hotel. Babbitt
-ordered Blue Point oysters with cocktail sauce, a tremendous steak with
-a tremendous platter of French fried potatoes, two pots of coffee, apple
-pie with ice cream for both of them and, for Ted, an extra piece of
-mince pie.
-
-“Hot stuff! Some feed, young fella!” Ted admired.
-
-“Huh! You stick around with me, old man, and I’ll show you a good time!”
-
-They went to a musical comedy and nudged each other at the matrimonial
-jokes and the prohibition jokes; they paraded the lobby, arm in arm,
-between acts, and in the glee of his first release from the shame which
-dissevers fathers and sons Ted chuckled, “Dad, did you ever hear the one
-about the three milliners and the judge?”
-
-When Ted had returned to Zenith, Babbitt was lonely. As he was trying to
-make alliance between Offutt and certain Milwaukee interests which
-wanted the race-track plot, most of his time was taken up in waiting for
-telephone calls.... Sitting on the edge of his bed, holding the portable
-telephone, asking wearily, “Mr. Sagen not in yet? Didn’ he leave any
-message for me? All right, I’ll hold the wire.” Staring at a stain on
-the wall, reflecting that it resembled a shoe, and being bored by this
-twentieth discovery that it resembled a shoe. Lighting a cigarette;
-then, bound to the telephone with no ash-tray in reach, wondering what
-to do with this burning menace and anxiously trying to toss it into the
-tiled bathroom. At last, on the telephone, “No message, eh? All right,
-I’ll call up again.”
-
-One afternoon he wandered through snow-rutted streets of which he had
-never heard, streets of small tenements and two-family houses and
-marooned cottages. It came to him that he had nothing to do, that there
-was nothing he wanted to do. He was bleakly lonely in the evening, when
-he dined by himself at the Regency Hotel. He sat in the lobby afterward,
-in a plush chair bedecked with the Saxe-Coburg arms, lighting a cigar
-and looking for some one who would come and play with him and save him
-from thinking. In the chair next to him (showing the arms of Lithuania)
-was a half-familiar man, a large red-faced man with pop eyes and a
-deficient yellow mustache. He seemed kind and insignificant, and as
-lonely as Babbitt himself. He wore a tweed suit and a reluctant orange
-tie.
-
-It came to Babbitt with a pyrotechnic crash. The melancholy stranger was
-Sir Gerald Doak.
-
-Instinctively Babbitt rose, bumbling, “How’re you, Sir Gerald? ’Member
-we met in Zenith, at Charley McKelvey’s? Babbitt’s my name--real
-estate.”
-
-“Oh! How d’you do.” Sir Gerald shook hands flabbily.
-
-Embarrassed, standing, wondering how he could retreat, Babbitt
-maundered, “Well, I suppose you been having a great trip since we saw
-you in Zenith.”
-
-“Quite. British Columbia and California and all over the place,” he said
-doubtfully, looking at Babbitt lifelessly.
-
-“How did you find business conditions in British Columbia? Or I suppose
-maybe you didn’t look into ’em. Scenery and sport and so on?”
-
-“Scenery? Oh, capital. But business conditions-- You know, Mr. Babbitt,
-they’re having almost as much unemployment as we are.” Sir Gerald was
-speaking warmly now.
-
-“So? Business conditions not so doggone good, eh?”
-
-“No, business conditions weren’t at all what I’d hoped to find them.”
-
-“Not good, eh?”
-
-“No, not--not really good.”
-
-“That’s a darn shame. Well-- I suppose you’re waiting for somebody to
-take you out to some big shindig, Sir Gerald.”
-
-“Shindig? Oh. Shindig. No, to tell you the truth, I was wondering what
-the deuce I could do this evening. Don’t know a soul in Tchicahgo. I
-wonder if you happen to know whether there’s a good theater in this
-city?”
-
-“Good? Why say, they’re running grand opera right now! I guess maybe
-you’d like that.”
-
-“Eh? Eh? Went to the opera once in London. Covent Garden sort of thing.
-Shocking! No, I was wondering if there was a good cinema--movie.”
-
-Babbitt was sitting down, hitching his chair over, shouting, “Movie?
-Say, Sir Gerald, I supposed of course you had a raft of dames waiting to
-lead you out to some soirée--”
-
-“God forbid!”
-
-“--but if you haven’t, what do you say you and me go to a movie? There’s
-a peach of a film at the Grantham: Bill Hart in a bandit picture.”
-
-“Right-o! Just a moment while I get my coat.”
-
-Swollen with greatness, slightly afraid lest the noble blood of
-Nottingham change its mind and leave him at any street corner, Babbitt
-paraded with Sir Gerald Doak to the movie palace and in silent bliss sat
-beside him, trying not to be too enthusiastic, lest the knight despise
-his adoration of six-shooters and broncos. At the end Sir Gerald
-murmured, “Jolly good picture, this. So awfully decent of you to take
-me. Haven’t enjoyed myself so much for weeks. All these Hostesses--they
-never let you go to the cinema!”
-
-“The devil you say!” Babbitt’s speech had lost the delicate refinement
-and all the broad A’s with which he had adorned it, and become hearty
-and natural. “Well, I’m tickled to death you liked it, Sir Gerald.”
-
-They crawled past the knees of fat women into the aisle; they stood in
-the lobby waving their arms in the rite of putting on overcoats. Babbitt
-hinted, “Say, how about a little something to eat? I know a place where
-we could get a swell rarebit, and we might dig up a little drink--that
-is, if you ever touch the stuff.”
-
-“Rather! But why don’t you come to my room? I’ve some Scotch--not half
-bad.”
-
-“Oh, I don’t want to use up all your hootch. It’s darn nice of you,
-but-- You probably want to hit the hay.”
-
-Sir Gerald was transformed. He was beefily yearning. “Oh really, now; I
-haven’t had a decent evening for so long! Having to go to all these
-dances. No chance to discuss business and that sort of thing. Do be a
-good chap and come along. Won’t you?”
-
-“Will I? You bet! I just thought maybe-- Say, by golly, it does do a
-fellow good, don’t it, to sit and visit about business conditions, after
-he’s been to these balls and masquerades and banquets and all that
-society stuff. I often feel that way in Zenith. Sure, you bet I’ll
-come.”
-
-“That’s awfully nice of you.” They beamed along the street. “Look here,
-old chap, can you tell me, do American cities always keep up this
-dreadful social pace? All these magnificent parties?”
-
-“Go on now, quit your kidding! Gosh, you with court balls and functions
-and everything--”
-
-“No, really, old chap! Mother and I--Lady Doak, I should say, we usually
-play a hand of bezique and go to bed at ten. Bless my soul, I couldn’t
-keep up your beastly pace! And talking! All your American women, they
-know so much--culture and that sort of thing. This Mrs. McKelvey--your
-friend--”
-
-“Yuh, old Lucile. Good kid.”
-
-“--she asked me which of the galleries I liked best in Florence. Or was
-it in Firenze? Never been in Italy in my life! And primitives. Did I
-like primitives. Do you know what the deuce a primitive is?”
-
-“Me? I should say not! But I know what a discount for cash is.”
-
-“Rather! So do I, by George! But primitives!”
-
-“Yuh! Primitives!”
-
-They laughed with the sound of a Boosters’ luncheon.
-
-Sir Gerald’s room was, except for his ponderous and durable English
-bags, very much like the room of George F. Babbitt; and quite in the
-manner of Babbitt he disclosed a huge whisky flask, looked proud and
-hospitable, and chuckled, “Say, when, old chap.”
-
-It was after the third drink that Sir Gerald proclaimed, “How do you
-Yankees get the notion that writing chaps like Bertrand Shaw and this
-Wells represent us? The real business England, we think those chaps are
-traitors. Both our countries have their comic Old Aristocracy--you know,
-old county families, hunting people and all that sort of thing--and we
-both have our wretched labor leaders, but we both have a backbone of
-sound business men who run the whole show.”
-
-“You bet. Here’s to the real guys!”
-
-“I’m with you! Here’s to ourselves!”
-
-It was after the fourth drink that Sir Gerald asked humbly, “What do you
-think of North Dakota mortgages?” but it was not till after the fifth
-that Babbitt began to call him “Jerry,” and Sir Gerald confided, “I say,
-do you mind if I pull off my boots?” and ecstatically stretched his
-knightly feet, his poor, tired, hot, swollen feet out on the bed.
-
-After the sixth, Babbitt irregularly arose. “Well, I better be hiking
-along. Jerry, you’re a regular human being! I wish to thunder we’d been
-better acquainted in Zenith. Lookit. Can’t you come back and stay with
-me a while?”
-
-“So sorry--must go to New York to-morrow. Most awfully sorry, old boy. I
-haven’t enjoyed an evening so much since I’ve been in the States. Real
-talk. Not all this social rot. I’d never have let them give me the
-beastly title--and I didn’t get it for nothing, eh?--if I’d thought I’d
-have to talk to women about primitives and polo! Goodish thing to have
-in Nottingham, though; annoyed the mayor most frightfully when I got it;
-and of course the missus likes it. But nobody calls me ‘Jerry’ now--” He
-was almost weeping. “--and nobody in the States has treated me like a
-friend till to-night! Good-by, old chap, good-by! Thanks awfully!”
-
-“Don’t mention it, Jerry. And remember whenever you get to Zenith, the
-latch-string is always out.”
-
-“And don’t forget, old boy, if you ever come to Nottingham, Mother and
-I will be frightfully glad to see you. I shall tell the fellows in
-Nottingham your ideas about Visions and Real Guys--at our next Rotary
-Club luncheon.”
-
-
-IV
-
-Babbitt lay abed at his hotel, imagining the Zenith Athletic Club asking
-him, “What kind of a time d’you have in Chicago?” and his answering,
-“Oh, fair; ran around with Sir Gerald Doak a lot;” picturing himself
-meeting Lucile McKelvey and admonishing her, “You’re all right, Mrs.
-Mac, when you aren’t trying to pull this highbrow pose. It’s just as
-Gerald Doak says to me in Chicago--oh, yes, Jerry’s an old friend of
-mine--the wife and I are thinking of running over to England to stay
-with Jerry in his castle, next year--and he said to me, ‘Georgie, old
-bean, I like Lucile first-rate, but you and me, George, we got to make
-her get over this highty-tighty hooptediddle way she’s got.”
-
-But that evening a thing happened which wrecked his pride.
-
-
-V
-
-At the Regency Hotel cigar-counter he fell to talking with a salesman of
-pianos, and they dined together. Babbitt was filled with friendliness
-and well-being. He enjoyed the gorgeousness of the dining-room: the
-chandeliers, the looped brocade curtains, the portraits of French kings
-against panels of gilded oak. He enjoyed the crowd: pretty women, good
-solid fellows who were “liberal spenders.”
-
-He gasped. He stared, and turned away, and stared again. Three tables
-off, with a doubtful sort of woman, a woman at once coy and withered,
-was Paul Riesling, and Paul was supposed to be in Akron, selling
-tar-roofing. The woman was tapping his hand, mooning at him and
-giggling. Babbitt felt that he had encountered something involved and
-harmful. Paul was talking with the rapt eagerness of a man who is
-telling his troubles. He was concentrated on the woman’s faded eyes.
-Once he held her hand and once, blind to the other guests, he puckered
-his lips as though he was pretending to kiss her. Babbitt had so strong
-an impulse to go to Paul that he could feel his body uncoiling, his
-shoulders moving, but he felt, desperately, that he must be diplomatic,
-and not till he saw Paul paying the check did he bluster to the
-piano-salesman, “By golly--friend of mine over there--’scuse me
-second--just say hello to him.”
-
-He touched Paul’s shoulder, and cried, “Well, when did you hit town?”
-
-Paul glared up at him, face hardening. “Oh, hello, George. Thought you’d
-gone back to Zenith.” He did not introduce his companion. Babbitt peeped
-at her. She was a flabbily pretty, weakly flirtatious woman of forty-two
-or three, in an atrocious flowery hat. Her rouging was thorough but
-unskilful.
-
-“Where you staying, Paulibus?”
-
-The woman turned, yawned, examined her nails. She seemed accustomed to
-not being introduced.
-
-Paul grumbled, “Campbell Inn, on the South Side.”
-
-“Alone?” It sounded insinuating.
-
-“Yes! Unfortunately!” Furiously Paul turned toward the woman, smiling
-with a fondness sickening to Babbitt. “May! Want to introduce you. Mrs.
-Arnold, this is my old--acquaintance, George Babbitt.”
-
-“Pleasmeech,” growled Babbitt, while she gurgled, “Oh, I’m very pleased
-to meet any friend of Mr. Riesling’s, I’m sure.”
-
-Babbitt demanded, “Be back there later this evening, Paul? I’ll drop
-down and see you.”
-
-“No, better-- We better lunch together to-morrow.”
-
-“All right, but I’ll see you to-night, too, Paul. I’ll go down to your
-hotel, and I’ll wait for you!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-
-I
-
-He sat smoking with the piano-salesman, clinging to the warm refuge of
-gossip, afraid to venture into thoughts of Paul. He was the more affable
-on the surface as secretly he became more apprehensive, felt more
-hollow. He was certain that Paul was in Chicago without Zilla’s
-knowledge, and that he was doing things not at all moral and secure.
-When the salesman yawned that he had to write up his orders, Babbitt
-left him, left the hotel, in leisurely calm. But savagely he said
-“Campbell Inn!” to the taxi-driver. He sat agitated on the slippery
-leather seat, in that chill dimness which smelled of dust and perfume
-and Turkish cigarettes. He did not heed the snowy lake-front, the dark
-spaces and sudden bright corners in the unknown land south of the Loop.
-
-The office of the Campbell Inn was hard, bright, new; the night clerk
-harder and brighter. “Yep?” he said to Babbitt.
-
-“Mr. Paul Riesling registered here?”
-
-“Yep.”
-
-“Is he in now?”
-
-“Nope.”
-
-“Then if you’ll give me his key, I’ll wait for him.”
-
-“Can’t do that, brother. Wait down here if you wanna.”
-
-Babbitt had spoken with the deference which all the Clan of Good Fellows
-give to hotel clerks. Now he said with snarling abruptness:
-
-“I may have to wait some time. I’m Riesling’s brother-in-law. I’ll go up
-to his room. D’ I look like a sneak-thief?”
-
-His voice was low and not pleasant. With considerable haste the clerk
-took down the key, protesting, “I never said you looked like a
-sneak-thief. Just rules of the hotel. But if you want to--”
-
-On his way up in the elevator Babbitt wondered why he was here. Why
-shouldn’t Paul be dining with a respectable married woman? Why had he
-lied to the clerk about being Paul’s brother-in-law? He had acted like a
-child. He must be careful not to say foolish dramatic things to Paul. As
-he settled down he tried to look pompous and placid. Then the
-thought-- Suicide. He’d been dreading that, without knowing it. Paul
-would be just the person to do something like that. He must be out of
-his head or he wouldn’t be confiding in that--that dried-up hag.
-
-Zilla (oh, damn Zilla! how gladly he’d throttle that nagging fiend of a
-woman!)--she’d probably succeeded at last, and driven Paul crazy.
-
-Suicide. Out there in the lake, way out, beyond the piled ice along the
-shore. It would be ghastly cold to drop into the water to-night.
-
-Or--throat cut--in the bathroom--
-
-Babbitt flung into Paul’s bathroom. It was empty. He smiled, feebly.
-
-He pulled at his choking collar, looked at his watch, opened the window
-to stare down at the street, looked at his watch, tried to read the
-evening paper lying on the glass-topped bureau, looked again at his
-watch. Three minutes had gone by since he had first looked at it.
-
-And he waited for three hours.
-
-He was sitting fixed, chilled, when the doorknob turned. Paul came in
-glowering.
-
-“Hello,” Paul said. “Been waiting?”
-
-“Yuh, little while.”
-
-“Well?”
-
-“Well what? Just thought I’d drop in to see how you made out in Akron.”
-
-“I did all right. What difference does it make?”
-
-“Why, gosh, Paul, what are you sore about?”
-
-“What are you butting into my affairs for?”
-
-“Why, Paul, that’s no way to talk! I’m not butting into nothing. I was
-so glad to see your ugly old phiz that I just dropped in to say howdy.”
-
-“Well, I’m not going to have anybody following me around and trying to
-boss me. I’ve had all of that I’m going to stand!”
-
-“Well, gosh, I’m not--”
-
-“I didn’t like the way you looked at May Arnold, or the snooty way you
-talked.”
-
-“Well, all right then! If you think I’m a buttinsky, then I’ll just butt
-in! I don’t know who your May Arnold is, but I know doggone good and
-well that you and her weren’t talking about tar-roofing, no, nor about
-playing the violin, neither! If you haven’t got any moral consideration
-for yourself, you ought to have some for your position in the community.
-The idea of your going around places gawping into a female’s eyes like a
-love-sick pup! I can understand a fellow slipping once, but I don’t
-propose to see a fellow that’s been as chummy with me as you have
-getting started on the downward path and sneaking off from his wife,
-even as cranky a one as Zilla, to go woman-chasing--”
-
-“Oh, you’re a perfectly moral little husband!”
-
-“I am, by God! I’ve never looked at any woman except Myra since I’ve
-been married--practically--and I never will! I tell you there’s nothing
-to immorality. It don’t pay. Can’t you see, old man, it just makes Zilla
-still crankier?”
-
-Slight of resolution as he was of body, Paul threw his snow-beaded
-overcoat on the floor and crouched on a flimsy cane chair. “Oh, you’re
-an old blowhard, and you know less about morality than Tinka, but you’re
-all right, Georgie. But you can’t understand that-- I’m through. I can’t
-go Zilla’s hammering any longer. She’s made up her mind that I’m a
-devil, and-- Reg’lar Inquisition. Torture. She enjoys it. It’s a game to
-see how sore she can make me. And me, either it’s find a little
-comfort, any comfort, anywhere, or else do something a lot worse. Now
-this Mrs. Arnold, she’s not so young, but she’s a fine woman and she
-understands a fellow, and she’s had her own troubles.”
-
-“Yea! I suppose she’s one of these hens whose husband ‘doesn’t
-understand her’!”
-
-“I don’t know. Maybe. He was killed in the war.”
-
-Babbitt lumbered up, stood beside Paul patting his shoulder, making soft
-apologetic noises.
-
-“Honest, George, she’s a fine woman, and she’s had one hell of a time.
-We manage to jolly each other up a lot. We tell each other we’re the
-dandiest pair on earth. Maybe we don’t believe it, but it helps a lot to
-have somebody with whom you can be perfectly simple, and not all this
-discussing--explaining--”
-
-“And that’s as far as you go?”
-
-“It is not! Go on! Say it!”
-
-“Well, I don’t-- I can’t say I like it, but--” With a burst which left
-him feeling large and shining with generosity, “it’s none of my darn
-business! I’ll do anything I can for you, if there’s anything I can do.”
-
-“There might be. I judge from Zilla’s letters that’ve been forwarded
-from Akron that she’s getting suspicious about my staying away so long.
-She’d be perfectly capable of having me shadowed, and of coming to
-Chicago and busting into a hotel dining-room and bawling me out before
-everybody.”
-
-“I’ll take care of Zilla. I’ll hand her a good fairy-story when I get
-back to Zenith.”
-
-“I don’t know-- I don’t think you better try it. You’re a good fellow,
-but I don’t know that diplomacy is your strong point.” Babbitt looked
-hurt, then irritated. “I mean with women! With women, I mean. Course
-they got to go some to beat you in business diplomacy, but I just mean
-with women. Zilla may do a lot of rough talking, but she’s pretty
-shrewd. She’d have the story out of you in no time.”
-
-“Well, all right, but--” Babbitt was still pathetic at not being allowed
-to play Secret Agent. Paul soothed:
-
-“Course maybe you might tell her you’d been in Akron and seen me there.”
-
-“Why, sure, you bet! Don’t I have to go look at that candy-store
-property in Akron? Don’t I? Ain’t it a shame I have to stop off there
-when I’m so anxious to get home? Ain’t it a regular shame? I’ll say it
-is! I’ll say it’s a doggone shame!”
-
-“Fine. But for glory hallelujah’s sake don’t go putting any fancy
-fixings on the story. When men lie they always try to make it too
-artistic, and that’s why women get suspicious. And-- Let’s have a drink,
-Georgie. I’ve got some gin and a little vermouth.”
-
-The Paul who normally refused a second cocktail took a second now, and a
-third. He became red-eyed and thick-tongued. He was embarrassingly
-jocular and salacious.
-
-In the taxicab Babbitt incredulously found tears crowding into his eyes.
-
-
-II
-
-He had not told Paul of his plan but he did stop at Akron, between
-trains, for the one purpose of sending to Zilla a post-card with “Had to
-come here for the day, ran into Paul.” In Zenith he called on her. If
-for public appearances Zilla was over-coiffed, over-painted, and
-resolutely corseted, for private misery she wore a filthy blue
-dressing-gown and torn stockings thrust into streaky pink satin mules.
-Her face was sunken. She seemed to have but half as much hair as Babbitt
-remembered, and that half was stringy. She sat in a rocker amid a debris
-of candy-boxes and cheap magazines, and she sounded dolorous when she
-did not sound derisive. But Babbitt was exceedingly breezy:
-
-“Well, well, Zil, old dear, having a good loaf while hubby’s away?
-That’s the idea! I’ll bet a hat Myra never got up till ten, while I was
-in Chicago. Say, could I borrow your thermos--just dropped in to see if
-I could borrow your thermos bottle. We’re going to have a toboggan
-party--want to take some coffee _mit_. Oh, did you get my card from
-Akron, saying I’d run into Paul?”
-
-“Yes. What was he doing?”
-
-“How do you mean?” He unbuttoned his overcoat, sat tentatively on the
-arm of a chair.
-
-“You know how I mean!” She slapped the pages of a magazine with an
-irritable clatter. “I suppose he was trying to make love to some hotel
-waitress or manicure girl or somebody.”
-
-“Hang it, you’re always letting on that Paul goes round chasing skirts.
-He doesn’t, in the first place, and if he did, it would prob’ly be
-because you keep hinting at him and dinging at him so much. I hadn’t
-meant to, Zilla, but since Paul is away, in Akron--”
-
-“He really is in Akron? I know he has some horrible woman that he writes
-to in Chicago.”
-
-“Didn’t I tell you I saw him in Akron? What ’re you trying to do? Make
-me out a liar?”
-
-“No, but I just-- I get so worried.”
-
-“Now, there you are! That’s what gets me! Here you love Paul, and yet
-you plague him and cuss him out as if you hated him. I simply can’t
-understand why it is that the more some folks love people, the harder
-they try to make ’em miserable.”
-
-“You love Ted and Rone-- I suppose--and yet you nag them.”
-
-“Oh. Well. That. That’s different. Besides, I don’t nag ’em. Not what
-you’d call nagging. But zize saying: Now, here’s Paul, the nicest, most
-sensitive critter on God’s green earth. You ought to be ashamed of
-yourself the way you pan him. Why, you talk to him like a washerwoman.
-I’m surprised you can act so doggone common, Zilla!”
-
-She brooded over her linked fingers. “Oh, I know. I do go and get mean
-sometimes, and I’m sorry afterwards. But, oh, Georgie, Paul is so
-aggravating! Honestly, I’ve tried awfully hard, these last few years, to
-be nice to him, but just because I used to be spiteful--or I seemed so;
-I wasn’t, really, but I used to speak up and say anything that came into
-my head--and so he made up his mind that everything was my fault.
-Everything can’t always be my fault, can it? And now if I get to
-fussing, he just turns silent, oh, so dreadfully silent, and he won’t
-look at me--he just ignores me. He simply isn’t human! And he
-deliberately keeps it up till I bust out and say a lot of things I don’t
-mean. So silent-- Oh, you righteous men! How wicked you are! How rotten
-wicked!”
-
-They thrashed things over and over for half an hour. At the end, weeping
-drably, Zilla promised to restrain herself.
-
-Paul returned four days later, and the Babbitts and Rieslings went
-festively to the movies and had chop suey at a Chinese restaurant. As
-they walked to the restaurant through a street of tailor shops and
-barber shops, the two wives in front, chattering about cooks, Babbitt
-murmured to Paul, “Zil seems a lot nicer now.”
-
-“Yes, she has been, except once or twice. But it’s too late now. I
-just-- I’m not going to discuss it, but I’m afraid of her. There’s
-nothing left. I don’t ever want to see her. Some day I’m going to break
-away from her. Somehow.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-
-The International Organization of Boosters’ Clubs has become a
-world-force for optimism, manly pleasantry, and good business. Chapters
-are to be found now in thirty countries. Nine hundred and twenty of the
-thousand chapters, however, are in the United States.
-
-None of these is more ardent than the Zenith Boosters’ Club.
-
-The second March lunch of the Zenith Boosters was the most important of
-the year, as it was to be followed by the annual election of officers.
-There was agitation abroad. The lunch was held in the ballroom of the
-O’Hearn House. As each of the four hundred Boosters entered he took from
-a wallboard a huge celluloid button announcing his name, his nickname,
-and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow
-Booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbitt jovially
-checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of “Hello, Chet!” and
-“How’re you, Shorty!” and “Top o’ the mornin’, Mac!”
-
-They sat at friendly tables for eight, choosing places by lot. Babbitt
-was with Albert Boos the merchant tailor, Hector Seybolt of the Little
-Sweetheart Condensed Milk Company, Emil Wengert the jeweler, Professor
-Pumphrey of the Riteway Business College, Dr. Walter Gorbutt, Roy
-Teegarten the photographer, and Ben Berkey the photo-engraver. One of
-the merits of the Boosters’ Club was that only two persons from each
-department of business were permitted to join, so that you at once
-encountered the Ideals of other occupations, and realized the
-metaphysical oneness of all occupations--plumbing and portrait-painting,
-medicine and the manufacture of chewing-gum.
-
-Babbitt’s table was particularly happy to-day, because Professor
-Pumphrey had just had a birthday, and was therefore open to teasing.
-
-“Let’s pump Pump about how old he is!” said Emil Wengert.
-
-“No, let’s paddle him with a dancing-pump!” said Ben Berkey.
-
-But it was Babbitt who had the applause, with “Don’t talk about pumps to
-that guy! The only pump he knows is a bottle! Honest, they tell me he’s
-starting a class in home-brewing at the ole college!”
-
-At each place was the Boosters’ Club booklet, listing the members.
-Though the object of the club was good-fellowship, yet they never lost
-sight of the importance of doing a little more business. After each name
-was the member’s occupation. There were scores of advertisements in the
-booklet, and on one page the admonition: “There’s no rule that you have
-to trade with your Fellow Boosters, but get wise, boy--what’s the use of
-letting all this good money get outside of our happy fambly?” And at
-each place, to-day, there was a present; a card printed in artistic red
-and black:
-
-                        SERVICE AND BOOSTERISM
-
-     Service finds its finest opportunity and development only in its
-     broadest and deepest application and the consideration of its
-     perpetual action upon reaction. I believe the highest type of
-     Service, like the most progressive tenets of ethics, senses
-     unceasingly and is motived by active adherence and loyalty to that
-     which is the essential principle of Boosterism--Good Citizenship in
-     all its factors and aspects.
-
-                                                          DAD PETERSEN.
-
-           Compliments of Dadbury Petersen Advertising Corp.
-
-                       “Ads, not Fads, at Dad’s”
-
-
-
-The Boosters all read Mr. Peterson’s aphorism and said they understood
-it perfectly.
-
-The meeting opened with the regular weekly “stunts.” Retiring President
-Vergil Gunch was in the chair, his stiff hair like a hedge, his voice
-like a brazen gong of festival. Members who had brought guests
-introduced them publicly. “This tall red-headed piece of misinformation
-is the sporting editor of the _Press_,” said Willis Ijams; and H. H.
-Hazen, the druggist, chanted, “Boys, when you’re on a long motor tour
-and finally get to a romantic spot or scene and draw up and remark to
-the wife, ‘This is certainly a romantic place,’ it sends a glow right up
-and down your vertebræ. Well, my guest to-day is from such a place,
-Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in the beautiful Southland, with memories of
-good old General Robert E. Lee and of that brave soul, John Brown who,
-like every good Booster, goes marching on--”
-
-There were two especially distinguished guests: the leading man of the
-“Bird of Paradise” company, playing this week at the Dodsworth Theater,
-and the mayor of Zenith, the Hon. Lucas Prout.
-
-Vergil Gunch thundered, “When we manage to grab this celebrated Thespian
-off his lovely aggregation of beautiful actresses--and I got to admit I
-butted right into his dressing-room and told him how the Boosters
-appreciated the high-class artistic performance he’s giving us--and
-don’t forget that the treasurer of the Dodsworth is a Booster and will
-appreciate our patronage--and when on top of that we yank Hizzonor out
-of his multifarious duties at City Hall, then I feel we’ve done
-ourselves proud, and Mr. Prout will now say a few words about the
-problems and duties--”
-
-By rising vote the Boosters decided which was the handsomest and which
-the ugliest guest, and to each of them was given a bunch of carnations,
-donated, President Gunch noted, by Brother Booster H. G. Yeager, the
-Jennifer Avenue florist.
-
-Each week, in rotation, four Boosters were privileged to obtain the
-pleasures of generosity and of publicity by donating goods or services
-to four fellow-members, chosen by lot. There was laughter, this week,
-when it was announced that one of the contributors was Barnabas Joy, the
-undertaker. Everybody whispered, “I can think of a coupla good guys to
-be buried if his donation is a free funeral!”
-
-Through all these diversions the Boosters were lunching on chicken
-croquettes, peas, fried potatoes, coffee, apple pie, and American
-cheese. Gunch did not lump the speeches. Presently he called on the
-visiting secretary of the Zenith Rotary Club, a rival organization. The
-secretary had the distinction of possessing State Motor Car License
-Number 5.
-
-The Rotary secretary laughingly admitted that wherever he drove in the
-state so low a number created a sensation, and “though it was pretty
-nice to have the honor, yet traffic cops remembered it only too darn
-well, and sometimes he didn’t know but what he’d almost as soon have
-just plain B56,876 or something like that. Only let any doggone Booster
-try to get Number 5 away from a live Rotarian next year, and watch the
-fur fly! And if they’d permit him, he’d wind up by calling for a cheer
-for the Boosters and Rotarians and the Kiwanis all together!”
-
-Babbitt sighed to Professor Pumphrey, “Be pretty nice to have as low a
-number as that! Everybody’d say, ‘He must be an important guy!’ Wonder
-how he got it? I’ll bet he wined and dined the superintendent of the
-Motor License Bureau to a fare-you-well!”
-
-Then Chum Frink addressed them:
-
-“Some of you may feel that it’s out of place here to talk on a strictly
-highbrow and artistic subject, but I want to come out flatfooted and ask
-you boys to O.K. the proposition of a Symphony Orchestra for Zenith.
-Now, where a lot of you make your mistake is in assuming that if you
-don’t like classical music and all that junk, you ought to oppose it.
-Now, I want to confess that, though I’m a literary guy by profession, I
-don’t care a rap for all this long-haired music. I’d rather listen to a
-good jazz band any time than to some piece by Beethoven that hasn’t any
-more tune to it than a bunch of fighting cats, and you couldn’t whistle
-it to save your life! But that isn’t the point. Culture has become as
-necessary an adornment and advertisement for a city to-day as pavements
-or bank-clearances. It’s Culture, in theaters and art-galleries and so
-on, that brings thousands of visitors to New York every year and, to be
-frank, for all our splendid attainments we haven’t yet got the Culture
-of a New York or Chicago or Boston--or at least we don’t get the credit
-for it. The thing to do then, as a live bunch of go-getters, is to
-_capitalize Culture_; to go right out and grab it.
-
-“Pictures and books are fine for those that have the time to study ’em,
-but they don’t shoot out on the road and holler ‘This is what little old
-Zenith can put up in the way of Culture.’ That’s precisely what a
-Symphony Orchestra does do. Look at the credit Minneapolis and
-Cincinnati get. An orchestra with first-class musickers and a swell
-conductor--and I believe we ought to do the thing up brown and get one
-of the highest-paid conductors on the market, providing he ain’t a
-Hun--it goes right into Beantown and New York and Washington; it plays
-at the best theaters to the most cultured and moneyed people; it gives
-such class-advertising as a town can get in no other way; and the guy
-who is so short-sighted as to crab this orchestra proposition is passing
-up the chance to impress the glorious name of Zenith on some big New
-York millionaire that might--that might establish a branch factory here!
-
-“I could also go into the fact that for our daughters who show an
-interest in highbrow music and may want to teach it, having an A1 local
-organization is of great benefit, but let’s keep this on a practical
-basis, and I call on you good brothers to whoop it up for Culture and a
-World-beating Symphony Orchestra!”
-
-They applauded.
-
-To a rustle of excitement President Gunch proclaimed, “Gentlemen, we
-will now proceed to the annual election of officers.” For each of the
-six offices, three candidates had been chosen by a committee. The second
-name among the candidates for vice-president was Babbitt’s.
-
-He was surprised. He looked self-conscious. His heart pounded. He was
-still more agitated when the ballots were counted and Gunch said, “It’s
-a pleasure to announce that Georgie Babbitt will be the next assistant
-gavel-wielder. I know of no man who stands more stanchly for common
-sense and enterprise than good old George. Come on, let’s give him our
-best long yell!”
-
-As they adjourned, a hundred men crushed in to slap his back. He had
-never known a higher moment. He drove away in a blur of wonder. He
-lunged into his office, chuckling to Miss McGoun, “Well, I guess you
-better congratulate your boss! Been elected vice-president of the
-Boosters!”
-
-He was disappointed. She answered only, “Yes-- Oh, Mrs. Babbitt’s been
-trying to get you on the ’phone.” But the new salesman, Fritz Weilinger,
-said, “By golly, chief, say, that’s great, that’s perfectly great! I’m
-tickled to death! Congratulations!”
-
-Babbitt called the house, and crowed to his wife, “Heard you were trying
-to get me, Myra. Say, you got to hand it to little Georgie, this time!
-Better talk careful! You are now addressing the vice-president of the
-Boosters’ Club!”
-
-“Oh, Georgie--”
-
-“Pretty nice, huh? Willis Ijams is the new president, but when he’s
-away, little ole Georgie takes the gavel and whoops ’em up and
-introduces the speakers--no matter if they’re the governor
-himself--and--”
-
-“George! Listen!”
-
-“--it puts him in solid with big men like Doc Dilling and--”
-
-“George! Paul Riesling--”
-
-“Yes, sure, I’ll ’phone Paul and let him know about it right away.”
-
-“Georgie! _Listen!_ Paul’s in jail. He shot his wife, he shot Zilla,
-this noon. She may not live.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-
-I
-
-He drove to the City Prison, not blindly, but with unusual fussy care at
-corners, the fussiness of an old woman potting plants. It kept him from
-facing the obscenity of fate.
-
-The attendant said, “Naw, you can’t see any of the prisoners till
-three-thirty--visiting-hour.”
-
-It was three. For half an hour Babbitt sat looking at a calendar and a
-clock on a whitewashed wall. The chair was hard and mean and creaky.
-People went through the office and, he thought, stared at him. He felt a
-belligerent defiance which broke into a wincing fear of this machine
-which was grinding Paul--Paul--
-
-Exactly at half-past three he sent in his name.
-
-The attendant returned with “Riesling says he don’t want to see you.”
-
-“You’re crazy! You didn’t give him my name! Tell him it’s George wants
-to see him, George Babbitt.”
-
-“Yuh, I told him, all right, all right! He said he didn’t want to see
-you.”
-
-“Then take me in anyway.”
-
-“Nothing doing. If you ain’t his lawyer, if he don’t want to see you,
-that’s all there is to it.”
-
-“But, my _God_-- Say, let me see the warden.”
-
-“He’s busy. Come on, now, you--” Babbitt reared over him. The attendant
-hastily changed to a coaxing “You can come back and try to-morrow.
-Probably the poor guy is off his nut.”
-
-Babbitt drove, not at all carefully or fussily, sliding viciously past
-trucks, ignoring the truckmen’s curses, to the City Hall; he stopped
-with a grind of wheels against the curb, and ran up the marble steps to
-the office of the Hon. Mr. Lucas Prout, the mayor. He bribed the mayor’s
-doorman with a dollar; he was instantly inside, demanding, “You remember
-me, Mr. Prout? Babbitt--vice-president of the Boosters--campaigned for
-you? Say, have you heard about poor Riesling? Well, I want an order on
-the warden or whatever you call um of the City Prison to take me back
-and see him. Good. Thanks.”
-
-In fifteen minutes he was pounding down the prison corridor to a cage
-where Paul Riesling sat on a cot, twisted like an old beggar, legs
-crossed, arms in a knot, biting at his clenched fist.
-
-Paul looked up blankly as the keeper unlocked the cell, admitted
-Babbitt, and left them together. He spoke slowly: “Go on! Be moral!”
-
-Babbitt plumped on the couch beside him. “I’m not going to be moral! I
-don’t care what happened! I just want to do anything I can. I’m glad
-Zilla got what was coming to her.”
-
-Paul said argumentatively, “Now, don’t go jumping on Zilla. I’ve been
-thinking; maybe she hasn’t had any too easy a time. Just after I shot
-her-- I didn’t hardly mean to, but she got to deviling me so I went
-crazy, just for a second, and pulled out that old revolver you and I
-used to shoot rabbits with, and took a crack at her. Didn’t hardly mean
-to-- After that, when I was trying to stop the blood-- It was terrible
-what it did to her shoulder, and she had beautiful skin-- Maybe she won’t
-die. I hope it won’t leave her skin all scarred. But just afterward,
-when I was hunting through the bathroom for some cotton to stop the
-blood, I ran onto a little fuzzy yellow duck we hung on the tree one
-Christmas, and I remembered she and I’d been awfully happy then-- Hell. I
-can’t hardly believe it’s me here.” As Babbitt’s arm tightened about his
-shoulder, Paul sighed, “I’m glad you came. But I thought maybe you’d
-lecture me, and when you’ve committed a murder, and been brought here
-and everything--there was a big crowd outside the apartment house, all
-staring, and the cops took me through it-- Oh, I’m not going to talk
-about it any more.”
-
-But he went on, in a monotonous, terrified insane mumble. To divert him
-Babbitt said, “Why, you got a scar on your cheek.”
-
-“Yes. That’s where the cop hit me. I suppose cops get a lot of fun out
-of lecturing murderers, too. He was a big fellow. And they wouldn’t let
-me help carry Zilla down to the ambulance.”
-
-“Paul! Quit it! Listen: she won’t die, and when it’s all over you and
-I’ll go off to Maine again. And maybe we can get that May Arnold to go
-along. I’ll go up to Chicago and ask her. Good woman, by golly. And
-afterwards I’ll see that you get started in business out West somewhere,
-maybe Seattle--they say that’s a lovely city.”
-
-Paul was half smiling. It was Babbitt who rambled now. He could not tell
-whether Paul was heeding, but he droned on till the coming of Paul’s
-lawyer, P. J. Maxwell, a thin, busy, unfriendly man who nodded at
-Babbitt and hinted, “If Riesling and I could be alone for a moment--”
-
-Babbitt wrung Paul’s hands, and waited in the office till Maxwell came
-pattering out. “Look, old man, what can I do?” he begged.
-
-“Nothing. Not a thing. Not just now,” said Maxwell. “Sorry. Got to
-hurry. And don’t try to see him. I’ve had the doctor give him a shot of
-morphine, so he’ll sleep.”
-
-It seemed somehow wicked to return to the office. Babbitt felt as though
-he had just come from a funeral. He drifted out to the City Hospital to
-inquire about Zilla. She was not likely to die, he learned. The bullet
-from Paul’s huge old .44 army revolver had smashed her shoulder and torn
-upward and out.
-
-He wandered home and found his wife radiant with the horrified interest
-we have in the tragedies of our friends. “Of course Paul isn’t
-altogether to blame, but this is what comes of his chasing after other
-women instead of bearing his cross in a Christian way,” she exulted.
-
-He was too languid to respond as he desired. He said what was to be said
-about the Christian bearing of crosses, and went out to clean the car.
-Dully, patiently, he scraped linty grease from the drip-pan, gouged at
-the mud caked on the wheels. He used up many minutes in washing his
-hands; scoured them with gritty kitchen soap; rejoiced in hurting his
-plump knuckles. “Damn soft hands--like a woman’s. Aah!”
-
-At dinner, when his wife began the inevitable, he bellowed, “I forbid
-any of you to say a word about Paul! I’ll ’tend to all the talking about
-this that’s necessary, hear me? There’s going to be one house in this
-scandal-mongering town to-night that isn’t going to spring the
-holier-than-thou. And throw those filthy evening papers out of the
-house!”
-
-But he himself read the papers, after dinner.
-
-Before nine he set out for the house of Lawyer Maxwell. He was received
-without cordiality. “Well?” said Maxwell.
-
-“I want to offer my services in the trial. I’ve got an idea. Why
-couldn’t I go on the stand and swear I was there, and she pulled the gun
-first and he wrestled with her and the gun went off accidentally?”
-
-“And perjure yourself?”
-
-“Huh? Yes, I suppose it would be perjury. Oh-- Would it help?”
-
-“But, my dear fellow! Perjury!”
-
-“Oh, don’t be a fool! Excuse me, Maxwell; I didn’t mean to get your
-goat. I just mean: I’ve known and you’ve known many and many a case of
-perjury, just to annex some rotten little piece of real estate, and here
-where it’s a case of saving Paul from going to prison, I’d perjure
-myself black in the face.”
-
-“No. Aside from the ethics of the matter, I’m afraid it isn’t
-practicable. The prosecutor would tear your testimony to pieces. It’s
-known that only Riesling and his wife were there at the time.”
-
-“Then, look here! Let me go on the stand and swear--and this would be
-the God’s truth--that she pestered him till he kind of went crazy.”
-
-“No. Sorry. Riesling absolutely refuses to have any testimony reflecting
-on his wife. He insists on pleading guilty.”
-
-“Then let me get up and testify something--whatever you say. Let me do
-_something_!”
-
-“I’m sorry, Babbitt, but the best thing you can do-- I hate to say it,
-but you could help us most by keeping strictly out of it.”
-
-Babbitt, revolving his hat like a defaulting poor tenant, winced so
-visibly that Maxwell condescended:
-
-“I don’t like to hurt your feelings, but you see we both want to do our
-best for Riesling, and we mustn’t consider any other factor. The trouble
-with you, Babbitt, is that you’re one of these fellows who talk too
-readily. You like to hear your own voice. If there were anything for
-which I could put you in the witness-box, you’d get going and give the
-whole show away. Sorry. Now I must look over some papers-- So sorry.”
-
-
-II
-
-He spent most of the next morning nerving himself to face the garrulous
-world of the Athletic Club. They would talk about Paul; they would be
-lip-licking and rotten. But at the Roughnecks’ Table they did not
-mention Paul. They spoke with zeal of the coming baseball season. He
-loved them as he never had before.
-
-
-III
-
-He had, doubtless from some story-book, pictured Paul’s trial as a long
-struggle, with bitter arguments, a 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 church and all the decencies. He liked none of
-the books. In them he felt a spirit of rebellion against niceness and
-solid-citizenship. These authors--and he supposed they were famous ones,
-too--did not seem to care about telling a good story which would enable
-a fellow to forget his troubles. He sighed. He noted a book, “The Three
-Black Pennies,” by Joseph Hergesheimer. Ah, that was something like it!
-It would be an adventure story, maybe about counterfeiting--detectives
-sneaking up on the old house at night. He tucked the book under his arm,
-he clumped down-stairs and solemnly began to read, under the piano-lamp:
-
-“A twilight like blue dust sifted into the shallow fold of the thickly
-wooded hills. It was early October, but a crisping frost had already
-stamped the maple trees with gold, the Spanish oaks were hung with
-patches of wine red, the sumach was brilliant in the darkening
-underbrush. A pattern of wild geese, flying low and unconcerned above
-the hills, wavered against the serene ashen evening. Howat Penny,
-standing in the comparative clearing of a road, decided that the
-shifting regular flight would not come close enough for a shot.... He
-had no intention of hunting the geese. With the drooping of day his
-keenness had evaporated; an habitual indifference strengthened,
-permeating him....”
-
-There it was again: discontent with the good common ways. Babbitt laid
-down the book and listened to the stillness. The inner doors of the
-house were open. He heard from the kitchen the steady drip of the
-refrigerator, a rhythm demanding and disquieting. He roamed to the
-window. The summer evening was foggy and, seen through the wire screen,
-the street lamps were crosses of pale fire. The whole world was
-abnormal. While he brooded, Verona and Ted came in and went up to bed.
-Silence thickened in the sleeping house. He put on his hat, his
-respectable derby, lighted a cigar, and walked up and down before the
-house, a portly, worthy, unimaginative figure, humming “Silver Threads
-among the Gold.” He casually considered, “Might call up Paul.” Then he
-remembered. He saw Paul in a jailbird’s uniform, but while he agonized
-he didn’t believe the tale. It was part of the unreality of this
-fog-enchanted evening.
-
-If she were here Myra would be hinting, “Isn’t it late, Georgie?” He
-tramped in forlorn and unwanted freedom. Fog hid the house now. The
-world was uncreated, a chaos without turmoil or desire.
-
-Through the mist came a man at so feverish a pace that he seemed to
-dance with fury as he entered the orb of glow from a street-lamp. At
-each step he brandished his stick and brought it down with a crash. His
-glasses on their broad pretentious ribbon banged against his stomach.
-Babbitt incredulously saw that it was Chum Frink.
-
-Frink stopped, focused his vision, and spoke with gravity:
-
-“There’s another fool. George Babbitt. Lives for renting
-howshes--houses. Know who I am? I’m traitor to poetry. I’m drunk. I’m
-talking too much. I don’t care. Know what I could’ve been? I could’ve
-been a Gene Field or a James Whitcomb Riley. Maybe a Stevenson. I
-could’ve. Whimsies. ’Magination. Lissen. Lissen to this. Just made it
-up:
-
-    Glittering summery meadowy noise
-    Of beetles and bums and respectable boys.
-
-Hear that? Whimzh--whimsy. I made that up. _I_ don’t know what it means!
-Beginning good verse. Chile’s Garden Verses. And whadi write? Tripe!
-Cheer-up poems. All tripe! Could have written-- Too late!”
-
-He darted on with an alarming plunge, seeming always to pitch forward
-yet never quite falling. Babbitt would have been no more astonished and
-no less had a ghost skipped out of the fog carrying his head. He
-accepted Frink with vast apathy; he grunted, “Poor boob!” and
-straightway forgot him.
-
-He plodded into the house, deliberately went to the refrigerator and
-rifled it. When Mrs. Babbitt was at home, this was one of the major
-household crimes. He stood before the covered laundry tubs, eating a
-chicken leg and half a saucer of raspberry jelly, and grumbling over a
-clammy cold boiled potato. He was thinking. It was coming to him that
-perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practised it was futile;
-that heaven as portrayed by the Reverend Dr. John Jennison Drew was
-neither probable nor very interesting; that he hadn’t much pleasure out
-of making money; that it was of doubtful worth to rear children merely
-that they might rear children who would rear children. What was it all
-about? What did he want?
-
-He blundered into the living-room, lay on the davenport, hands behind
-his head.
-
-What did he want? Wealth? Social position? Travel? Servants? Yes, but
-only incidentally.
-
-“I give it up,” he sighed.
-
-But he did know that he wanted the presence of Paul Riesling; and from
-that he stumbled into the admission that he wanted the fairy girl--in
-the flesh. If there had been a woman whom he loved, he would have fled
-to her, humbled his forehead on her knees.
-
-He thought of his stenographer, Miss McGoun. He thought of the prettiest
-of the manicure girls at the Hotel Thornleigh barber shop. As he fell
-asleep on the davenport he felt that he had found something in life, and
-that he had made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was
-decent and normal.
-
-
-II
-
-He had forgotten, next morning, that he was a conscious rebel, but he
-was irritable in the office and at the eleven o’clock drive of telephone
-calls and visitors he did something he had often desired and never
-dared: he left the office without excuses to those slave-drivers his
-employees, and went to the movies. He enjoyed the right to be alone. He
-came out with a vicious determination to do what he pleased.
-
-As he approached the Roughnecks’ Table at the club, everybody laughed.
-
-“Well, here’s the millionaire!” said Sidney Finkelstein.
-
-“Yes, I saw him in his Locomobile!” said Professor Pumphrey.
-
-“Gosh, it must be great to be a smart guy like Georgie!” moaned Vergil
-Gunch. “He’s probably stolen all of Dorchester. I’d hate to leave a poor
-little defenseless piece of property lying around where he could get his
-hooks on it!”
-
-They had, Babbitt perceived, “something on him.” Also, they “had their
-kidding clothes on.” Ordinarily he would have been delighted at the
-honor implied in being chaffed, but he was suddenly touchy. He grunted,
-“Yuh, sure; maybe I’ll take you guys on as office boys!” He was
-impatient as the jest elaborately rolled on to its dénouement.
-
-“Of course he may have been meeting a girl,” they said, and “No, I think
-he was waiting for his old roommate, Sir Jerusalem Doak.”
-
-He exploded, “Oh, spring it, spring it, you boneheads! What’s the great
-joke?”
-
-“Hurray! George is peeved!” snickered Sidney Finkelstein, while a grin
-went round the table. Gunch revealed the shocking truth: He had seen
-Babbitt coming out of a motion-picture theater--at noon!
-
-They kept it up. With a hundred variations, a hundred guffaws, they
-said that he had gone to the movies during business-hours. He didn’t so
-much mind Gunch, but he was annoyed by Sidney Finkelstein, that brisk,
-lean, red-headed explainer of jokes. He was bothered, too, by the lump
-of ice in his glass of water. It was too large; it spun round and burned
-his nose when he tried to drink. He raged that Finkelstein was like that
-lump of ice. But he won through; he kept up his banter till they grew
-tired of the superlative jest and turned to the great problems of the
-day.
-
-He reflected, “What’s the matter with me to-day? Seems like I’ve got an
-awful grouch. Only they talk so darn much. But I better steer careful
-and keep my mouth shut.”
-
-As they lighted their cigars he mumbled, “Got to get back,” and on a
-chorus of “If you _will_ go spending your mornings with lady ushers at
-the movies!” he escaped. He heard them giggling. He was embarrassed.
-While he was most bombastically agreeing with the coat-man that the
-weather was warm, he was conscious that he was longing to run childishly
-with his troubles to the comfort of the fairy child.
-
-
-III
-
-He kept Miss McGoun after he had finished dictating. He searched for a
-topic which would warm her office impersonality into friendliness.
-
-“Where you going on your vacation?” he purred.
-
-“I think I’ll go up-state to a farm do you want me to have the Siddons
-lease copied this afternoon?”
-
-“Oh, no hurry about it.... I suppose you have a great time when you get
-away from us cranks in the office.”
-
-She rose and gathered her pencils. “Oh, nobody’s cranky here I think I
-can get it copied after I do the letters.”
-
-She was gone. Babbitt utterly repudiated the view that he had been
-trying to discover how approachable was Miss McGoun. “Course! knew there
-was nothing doing!” he said.
-
-
-IV
-
-Eddie Swanson, the motor-car agent who lived across the street from
-Babbitt, was giving a Sunday supper. His wife Louetta, young Louetta who
-loved jazz in music and in clothes and laughter, was at her wildest. She
-cried, “We’ll have a real party!” as she received the guests. Babbitt
-had uneasily felt that to many men she might be alluring; now he
-admitted that to himself she was overwhelmingly alluring. Mrs. Babbitt
-had never quite approved of Louetta; Babbitt was glad that she was not
-here this evening.
-
-He insisted on helping Louetta in the kitchen: taking the chicken
-croquettes from the warming-oven, the lettuce sandwiches from the
-ice-box. He held her hand, once, and she depressingly didn’t notice it.
-She caroled, “You’re a good little mother’s-helper, Georgie. Now trot in
-with the tray and leave it on the side-table.”
-
-He wished that Eddie Swanson would give them cocktails; that Louetta
-would have one. He wanted-- Oh, he wanted to be one of these Bohemians
-you read about. Studio parties. Wild lovely girls who were independent.
-Not necessarily bad. Certainly not! But not tame, like Floral Heights.
-How he’d ever stood it all these years--
-
-Eddie did not give them cocktails. True, they supped with mirth, and
-with several repetitions by Orville Jones of “Any time Louetta wants to
-come sit on my lap I’ll tell this sandwich to beat it!” but they were
-respectable, as befitted Sunday evening. Babbitt had discreetly
-preëmpted a place beside Louetta on the piano bench. While he talked
-about motors, while he listened with a fixed smile to her account of the
-film she had seen last Wednesday, while he hoped that she would hurry up
-and finish her description of the plot, the beauty of the leading man,
-and the luxury of the setting, he studied her. Slim waist girdled with
-raw silk, strong brows, ardent eyes, hair parted above a broad
-forehead--she meant youth to him and a charm which saddened. He thought
-of how valiant a companion she would be on a long motor tour, exploring
-mountains, picnicking in a pine grove high above a valley. Her frailness
-touched him; he was angry at Eddie Swanson for the incessant family
-bickering. All at once he identified Louetta with the fairy girl. He was
-startled by the conviction that they had always had a romantic
-attraction for each other.
-
-“I suppose you’re leading a simply terrible life, now you’re a widower,”
-she said.
-
-“You bet! I’m a bad little fellow and proud of it. Some evening you slip
-Eddie some dope in his coffee and sneak across the road and I’ll show
-you how to mix a cocktail,” he roared.
-
-“Well, now, I might do it! You never can tell!”
-
-“Well, whenever you’re ready, you just hang a towel out of the attic
-window and I’ll jump for the gin!”
-
-Every one giggled at this naughtiness. In a pleased way Eddie Swanson
-stated that he would have a physician analyze his coffee daily. The
-others were diverted to a discussion of the more agreeable recent
-murders, but Babbitt drew Louetta back to personal things:
-
-“That’s the prettiest dress I ever saw in my life.”
-
-“Do you honestly like it?”
-
-“Like it? Why, say, I’m going to have Kenneth Escott put a piece in the
-paper saying that the swellest dressed woman in the U. S. is MrS.E.
-Louetta Swanson.”
-
-“Now, you stop teasing me!” But she beamed. “Let’s dance a little.
-George, you’ve got to dance with me.”
-
-Even as he protested, “Oh, you know what a rotten dancer I am!” he was
-lumbering to his feet.
-
-“I’ll teach you. I can teach anybody.”
-
-Her eyes were moist, her voice was jagged with excitement. He was
-convinced that he had won her. He clasped her, conscious of her smooth
-warmth, and solemnly he circled in a heavy version of the one-step. He
-bumped into only one or two people. “Gosh, I’m not doing so bad;
-hittin’ ’em up like a regular stage dancer!” he gloated; and she
-answered busily, “Yes--yes-- I told you I could teach anybody--_don’t
-take such long steps_!”
-
-For a moment he was robbed of confidence; with fearful concentration he
-sought to keep time to the music. But he was enveloped again by her
-enchantment. “She’s got to like me; I’ll make her!” he vowed. He tried
-to kiss the lock beside her ear. She mechanically moved her head to
-avoid it, and mechanically she murmured, “Don’t!”
-
-For a moment he hated her, but after the moment he was as urgent as
-ever. He danced with Mrs. Orville Jones, but he watched Louetta swooping
-down the length of the room with her husband. “Careful! You’re getting
-foolish!” he cautioned himself, the while he hopped and bent his solid
-knees in dalliance with Mrs. Jones, and to that worthy lady rumbled,
-“Gee, it’s hot!” Without reason, he thought of Paul in that shadowy
-place where men never dance. “I’m crazy to-night; better go home,” he
-worried, but he left Mrs. Jones and dashed to Louetta’s lovely side,
-demanding, “The next is mine.”
-
-“Oh, I’m so hot; I’m not going to dance this one.”
-
-“Then,” boldly, “come out and sit on the porch and get all nice and
-cool.”
-
-“Well--”
-
-In the tender darkness, with the clamor in the house behind them, he
-resolutely took her hand. She squeezed his once, then relaxed.
-
-“Louetta! I think you’re the nicest thing I know!”
-
-“Well, I think you’re very nice.”
-
-“Do you? You got to like me! I’m so lonely!”
-
-“Oh, you’ll be all right when your wife comes home.”
-
-“No, I’m always lonely.”
-
-She clasped her hands under her chin, so that he dared not touch her. He
-sighed:
-
-“When I feel punk and--” He was about to bring in the tragedy of Paul,
-but that was too sacred even for the diplomacy of love. “--when I get
-tired out at the office and everything, I like to look across the street
-and think of you. Do you know I dreamed of you, one time!”
-
-“Was it a nice dream?”
-
-“Lovely!”
-
-“Oh, well, they say dreams go by opposites! Now I must run in.”
-
-She was on her feet.
-
-“Oh, don’t go in yet! Please, Louetta!”
-
-“Yes, I must. Have to look out for my guests.”
-
-“Let ’em look out for ’emselves!”
-
-“I couldn’t do that.” She carelessly tapped his shoulder and slipped
-away.
-
-But after two minutes of shamed and childish longing to sneak home he
-was snorting, “Certainly I wasn’t trying to get chummy with her! Knew
-there was nothing doing, all the time!” and he ambled in to dance with
-Mrs. Orville Jones, and to avoid Louetta, virtuously and conspicuously.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV
-
-
-I
-
-His visit to Paul was as unreal as his night of fog and questioning.
-Unseeing he went through prison corridors stinking of carbolic acid to a
-room lined with pale yellow settees pierced in rosettes, like the
-shoe-store benches he had known as a boy. The guard led in Paul. Above
-his uniform of linty gray, Paul’s face was pale and without expression.
-He moved timorously in response to the guard’s commands; he meekly
-pushed Babbitt’s gifts of tobacco and magazines across the table to the
-guard for examination. He had nothing to say but “Oh, I’m getting used
-to it” and “I’m working in the tailor shop; the stuff hurts my fingers.”
-
-Babbitt knew that in this place of death Paul was already dead. And as
-he pondered on the train home something in his own self seemed to have
-died: a loyal and vigorous faith in the goodness of the world, a fear of
-public disfavor, a pride in success. He was glad that his wife was away.
-He admitted it without justifying it. He did not care.
-
-
-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 tinhorn 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.”
-
-“Say, gee, do I! Say, listen, there’s some of these cigar-store sports
-that think because a girl’s working in a barber shop, they can get away
-with anything. The things they saaaaaay! But, believe me, I know how to
-hop those birds! I just give um the north and south and ask um, ‘Say,
-who do you think you’re talking to?’ and they fade away like love’s
-young nightmare and oh, don’t you want a box of nail-paste? It will keep
-the nails as shiny as when first manicured, harmless to apply and lasts
-for days.”
-
-“Sure, I’ll try some. Say-- Say, it’s funny; I’ve been coming here ever
-since the shop opened and--” With arch surprise. “-- I don’t believe I
-know your name!”
-
-“Don’t you? My, that’s funny! I don’t know yours!”
-
-“Now you quit kidding me! What’s the nice little name?”
-
-“Oh, it ain’t so darn nice. I guess it’s kind of kike. But my folks
-ain’t kikes. My papa’s papa was a nobleman in Poland, and there was a
-gentleman in here one day, he was kind of a count or something--”
-
-“Kind of a no-account, I guess you mean!”
-
-“Who’s telling this, smarty? And he said he knew my papa’s papa’s folks
-in Poland and they had a dandy big house. Right on a lake!” Doubtfully,
-“Maybe you don’t believe it?”
-
-“Sure. No. Really. Sure I do. Why not? Don’t think I’m kidding you,
-honey, but every time I’ve noticed you I’ve said to myself, ‘That kid
-has Blue Blood in her veins!’”
-
-“Did you, honest?”
-
-“Honest I did. Well, well, come on--now we’re friends--what’s the
-darling little name?”
-
-“Ida Putiak. It ain’t so much-a-much of a name. I always say to Ma, I
-say, ‘Ma, why didn’t you name me Dolores, or something with some class
-to it?’”
-
-“Well, now, I think it’s a scrumptious name. Ida!”
-
-“I bet I know _your_ name!”
-
-“Well, now, not necessarily. Of course-- Oh, it isn’t so specially well
-known.”
-
-“Aren’t you Mr. Sondheim that travels for the Krackajack Kitchen Kutlery
-Ko.?”
-
-“I am not! I’m Mr. Babbitt, the real-estate broker!”
-
-“Oh, excuse me! Oh, of course. You mean here in Zenith.”
-
-“Yep.” With the briskness of one whose feelings have been hurt.
-
-“Oh, sure. I’ve read your ads. They’re swell.”
-
-“Um, well-- You might have read about my speeches.”
-
-“Course I have! I don’t get much time to read but-- I guess you think I’m
-an awfully silly little nit!”
-
-“I think you’re a little darling!”
-
-“Well-- There’s one nice thing about this job. It gives a girl a chance
-to meet some awfully nice gentlemen and improve her mind with
-conversation, and you get so you can read a guy’s character at the first
-glance.”
-
-“Look here, Ida; please don’t think I’m getting fresh--” He was hotly
-reflecting that it would be humiliating to be rejected by this child,
-and dangerous to be accepted. If he took her to dinner, if he were seen
-by censorious friends-- But he went on ardently: “Don’t think I’m getting
-fresh if I suggest it would be nice for us to go out and have a little
-dinner together some evening.”
-
-“I don’t know as I ought to but-- My gentleman-friend’s always wanting to
-take me out. But maybe I could to-night.”
-
-
-IV
-
-There was no reason, he assured himself, why he shouldn’t have a quiet
-dinner with a poor girl who would benefit by association with an
-educated and mature person like himself. But, lest some one see them
-and not understand, he would take her to Biddlemeier’s Inn, on the
-outskirts of the city. They would have a pleasant drive, this hot lonely
-evening, and he might hold her hand--no, he wouldn’t even do that. Ida
-was complaisant; her bare shoulders showed it only too clearly; but he’d
-be hanged if he’d make love to her merely because she expected it.
-
-Then his car broke down; something had happened to the ignition. And he
-_had_ to have the car this evening! Furiously he tested the spark-plugs,
-stared at the commutator. His angriest glower did not seem to stir the
-sulky car, and in disgrace it was hauled off to a garage. With a renewed
-thrill he thought of a taxicab. There was something at once wealthy and
-interestingly wicked about a taxicab.
-
-But when he met her, on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Thornleigh,
-she said, “A taxi? Why, I thought you owned a car!”
-
-“I do. Of course I do! But it’s out of commission to-night.”
-
-“Oh,” she remarked, as one who had heard that tale before.
-
-All the way out to Biddlemeier’s Inn he tried to talk as an old friend,
-but he could not pierce the wall of her words. With interminable
-indignation she narrated her retorts to “that fresh head-barber” and the
-drastic things she would do to him if he persisted in saying that she
-was “better at gassing than at hoof-paring.”
-
-At Biddlemeier’s Inn they were unable to get anything to drink. The
-head-waiter refused to understand who George F. Babbitt was. They sat
-steaming before a vast mixed grill, and made conversation about
-baseball. When he tried to hold Ida’s hand she said with bright
-friendliness, “Careful! That fresh waiter is rubbering.” But they came
-out into a treacherous summer night, the air lazy and a little moon
-above transfigured maples.
-
-“Let’s drive some other place, where we can get a drink and dance!” he
-demanded.
-
-“Sure, some other night. But I promised Ma I’d be home early to-night.”
-
-“Rats! It’s too nice to go home.”
-
-“I’d just love to, but Ma would give me fits.”
-
-He was trembling. She was everything that was young and exquisite. He
-put his arm about her. She snuggled against his shoulder, unafraid, and
-he was triumphant. Then she ran down the steps of the Inn, singing,
-“Come on, Georgie, we’ll have a nice drive and get cool.”
-
-It was a night of lovers. 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.
-
-On her previous absences he had missed her reassuring buzz and of her
-arrival he had made a fête. Now, though he dared not hurt her by letting
-a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming
-before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of
-meeting her and looking joyful.
-
-He loitered down to the station; he studied the summer-resort posters,
-lest he have to speak to acquaintances and expose his uneasiness. But he
-was well trained. When the train clanked in he was out on the cement
-platform, peering into the chair-cars, and as he saw her in the line of
-passengers moving toward the vestibule he waved his hat. At the door he
-embraced her, and announced, “Well, well, well, well, by golly, you look
-fine, you look fine.” Then he was aware of Tinka. Here was something,
-this child with her absurd little nose and lively eyes, that loved him,
-believed him great, and as he clasped her, lifted and held her till she
-squealed, he was for the moment come back to his old steady self.
-
-Tinka sat beside him in the car, with one hand on the steering-wheel,
-pretending to help him drive, and he shouted back to his wife, “I’ll bet
-the kid will be the best chuffer in the family! She holds the wheel like
-an old professional!”
-
-All the while he was dreading the moment when he would be alone with his
-wife and she would patiently expect him to be ardent.
-
-
-III
-
-There was about the house an unofficial theory that he was to take his
-vacation alone, to spend a week or ten days in Catawba, but he was
-nagged by the memory that a year ago he had been with Paul in Maine. He
-saw himself returning; finding peace there, and the presence of Paul, in
-a life primitive and heroic. Like a shock came the thought that he
-actually could go. Only, he couldn’t, really; he couldn’t leave his
-business, and “Myra would think it sort of funny, his going way off
-there alone. Course he’d decided to do whatever he darned pleased, from
-now on, but still--to go way off to Maine!”
-
-He went, after lengthy meditations.
-
-With his wife, since it was inconceivable to explain that he was going
-to seek Paul’s spirit in the wilderness, he frugally employed the lie
-prepared over a year ago and scarcely used at all. He said that he had
-to see a man in New York on business. He could not have explained even
-to himself why he drew from the bank several hundred dollars more than
-he needed, nor why he kissed Tinka so tenderly, and cried, “God bless
-you, baby!” From the train he waved to her till she was but a scarlet
-spot beside the brown bulkier presence of Mrs. Babbitt, at the end of a
-steel and cement aisle ending in vast barred gates. With melancholy he
-looked back at the last suburb of Zenith.
-
-All the way north he pictured the Maine guides: simple and strong and
-daring, jolly as they played stud-poker in their unceiled shack, wise in
-woodcraft as they tramped the forest and shot the rapids. He
-particularly remembered Joe Paradise, half Yankee, half Indian. If he
-could but take up a backwoods claim with a man like Joe, work hard with
-his hands, be free and noisy in a flannel shirt, and never come back to
-this dull decency!
-
-Or, like a trapper in a Northern Canada movie, plunge through the
-forest, make camp in the Rockies, a grim and wordless caveman! Why not?
-He _could_ do it! There’d be enough money at home for the family to live
-on till Verona was married and Ted self-supporting. Old Henry T. would
-look out for them. Honestly! Why _not_? Really _live_--
-
-He longed for it, admitted that he longed for it, then almost believed
-that he was going to do it. Whenever common sense snorted, “Nonsense!
-Folks don’t run away from decent families and partners; just simply
-don’t do it, that’s all!” then Babbitt answered pleadingly, “Well, it
-wouldn’t take any more nerve than for Paul to go to jail and-- Lord, how
-I’d like to do it! Moccasins--six-gun--frontier town--gamblers--sleep
-under the stars--be a regular man, with he-men like Joe
-Paradise--gosh!”
-
-So he came to Maine, again stood on the wharf before the camp-hotel,
-again spat heroically into the delicate and shivering water, while the
-pines rustled, the mountains glowed, and a trout leaped and fell in a
-sliding circle. He hurried to the guides’ shack as to his real home, his
-real friends, long missed. They would be glad to see him. They would
-stand up and shout, “Why, here’s Mr. Babbitt! He ain’t one of these
-ordinary sports! He’s a real guy!”
-
-In their boarded and rather littered cabin the guides sat about the
-greasy table playing stud-poker with greasy cards: half a dozen wrinkled
-men in old trousers and easy old felt hats. They glanced up and nodded.
-Joe Paradise, the swart aging man with the big mustache, grunted, “How
-do. Back again?”
-
-Silence, except for the clatter of chips.
-
-Babbitt stood beside them, very lonely. He hinted, after a period of
-highly concentrated playing, “Guess I might take a hand, Joe.”
-
-“Sure. Sit in. How many chips you want? Let’s see; you were here with
-your wife, last year, wa’n’t you?” said Joe Paradise.
-
-That was all of Babbitt’s welcome to the old home.
-
-He played for half an hour before he spoke again. His head was reeking
-with the smoke of pipes and cheap cigars, and he was weary of pairs and
-four-flushes, resentful of the way in which they ignored him. He flung
-at Joe:
-
-“Working now?”
-
-“Nope.”
-
-“Like to guide me for a few days?”
-
-“Well, jus’ soon. I ain’t engaged till next week.”
-
-Only thus did Joe recognize the friendship Babbitt was offering him.
-Babbitt paid up his losses and left the shack rather childishly. Joe
-raised his head from the coils of smoke like a seal rising from surf,
-grunted, “I’ll come ’round t’morrow,” and dived down to his three aces.
-
-Neither in his voiceless cabin, fragrant with planks of new-cut pine,
-nor along the lake, nor in the sunset clouds which presently eddied
-behind the lavender-misted mountains, could Babbitt find the spirit of
-Paul as a reassuring presence. He was so lonely that after supper he
-stopped to talk with an ancient old lady, a gasping and steadily
-discoursing old lady, by the stove in the hotel-office. He told her of
-Ted’s presumable future triumphs in the State University and of Tinka’s
-remarkable vocabulary till he was homesick for the home he had left
-forever.
-
-Through the darkness, through that Northern pine-walled silence, he
-blundered down to the lake-front and found a canoe. There were no
-paddles in it but with a board, sitting awkwardly amidships and poking
-at the water rather than paddling, he made his way far out on the lake.
-The lights of the hotel and the cottages became yellow dots, a cluster
-of glow-worms at the base of Sachem Mountain. Larger and ever more
-imperturbable was the mountain in the star-filtered darkness, and the
-lake a limitless pavement of black marble. He was dwarfed and dumb and a
-little awed, but that insignificance freed him from the pomposities of
-being Mr. George F. Babbitt of Zenith; saddened and freed his heart. Now
-he was conscious of the presence of Paul, fancied him (rescued from
-prison, from Zilla and the brisk exactitudes of the tar-roofing
-business) playing his violin at the end of the canoe. He vowed, “I will
-go on! I’ll never go back! Now that Paul’s out of it, I don’t want to
-see any of those damn people again! I was a fool to get sore because Joe
-Paradise didn’t jump up and hug me. He’s one of these woodsmen; too wise
-to go yelping and talking your arm off like a cityman. But get him back
-in the mountains, out on the trail--! That’s real living!”
-
-
-IV
-
-Joe reported at Babbitt’s cabin at nine the next morning. Babbitt
-greeted him as a fellow caveman:
-
-“Well, Joe, how d’you feel about hitting the trail, and getting away
-from these darn soft summerites and these women and all?”
-
-“All right, Mr. Babbitt.”
-
-“What do you say we go over to Box Car Pond--they tell me the shack
-there isn’t being used--and camp out?”
-
-“Well, all right, Mr. Babbitt, but it’s nearer to Skowtuit Pond, and you
-can get just about as good fishing there.”
-
-“No, I want to get into the real wilds.”
-
-“Well, all right.”
-
-“We’ll put the old packs on our backs and get into the woods and really
-hike.”
-
-“I think maybe it would be easier to go by water, through Lake Chogue.
-We can go all the way by motor boat--flat-bottom boat with an Evinrude.”
-
-“No, sir! Bust up the quiet with a chugging motor? Not on your life! You
-just throw a pair of socks in the old pack, and tell ’em what you want
-for eats. I’ll be ready soon’s you are.”
-
-“Most of the sports go by boat, Mr. Babbitt. It’s a long walk.”
-
-“Look here, Joe: are you objecting to walking?”
-
-“Oh, no, I guess I can do it. But I haven’t tramped that far for sixteen
-years. Most of the sports go by boat. But I can do it if you say so-- I
-guess.” Joe walked away in sadness.
-
-Babbitt had recovered from his touchy wrath before Joe returned. He
-pictured him as warming up and telling the most entertaining stories.
-But Joe had not yet warmed up when they took the trail. He persistently
-kept behind Babbitt, and however much his shoulders ached from the
-pack, however sorely he panted, Babbitt could hear his guide panting
-equally. But the trail was satisfying: a path brown with pine-needles
-and rough with roots, among the balsams, the ferns, the sudden groves of
-white birch. He became credulous again, and rejoiced in sweating. When
-he stopped to rest he chuckled, “Guess we’re hitting it up pretty good
-for a couple o’ old birds, eh?”
-
-“Uh-huh,” admitted Joe.
-
-“This is a mighty pretty place. Look, you can see the lake down through
-the trees. I tell you, Joe, you don’t appreciate how lucky you are to
-live in woods like this, instead of a city with trolleys grinding and
-typewriters clacking and people bothering the life out of you all the
-time! I wish I knew the woods like you do. Say, what’s the name of that
-little red flower?”
-
-Rubbing his back, Joe regarded the flower resentfully. “Well, some folks
-call it one thing and some calls it another I always just call it Pink
-Flower.”
-
-Babbitt blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned into blind
-plodding. He was submerged in weariness. His plump legs seemed to go on
-by themselves, without guidance, and he mechanically wiped away the
-sweat which stung his eyes. He was too tired to be consciously glad as,
-after a sun-scourged mile of corduroy tote-road through a swamp where
-flies hovered over a hot waste of brush, they reached the cool shore of
-Box Car Pond. When he lifted the pack from his back he staggered from
-the change in balance, and for a moment could not stand erect. He lay
-beneath an ample-bosomed maple tree near the guest-shack, and joyously
-felt sleep running through his veins.
-
-He awoke toward dusk, to find Joe efficiently cooking bacon and eggs and
-flapjacks for supper, and his admiration of the woodsman returned. He
-sat on a stump and felt virile.
-
-“Joe, what would you do if you had a lot of money? Would you stick to
-guiding, or would you take a claim ’way back in the woods and be
-independent of people?”
-
-For the first time Joe brightened. He chewed his cud a second, and
-bubbled, “I’ve often thought of that! If I had the money, I’d go down to
-Tinker’s Falls and open a swell shoe store.”
-
-After supper Joe proposed a game of stud-poker but Babbitt refused with
-brevity, and Joe contentedly went to bed at eight. Babbitt sat on the
-stump, facing the dark pond, slapping mosquitos. Save the snoring guide,
-there was no other human being within ten miles. He was lonelier than he
-had ever been in his life. Then he was in Zenith.
-
-He was worrying as to whether Miss McGoun wasn’t paying too much for
-carbon paper. He was at once resenting and missing the persistent
-teasing at the Roughnecks’ Table. He was wondering what Zilla Riesling
-was doing now. He was wondering whether, after the summer’s maturity of
-being a garageman, Ted would “get busy” in the university. He was
-thinking of his wife. “If she would only--if she wouldn’t be so darn
-satisfied with just settling down-- No! I won’t! I won’t go back! I’ll be
-fifty in three years. Sixty in thirteen years. I’m going to have some
-fun before it’s too late. I don’t care! I will!”
-
-He thought of Ida Putiak, of Louetta Swanson, of that nice widow--what
-was her name?--Tanis Judique?--the one for whom he’d found the flat. He
-was enmeshed in imaginary conversations. Then:
-
-“Gee, I can’t seem to get away from thinking about folks!”
-
-Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never
-run away from himself.
-
-That moment he started for Zenith. In his journey there was no
-appearance of flight, but he was fleeing, and four days afterward he was
-on the Zenith train. He knew that he was slinking back not because it
-was what he longed to do but because it was all he could do. He scanned
-again his discovery that he could never run away from Zenith and family
-and office, because in his own brain he bore the office and the family
-and every street and disquiet and illusion of Zenith.
-
-“But I’m going to--oh, I’m going to start something!” he vowed, and he
-tried to make it valiant.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI
-
-
-I
-
-As he walked through the train, looking for familiar faces, he saw only
-one person whom he knew, and that was Seneca Doane, the lawyer who,
-after the blessings of being in Babbitt’s own class at college and of
-becoming a corporation-counsel, had turned crank, had headed
-farmer-labor tickets and fraternized with admitted socialists. Though he
-was in rebellion, naturally Babbitt did not care to be seen talking with
-such a fanatic, but in all the Pullmans he could find no other
-acquaintance, and reluctantly he halted. Seneca Doane was a slight,
-thin-haired man, rather like Chum Frink except that he hadn’t Frink’s
-grin. He was reading a book called “The Way of All Flesh.” It looked
-religious to Babbitt, and he wondered if Doane could possibly have been
-converted and turned decent and patriotic.
-
-“Why, hello, Doane,” he said.
-
-Doane looked up. His voice was curiously kind. “Oh! How do, Babbitt.”
-
-“Been away, eh?”
-
-“Yes, I’ve been in Washington.”
-
-“Washington, eh? How’s the old Government making out?”
-
-“It’s-- Won’t you sit down?”
-
-“Thanks. Don’t care if I do. Well, well! Been quite a while since I’ve
-had a good chance to talk to you, Doane. I was, uh-- Sorry you didn’t
-turn up at the last class-dinner.”
-
-“Oh--thanks.”
-
-“How’s the unions coming? Going to run for mayor again?”
-
-Doane seemed restless. He was fingering the pages of his book. He said
-“I might” as though it didn’t mean anything in particular, and he
-smiled.
-
-Babbitt liked that smile, and hunted for conversation: “Saw a bang-up
-cabaret in New York: the ‘Good-Morning Cutie’ bunch at the Hotel
-Minton.”
-
-“Yes, they’re pretty girls. I danced there one evening.”
-
-“Oh. Like dancing?”
-
-“Naturally. I like dancing and pretty women and good food better than
-anything else in the world. Most men do.”
-
-“But gosh, Doane, I thought you fellows wanted to take all the good eats
-and everything away from us.”
-
-“No. Not at all. What I’d like to see is the meetings of the Garment
-Workers held at the Ritz, with a dance afterward. Isn’t that
-reasonable?”
-
-“Yuh, might be good idea, all right. Well-- Shame I haven’t seen more of
-you, recent years. Oh, say, hope you haven’t held it against me, my
-bucking you as mayor, going on the stump for Prout. You see, I’m an
-organization Republican, and I kind of felt--”
-
-“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t fight me. I have no doubt you’re
-good for the Organization. I remember--in college you were an unusually
-liberal, sensitive chap. I can still recall your saying to me that you
-were going to be a lawyer, and take the cases of the poor for nothing,
-and fight the rich. And I remember I said I was going to be one of the
-rich myself, and buy paintings and live at Newport. I’m sure you
-inspired us all.”
-
-“Well.... Well.... I’ve always aimed to be liberal.” Babbitt was
-enormously shy and proud and self-conscious; he tried to look like the
-boy he had been a quarter-century ago, and he shone upon his old friend
-Seneca Doane as he rumbled, “Trouble with a lot of these fellows, even
-the live wires and some of ’em that think they’re forward-looking, is
-they aren’t broad-minded and liberal. Now, I always believe in giving
-the other fellow a chance, and listening to his ideas.”
-
-“That’s fine.”
-
-“Tell you how I figure it: A little opposition is good for all of us, so
-a fellow, especially if he’s a business man and engaged in doing the
-work of the world, ought to be liberal.”
-
-“Yes--”
-
-“I always say a fellow ought to have Vision and Ideals. I guess some of
-the fellows in my business think I’m pretty visionary, but I just let
-’em think what they want to and go right on--same as you do.... By
-golly, this is nice to have a chance to sit and visit and kind of, you
-might say, brush up on our ideals.”
-
-“But of course we visionaries do rather get beaten. Doesn’t it bother
-you?”
-
-“Not a bit! Nobody can dictate to me what I think!”
-
-“You’re the man I want to help me. I want you to talk to some of the
-business men and try to make them a little more liberal in their
-attitude toward poor Beecher Ingram.”
-
-“Ingram? But, why, he’s this nut preacher that got kicked out of the
-Congregationalist Church, isn’t he, and preaches free love and
-sedition?”
-
-This, Doane explained, was indeed the general conception of Beecher
-Ingram, but he himself saw Beecher Ingram as a priest of the brotherhood
-of man, of which Babbitt was notoriously an upholder. So would Babbitt
-keep his acquaintances from hounding Ingram and his forlorn little
-church?
-
-“You bet! I’ll call down any of the boys I hear getting funny about
-Ingram,” Babbitt said affectionately to his dear friend Doane.
-
-Doane warmed up and became reminiscent. He spoke of student days in
-Germany, of lobbying for single tax in Washington, of international
-labor conferences. He mentioned his friends, Lord Wycombe, Colonel
-Wedgwood, Professor Piccoli. Babbitt had always supposed that Doane
-associated only with the I. W. W., but now he nodded gravely, as one who
-knew Lord Wycombes by the score, and he got in two references to Sir
-Gerald Doak. He felt daring and idealistic and cosmopolitan.
-
-Suddenly, in his new spiritual grandeur, he was sorry for Zilla
-Riesling, and understood her as these ordinary fellows at the Boosters’
-Club never could.
-
-
-II
-
-Five hours after he had arrived in Zenith and told his wife how hot it
-was in New York, he went to call on Zilla. He was buzzing with ideas and
-forgiveness. He’d get Paul released; he’d do things, vague but highly
-benevolent things, for Zilla; he’d be as generous as his friend Seneca
-Doane.
-
-He had not seen Zilla since Paul had shot her, and he still pictured her
-as buxom, high-colored, lively, and a little blowsy. As he drove up to
-her boarding-house, in a depressing back street below the wholesale
-district, he stopped in discomfort. At an upper window, leaning on her
-elbow, was a woman with the features of Zilla, but she was bloodless and
-aged, like a yellowed wad of old paper crumpled into wrinkles. Where
-Zilla had bounced and jiggled, this woman was dreadfully still.
-
-He waited half an hour before she came into the boarding-house parlor.
-Fifty times he opened the book of photographs of the Chicago World’s
-Fair of 1893, fifty times he looked at the picture of the Court of
-Honor.
-
-He was startled to find Zilla in the room. She wore a black streaky gown
-which she had tried to brighten with a girdle of crimson ribbon. The
-ribbon had been torn and patiently mended. He noted this carefully,
-because he did not wish to look at her shoulders. One shoulder was lower
-than the other; one arm she carried in contorted fashion, as though it
-were paralyzed; and behind a high collar of cheap lace there was a gouge
-in the anemic neck which had once been shining and softly plump.
-
-“Yes?” she said.
-
-“Well, well, old Zilla! By golly, it’s good to see you again!”
-
-“He can send his messages through a lawyer.”
-
-“Why, rats, Zilla, I didn’t come just because of him. Came as an old
-friend.”
-
-“You waited long enough!”
-
-“Well, you know how it is. Figured you wouldn’t want to see a friend of
-his for quite some time and-- Sit down, honey! Let’s be sensible. We’ve
-all of us done a bunch of things that we hadn’t ought to, but maybe we
-can sort of start over again. Honest, Zilla, I’d like to do something to
-make you both happy. Know what I thought to-day? Mind you, Paul doesn’t
-know a thing about this--doesn’t know I was going to come see you. I got
-to thinking: Zilla’s a fine, big-hearted woman, and she’ll understand
-that, uh, Paul’s had his lesson now. Why wouldn’t it be a fine idea if
-you asked the governor to pardon him? Believe he would, if it came from
-you. No! Wait! Just think how good you’d feel if you were generous.”
-
-“Yes, I wish to be generous.” She was sitting primly, speaking icily.
-“For that reason I wish to keep him in prison, as an example to
-evil-doers. I’ve gotten religion, George, since the terrible thing that
-man did to me. Sometimes I used to be unkind, and I wished for worldly
-pleasures, for dancing and the theater. But when I was in the hospital
-the pastor of the Pentecostal Communion Faith used to come to see me,
-and he showed me, right from the prophecies written in the Word of God,
-that the Day of Judgment is coming and all the members of the older
-churches are going straight to eternal damnation, because they only do
-lip-service and swallow the world, the flesh, and the devil--”
-
-For fifteen wild minutes she talked, pouring out admonitions to flee the
-wrath to come, and her face flushed, her dead voice recaptured something
-of the shrill energy of the old Zilla. She wound up with a furious:
-
-“It’s the blessing of God himself that Paul should be in prison now, and
-torn and humbled by punishment, so that he may yet save his soul, and so
-other wicked men, these horrible chasers after women and lust, may have
-an example.”
-
-Babbitt had itched and twisted. As in church he dared not move during
-the sermon so now he felt that he must seem attentive, though her
-screeching denunciations flew past him like carrion birds.
-
-He sought to be calm and brotherly:
-
-“Yes, I know, Zilla. But gosh, it certainly is the essence of religion
-to be charitable, isn’t it? Let me tell you how I figure it: What we
-need in the world is liberalism, liberality, if we’re going to get
-anywhere. I’ve always believed in being broad-minded and liberal--”
-
-“You? Liberal?” It was very much the old Zilla. “Why, George Babbitt,
-you’re about as broad-minded and liberal as a razor-blade!”
-
-“Oh, I am, am I! Well, just let me tell you, just--let--me--tell--you,
-I’m as by golly liberal as you are religious, anyway! _You religious!_”
-
-“I am so! Our pastor says I sustain him in the faith!”
-
-“I’ll bet you do! With Paul’s money! But just to show you how liberal I
-am, I’m going to send a check for ten bucks to this Beecher Ingram,
-because a lot of fellows are saying the poor cuss preaches sedition and
-free love, and they’re trying to run him out of town.”
-
-“And they’re right! They ought to run him out of town! Why, he
-preaches--if you can call it preaching--in a theater, in the House of
-Satan! You don’t know what it is to find God, to find peace, to behold
-the snares that the devil spreads out for our feet. Oh, I’m so glad to
-see the mysterious purposes of God in having Paul harm me and stop my
-wickedness--and Paul’s getting his, good and plenty, for the cruel
-things he did to me, and I hope he _dies_ in prison!”
-
-Babbitt was up, hat in hand, growling, “Well, if that’s what you call
-being at peace, for heaven’s sake just warn me before you go to war,
-will you?”
-
-
-III
-
-Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. More than mountains
-or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its character, imperturbable,
-cynical, holding behind apparent changes its essential purpose. Though
-Babbitt had deserted his family and dwelt with Joe Paradise in the
-wilderness, though he had become a liberal, though he had been quite
-sure, on the night before he reached Zenith, that neither he nor the
-city would be the same again, ten days after his return he could not
-believe that he had ever been away. Nor was it at all evident to his
-acquaintances that there was a new George F. Babbitt, save that he was
-more irritable under the incessant chaffing at the Athletic Club, and
-once, when Vergil Gunch observed that Seneca Doane ought to be hanged,
-Babbitt snorted, “Oh, rats, he’s not so bad.”
-
-At home he grunted “Eh?” across the newspaper to his commentatory wife,
-and was delighted by Tinka’s new red tam o’shanter, and announced, “No
-class to that corrugated iron garage. Have to build me a nice frame
-one.”
-
-Verona and Kenneth Escott appeared really to be engaged. In his
-newspaper Escott had conducted a pure-food crusade against
-commission-houses. As a result he had been given an excellent job in a
-commission-house, and he was making a salary on which he could marry,
-and denouncing irresponsible reporters who wrote stories criticizing
-commission-houses without knowing what they were talking about.
-
-This September Ted had entered the State University as a freshman in the
-College of Arts and Sciences. The university was at Mohalis, only
-fifteen miles from Zenith, and Ted often came down for the week-end.
-Babbitt was worried. Ted was “going in for” everything but books. He had
-tried to “make” the football team as a light half-back, he was looking
-forward to the basket-ball season, he was on the committee for the
-Freshman Hop, and (as a Zenithite, an aristocrat among the yokels) he
-was being “rushed” by two fraternities. But of his studies Babbitt could
-learn nothing save a mumbled, “Oh, gosh, these old stiffs of teachers
-just give you a lot of junk about literature and economics.”
-
-One week-end Ted proposed, “Say, Dad, why can’t I transfer over from the
-College to the School of Engineering and take mechanical engineering?
-You always holler that I never study, but honest, I would study there.”
-
-“No, the Engineering School hasn’t got the standing the College has,”
-fretted Babbitt.
-
-“I’d like to know how it hasn’t! The Engineers can play on any of the
-teams!”
-
-There was much explanation of the “dollars-and-cents value of being
-known as a college man when you go into the law,” and a truly oratorical
-account of the lawyer’s life. Before he was through with it, Babbitt had
-Ted a United States Senator.
-
-Among the great lawyers whom he mentioned was Seneca Doane.
-
-“But, gee whiz,” Ted marveled, “I thought you always said this Doane was
-a reg’lar nut!”
-
-“That’s no way to speak of a great man! Doane’s always been a good
-friend of mine--fact I helped him in college-- I started him out and you
-might say inspired him. Just because he’s sympathetic with the aims of
-Labor, a lot of chumps that lack liberality and broad-mindedness think
-he’s a crank, but let me tell you there’s mighty few of ’em that rake in
-the fees he does, and he’s a friend of some of the strongest, most
-conservative men in the world--like Lord Wycombe, this, uh, this big
-English nobleman that’s so well known. And you now, which would you
-rather do: be in with a lot of greasy mechanics and laboring-men, or
-chum up to a real fellow like Lord Wycombe, and get invited to his house
-for parties?”
-
-“Well--gosh,” sighed Ted.
-
-The next week-end he came in joyously with, “Say, Dad, why couldn’t I
-take mining engineering instead of the academic course? You talk about
-standing--maybe there isn’t much in mechanical engineering, but the
-Miners, gee, they got seven out of eleven in the new elections to Nu Tau
-Tau!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVII
-
-
-I
-
-The strike which turned Zenith into two belligerent camps, white and
-red, began late in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and
-linemen, in protest against a reduction of wages. The newly formed union
-of dairy-products workers went out, partly in sympathy and partly in
-demand for a forty-four hour week. They were followed by the
-truck-drivers’ union. Industry was tied up, and the whole city was
-nervous with talk of a trolley strike, a printers’ strike, a general
-strike. Furious citizens, trying to get telephone calls through
-strike-breaking girls, danced helplessly. Every truck that made its way
-from the factories to the freight-stations was guarded by a policeman,
-trying to look stoical beside the scab driver. A line of fifty trucks
-from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company was attacked by
-strikers--rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling drivers from the seats,
-smashing carburetors and commutators, while telephone girls cheered from
-the walk, and small boys heaved bricks.
-
-The National Guard was ordered out. Colonel Nixon, who in private life
-was Mr. Caleb Nixon, secretary of the Pullmore Tractor Company, put on a
-long khaki coat and stalked through crowds, a .44 automatic in hand.
-Even Babbitt’s friend, Clarence Drum the shoe merchant--a round and
-merry man who told stories at the Athletic Club, and who strangely
-resembled a Victorian pug-dog--was to be seen as a waddling but
-ferocious captain, with his belt tight about his comfortable little
-belly, and his round little mouth petulant as he piped to chattering
-groups on corners. “Move on there now! I can’t have any of this
-loitering!”
-
-Every newspaper in the city, save one, was against the strikers. When
-mobs raided the news-stands, at each was stationed a militiaman, a
-young, embarrassed citizen-soldier with eye-glasses, bookkeeper or
-grocery-clerk in private life, trying to look dangerous while small boys
-yelped, “Get onto de tin soldier!” and striking truck-drivers inquired
-tenderly, “Say, Joe, when I was fighting in France, was you in camp in
-the States or was you doing Swede exercises in the Y. M. C. A.? Be
-careful of that bayonet, now, or you’ll cut yourself!”
-
-There was no one in Zenith who talked of anything but the strike, and no
-one who did not take sides. You were either a courageous friend of
-Labor, or you were a fearless supporter of the Rights of Property; and
-in either case you were belligerent, and ready to disown any friend who
-did not hate the enemy.
-
-A condensed-milk plant was set afire--each side charged it to the
-other--and the city was hysterical.
-
-And Babbitt chose this time to be publicly liberal.
-
-He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing, and at first he
-agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot. He was sorry when
-his friend, Seneca Doane, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of
-going to Doane and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a
-broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls
-had been hungry, he was troubled. “All lies and fake figures,” he said,
-but in a doubtful croak.
-
-For the Sunday after, the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church announced a
-sermon by Dr. John Jennison Drew on “How the Saviour Would End Strikes.”
-Babbitt had been negligent about church-going lately, but he went to the
-service, hopeful that Dr. Drew really did have the information as to
-what the divine powers thought about strikes. Beside Babbitt in the
-large, curving, glossy, velvet-upholstered pew was Chum Frink.
-
-Frink whispered, “Hope the doc gives the strikers hell! Ordinarily, I
-don’t believe in a preacher butting into political matters--let him
-stick to straight religion and save souls, and not stir up a lot of
-discussion--but at a time like this, I do think he ought to stand right
-up and bawl out those plug-uglies to a fare-you-well!”
-
-“Yes--well--” said Babbitt.
-
-The Rev. Dr. Drew, his rustic bang flopping with the intensity of his
-poetic and sociologic ardor, trumpeted:
-
-“During the untoward series of industrial dislocations which have--let
-us be courageous and admit it boldly--throttled the business life of our
-fair city these past days, there has been a great deal of loose talk
-about scientific prevention of scientific--_scientific!_ Now, let me
-tell you that the most unscientific thing in the world is science! Take
-the attacks on the established fundamentals of the Christian creed which
-were so popular with the ‘scientists’ a generation ago. Oh, yes, they
-were mighty fellows, and great poo-bahs of criticism! They were going to
-destroy the church; they were going to prove the world was created and
-has been brought to its extraordinary level of morality and civilization
-by blind chance. Yet the church stands just as firmly to-day as ever,
-and the only answer a Christian pastor needs make to the long-haired
-opponents of his simple faith is just a pitying smile!
-
-“And now these same ‘scientists’ want to replace the natural condition
-of free competition by crazy systems which, no matter by what
-high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but a despotic
-paternalism. Naturally, I’m not criticizing labor courts, injunctions
-against men proven to be striking unjustly, or those excellent unions in
-which the men and the boss get together. But I certainly am criticizing
-the systems in which the free and fluid motivation of independent labor
-is to be replaced by cooked-up wage-scales and minimum salaries and
-government commissions and labor federations and all that poppycock.
-
-“What is not generally understood is that this whole industrial matter
-isn’t a question of economics. It’s essentially and only a matter of
-Love, and of the practical application of the Christian religion!
-Imagine a factory--instead of committees of workmen alienating the boss,
-the boss goes among them smiling, and they smile back, the elder brother
-and the younger. Brothers, that’s what they must be, loving brothers,
-and then strikes would be as inconceivable as hatred in the home!”
-
-It was at this point that Babbitt muttered, “Oh, rot!”
-
-“Huh?” said Chum Frink.
-
-“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s just as clear as mud. It
-doesn’t mean a darn thing.”
-
-“Maybe, but--”
-
-Frink looked at him doubtfully, through all the service kept glancing at
-him doubtfully, till Babbitt was nervous.
-
-
-II
-
-The strikers had announced a parade for Tuesday morning, but Colonel
-Nixon had forbidden it, the newspapers said. When Babbitt drove west
-from his office at ten that morning, he saw a drove of shabby men
-heading toward the tangled, dirty district beyond Court House Square. He
-hated them, because they were poor, because they made him feel insecure.
-“Damn loafers! Wouldn’t be common workmen if they had any pep,” he
-complained. He wondered if there was going to be a riot. He drove toward
-the starting-point of the parade, a triangle of limp and faded grass
-known as Moore Street Park, and halted his car.
-
-The park and streets were buzzing with strikers, young men in blue denim
-shirts, old men with caps. Through them, keeping them stirred like a
-boiling pot, moved the militiamen. Babbitt could hear the soldiers’
-monotonous orders: “Keep moving--move on, ’bo--keep your feet warm!”
-Babbitt admired their stolid good temper. The crowd shouted, “Tin
-soldiers,” and “Dirty dogs--servants of the capitalists!” but the
-militiamen grinned and answered only, “Sure, that’s right. Keep moving,
-Billy!”
-
-Babbitt thrilled over the citizen-soldiers, hated the scoundrels who
-were obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity, admired Colonel
-Nixon’s striding contempt for the crowd; and as Captain Clarence Drum,
-that rather puffing shoe-dealer, came raging by, Babbitt respectfully
-clamored, “Great work, Captain! Don’t let ’em march!” He watched the
-strikers filing from the park. Many of them bore posters with “They
-can’t stop our peacefully walking.” The militiamen tore away the
-posters, but the strikers fell in behind their leaders and straggled
-off, a thin unimpressive trickle between steel-glinting lines of
-soldiers. Babbitt saw with disappointment that there wasn’t going to be
-any violence, nothing interesting at all. Then he gasped.
-
-Among the marchers, beside a bulky young workman, was Seneca Doane,
-smiling, content. In front of him was Professor Brockbank, head of the
-history department in the State University, an old man and
-white-bearded, known to come from a distinguished Massachusetts family.
-
-“Why, gosh,” Babbitt marveled, “a swell like him in with the strikers?
-And good ole Senny Doane! They’re fools to get mixed up with this bunch.
-They’re parlor socialists! But they have got nerve. And nothing in it
-for them, not a cent! And-- I don’t know ’s _all_ the strikers look like
-such tough nuts. Look just about like anybody else to me!”
-
-The militiamen were turning the parade down a side street.
-
-“They got just as much right to march as anybody else! They own the
-streets as much as Clarence Drum or the American Legion does!” Babbitt
-grumbled. “Of course, they’re--they’re a bad element, but-- Oh, rats!”
-
-At the Athletic Club, Babbitt was silent during lunch, while the others
-fretted, “I don’t know what the world’s coming to,” or solaced their
-spirits with “kidding.”
-
-Captain Clarence Drum came swinging by, splendid in khaki.
-
-“How’s it going, Captain?” inquired Vergil Gunch.
-
-“Oh, we got ’em stopped. We worked ’em off on side streets and separated
-’em and they got discouraged and went home.”
-
-“Fine work. No violence.”
-
-“Fine work nothing!” groaned Mr. Drum. “If I had my way, there’d be a
-whole lot of violence, and I’d start it, and then the whole thing would
-be over. I don’t believe in standing back and wet-nursing these fellows
-and letting the disturbances drag on. I tell you these strikers are
-nothing in God’s world but a lot of bomb-throwing socialists and thugs,
-and the only way to handle ’em is with a club! That’s what I’d do; beat
-up the whole lot of ’em!”
-
-Babbitt heard himself saying, “Oh, rats, Clarence, they look just about
-like you and me, and I certainly didn’t notice any bombs.”
-
-Drum complained, “Oh, you didn’t, eh? Well, maybe you’d like to take
-charge of the strike! Just tell Colonel Nixon what innocents the
-strikers are! He’d be glad to hear about it!” Drum strode on, while all
-the table stared at Babbitt.
-
-“What’s the idea? Do you want us to give those hell-hounds love and
-kisses, or what?” said Orville Jones.
-
-“Do you defend a lot of hoodlums that are trying to take the bread and
-butter away from our families?” raged Professor Pumphrey.
-
-Vergil Gunch intimidatingly said nothing. He put on sternness like a
-mask; his jaw was hard, his bristly short hair seemed cruel, his silence
-was a ferocious thunder. While the others assured Babbitt that they must
-have misunderstood him, Gunch looked as though he had understood only
-too well. Like a robed judge he listened to Babbitt’s stammering:
-
-“No, sure; course they’re a bunch of toughs. But I just mean-- Strikes me
-it’s bad policy to talk about clubbing ’em. Cabe Nixon doesn’t. He’s got
-the fine Italian hand. And that’s why he’s colonel. Clarence Drum is
-jealous of him.”
-
-“Well,” said Professor Pumphrey, “you hurt Clarence’s feelings, George.
-He’s been out there all morning getting hot and dusty, and no wonder he
-wants to beat the tar out of those sons of guns!”
-
-Gunch said nothing, and watched; and Babbitt knew that he was being
-watched.
-
-
-III
-
-As he was leaving the club Babbitt heard Chum Frink protesting to Gunch,
-“--don’t know what’s got into him. Last Sunday Doc Drew preached a
-corking sermon about decency in business and Babbitt kicked about that,
-too. Near’s I can figure out--”
-
-Babbitt was vaguely frightened.
-
-
-IV
-
-He saw a crowd listening to a man who was talking from the rostrum of a
-kitchen-chair. He stopped his car. From newspaper pictures he knew that
-the speaker must be the notorious freelance preacher, Beecher Ingram, of
-whom Seneca Doane had spoken. Ingram was a gaunt man with flamboyant
-hair, weather-beaten cheeks, and worried eyes. He was pleading:
-
-“--if those telephone girls can hold out, living on one meal a day,
-doing their own washing, starving and smiling, you big hulking men ought
-to be able--”
-
-Babbitt saw that from the sidewalk Vergil Gunch was watching him. In
-vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically drove on, while
-Gunch’s hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the way.
-
-
-V
-
-“There’s a lot of these fellows,” Babbitt was complaining to his wife,
-“that think if workmen go on strike they’re a regular bunch of fiends.
-Now, of course, it’s a fight between sound business and the destructive
-element, and we got to lick the stuffin’s out of ’em when they challenge
-us, but doggoned if I see why we can’t fight like gentlemen and not go
-calling ’em dirty dogs and saying they ought to be shot down.”
-
-“Why, George,” she said placidly, “I thought you always insisted that
-all strikers ought to be put in jail.”
-
-“I never did! Well, I mean-- Some of ’em, of course. Irresponsible
-leaders. But I mean a fellow ought to be broad-minded and liberal about
-things like--”
-
-“But dearie, I thought you always said these so-called ‘liberal’ people
-were the worst of--”
-
-“Rats! Woman never can understand the different definitions of a word.
-Depends on how you mean it. And it don’t pay to be too cocksure about
-anything. Now, these strikers: Honest, they’re not such bad people. Just
-foolish. They don’t understand the complications of merchandizing and
-profit, the way we business men do, but sometimes I think they’re about
-like the rest of us, and no more hogs for wages than we are for
-profits.”
-
-“George! If people were to hear you talk like that--of course I _know_
-you; I remember what a wild crazy boy you were; I know you don’t mean a
-word you say--but if people that didn’t understand you were to hear you
-talking, they’d think you were a regular socialist!”
-
-“What do I care what anybody thinks? And let me tell you right now-- I
-want you to distinctly understand I never was a wild crazy kid, and when
-I say a thing, I mean it, and I stand by it and-- Honest, do you think
-people would think I was too liberal if I just said the strikers were
-decent?”
-
-“Of course they would. But don’t worry, dear; I know you don’t mean a
-word of it. Time to trot up to bed now. Have you enough covers for
-to-night?”
-
-On the sleeping-porch he puzzled, “She doesn’t understand me. Hardly
-understand myself. Why can’t I take things easy, way I used to?
-
-“Wish I could go out to Senny Doane’s house and talk things over with
-him. No! Suppose Verg Gunch saw me going in there!
-
-“Wish I knew some really smart woman, and nice, that would see what I’m
-trying to get at, and let me talk to her and-- I wonder if Myra’s right?
-Could the fellows think I’ve gone nutty just because I’m broad-minded
-and liberal? Way Verg looked at me--”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVIII
-
-
-Miss McGoun came into his private office at three in the afternoon with
-“Lissen, Mr. Babbitt; there’s a Mrs. Judique on the ’phone--wants to see
-about some repairs, and the salesmen are all out. Want to talk to her?”
-
-“All right.”
-
-The voice of Tanis Judique was clear and pleasant. The black cylinder of
-the telephone-receiver seemed to hold a tiny animated image of her:
-lustrous eyes, delicate nose, gentle chin.
-
-“This is Mrs. Judique. Do you remember me? You drove me up here to the
-Cavendish Apartments and helped me find such a nice flat.”
-
-“Sure! Bet I remember! What can I do for you?”
-
-“Why, it’s just a little-- I don’t know that I ought to bother you, but
-the janitor doesn’t seem to be able to fix it. You know my flat is on
-the top floor, and with these autumn rains the roof is beginning to
-leak, and I’d be awfully glad if--”
-
-“Sure! I’ll come up and take a look at it.” Nervously, “When do you
-expect to be in?”
-
-“Why, I’m in every morning.”
-
-“Be in this afternoon, in an hour or so?”
-
-“Ye-es. Perhaps I could give you a cup of tea. I think I ought to, after
-all your trouble.”
-
-“Fine! I’ll run up there soon as I can get away.”
-
-He meditated, “Now there’s a woman that’s got refinement, savvy,
-_class_! ‘After all your trouble--give you a cup of tea.’ She’d
-appreciate a fellow. I’m a fool, but I’m not such a bad cuss, get to
-know me. And not so much a fool as they think!”
-
-The great strike was over, the strikers beaten. Except that Vergil Gunch
-seemed less cordial, there were no visible effects of Babbitt’s
-treachery to the clan. The oppressive fear of criticism was gone, but a
-diffident loneliness remained. Now he was so exhilarated that, to prove
-he wasn’t, he droned about the office for fifteen minutes, looking at
-blue-prints, explaining to Miss McGoun that this Mrs. Scott wanted more
-money for her house--had raised the asking-price--raised it from seven
-thousand to eighty-five hundred--would Miss McGoun be sure and put it
-down on the card--Mrs. Scott’s house--raise. When he had thus
-established himself as a person unemotional and interested only in
-business, he sauntered out. He took a particularly long time to start
-his car; he kicked the tires, dusted the glass of the speedometer, and
-tightened the screws holding the wind-shield spot-light.
-
-He drove happily off toward the Bellevue district, conscious of the
-presence of Mrs. Judique as of a brilliant light on the horizon. The
-maple leaves had fallen and they lined the gutters of the asphalted
-streets. It was a day of pale gold and faded green, tranquil and
-lingering. Babbitt was aware of the meditative day, and of the
-barrenness of Bellevue--blocks of wooden houses, garages, little shops,
-weedy lots. “Needs pepping up; needs the touch that people like Mrs.
-Judique could give a place,” he ruminated, as he rattled through the
-long, crude, airy streets. The wind rose, enlivening, keen, and in a
-blaze of well-being he came to the flat of Tanis Judique.
-
-She was wearing, when she flutteringly admitted him, a frock of black
-chiffon cut modestly round at the base of her pretty throat. She seemed
-to him immensely sophisticated. He glanced at the cretonnes and colored
-prints in her living-room, and gurgled, “Gosh, you’ve fixed the place
-nice! Takes a clever woman to know how to make a home, all right!”
-
-“You really like it? I’m so glad! But you’ve neglected me, scandalously.
-You promised to come some time and learn to dance.”
-
-Rather unsteadily, “Oh, but you didn’t mean it seriously!”
-
-“Perhaps not. But you might have tried!”
-
-“Well, here I’ve come for my lesson, and you might just as well prepare
-to have me stay for supper!”
-
-They both laughed in a manner which indicated that of course he didn’t
-mean it.
-
-“But first I guess I better look at that leak.”
-
-She climbed with him to the flat roof of the apartment-house--a detached
-world of slatted wooden walks, clotheslines, water-tank in a penthouse.
-He poked at things with his toe, and sought to impress her by being
-learned about copper gutters, the desirability of passing plumbing pipes
-through a lead collar and sleeve and flashing them with copper, and the
-advantages of cedar over boiler-iron for roof-tanks.
-
-“You have to know so much, in real estate!” she admired.
-
-He promised that the roof should be repaired within two days. “Do you
-mind my ’phoning from your apartment?” he asked.
-
-“Heavens, no!”
-
-He stood a moment at the coping, looking over a land of hard little
-bungalows with abnormally large porches, and new apartment-houses,
-small, but brave with variegated brick walls and terra-cotta trimmings.
-Beyond them was a hill with a gouge of yellow clay like a vast wound.
-Behind every apartment-house, beside each dwelling, were small garages.
-It was a world of good little people, comfortable, industrious,
-credulous.
-
-In the autumnal light the flat newness was mellowed, and the air was a
-sun-tinted pool.
-
-“Golly, it’s one fine afternoon. You get a great view here, right up
-Tanner’s Hill,” said Babbitt.
-
-“Yes, isn’t it nice and open.”
-
-“So darn few people appreciate a View.”
-
-“Don’t you go raising my rent on that account! Oh, that was naughty of
-me! I was just teasing. Seriously though, there are so few who
-respond--who react to Views. I mean--they haven’t any feeling of poetry
-and beauty.”
-
-“That’s a fact, they haven’t,” he breathed, admiring her slenderness and
-the absorbed, airy way in which she looked toward the hill, chin lifted,
-lips smiling. “Well, guess I’d better telephone the plumbers, so they’ll
-get on the job first thing in the morning.”
-
-When he had telephoned, making it conspicuously authoritative and gruff
-and masculine, he looked doubtful, and sighed, “S’pose I’d better be--”
-
-“Oh, you must have that cup of tea first!”
-
-“Well, it would go pretty good, at that.”
-
-It was luxurious to loll in a deep green rep chair, his legs thrust out
-before him, to glance at the black Chinese telephone stand and the
-colored photograph of Mount Vernon which he had always liked so much,
-while in the tiny kitchen--so near--Mrs. Judique sang “My Creole Queen.”
-In an intolerable sweetness, a contentment so deep that he was wistfully
-discontented, he saw magnolias by moonlight and heard plantation darkies
-crooning to the banjo. He wanted to be near her, on pretense of helping
-her, yet he wanted to remain in this still ecstasy. Languidly he
-remained.
-
-When she bustled in with the tea he smiled up at her. “This is awfully
-nice!” For the first time, he was not fencing; he was quietly and
-securely friendly; and friendly and quiet was her answer: “It’s nice to
-have you here. You were so kind, helping me to find this little home.”
-
-They agreed that the weather would soon turn cold. They agreed that
-prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was
-cultural. They agreed about everything. They even became bold. They
-hinted that these modern young girls, well, honestly, their short skirts
-were short. They were proud to find that they were not shocked by such
-frank speaking. Tanis ventured, “I know you’ll understand-- I mean-- I
-don’t quite know how to say it, but I do think that girls who pretend
-they’re bad by the way they dress really never go any farther. They give
-away the fact that they haven’t the instincts of a womanly woman.”
-
-Remembering Ida Putiak, the manicure girl, and how ill she had used him,
-Babbitt agreed with enthusiasm; remembering how ill all the world had
-used him, he told of Paul Riesling, of Zilla, of Seneca Doane, of the
-strike:
-
-“See how it was? Course I was as anxious to have those beggars licked to
-a standstill as anybody else, but gosh, no reason for not seeing their
-side. For a fellow’s own sake, he’s got to be broad-minded and liberal,
-don’t you think so?”
-
-“Oh, I do!” Sitting on the hard little couch, she clasped her hands
-beside her, leaned toward him, absorbed him; and in a glorious state of
-being appreciated he proclaimed:
-
-“So I up and said to the fellows at the club, ‘Look here,’ I--”
-
-“Do you belong to the Union Club? I think it’s--”
-
-“No; the Athletic. Tell you: Course they’re always asking me to join the
-Union, but I always say, ‘No, sir! Nothing doing!’ I don’t mind the
-expense but I can’t stand all the old fogies.”
-
-“Oh, yes, that’s so. But tell me: what did you say to them?”
-
-“Oh, you don’t want to hear it. I’m probably boring you to death with my
-troubles! You wouldn’t hardly think I was an old duffer; I sound like a
-kid!”
-
-“Oh, you’re a boy yet. I mean--you can’t be a day over forty-five.”
-
-“Well, I’m not--much. But by golly I begin to feel middle-aged
-sometimes; all these responsibilities and all.”
-
-“Oh, I know!” Her voice caressed him; it cloaked him like warm silk.
-“And I feel lonely, so lonely, some days, Mr. Babbitt.”
-
-“We’re a sad pair of birds! But I think we’re pretty darn nice!”
-
-“Yes, I think we’re lots nicer than most people I know!” They smiled.
-“But please tell me what you said at the Club.”
-
-“Well, it was like this: Course Seneca Doane is a friend of mine--they
-can say what they want to, they can call him anything they please, but
-what most folks here don’t know is that Senny is the bosom pal of some
-of the biggest statesmen in the world--Lord Wycombe, frinstance--you
-know, this big British nobleman. My friend Sir Gerald Doak told me that
-Lord Wycombe is one of the biggest guns in England--well, Doak or
-somebody told me.”
-
-“Oh! Do you know Sir Gerald? The one that was here, at the McKelveys’?”
-
-“Know him? Well, say, I know him just well enough so we call each other
-George and Jerry, and we got so pickled together in Chicago--”
-
-“That must have been fun. But--” She shook a finger at him. “--I can’t
-have you getting pickled! I’ll have to take you in hand!”
-
-“Wish you would!... Well, zize saying: You see I happen to know what a
-big noise Senny Doane is outside of Zenith, but of course a prophet
-hasn’t got any honor in his own country, and Senny, darn his old hide,
-he’s so blame modest that he never lets folks know the kind of an outfit
-he travels with when he goes abroad. Well, during the strike Clarence
-Drum comes pee-rading up to our table, all dolled up fit to kill in his
-nice lil cap’n’s uniform, and somebody says to him, ‘Busting the strike,
-Clarence?’
-
-“Well, he swells up like a pouter-pigeon and he hollers, so’s you could
-hear him way up in the reading-room, ‘Yes, sure; I told the
-strike-leaders where they got off, and so they went home.’
-
-“‘Well,’ I says to him, ‘glad there wasn’t any violence.’
-
-“‘Yes,’ he says, ‘but if I hadn’t kept my eye skinned there would’ve
-been. All those fellows had bombs in their pockets. They’re reg’lar
-anarchists.’
-
-“‘Oh, rats, Clarence,’ I says, ‘I looked ’em all over carefully, and
-they didn’t have any more bombs ’n a rabbit,’ I says. ‘Course,’ I says,
-‘they’re foolish, but they’re a good deal like you and me, after all.’
-
-“And then Vergil Gunch or somebody--no, it was Chum Frink--you know,
-this famous poet--great pal of mine--he says to me, ‘Look here,’ he
-says, ‘do you mean to say you advocate these strikes?’ Well, I was so
-disgusted with a fellow whose mind worked that way that I swear, I had a
-good mind to not explain at all--just ignore him--”
-
-“Oh, that’s so wise!” said Mrs. Judique.
-
-“--but finally I explains to him: ‘If you’d done as much as I have on
-Chamber of Commerce committees and all,’ I says, ‘then you’d have the
-right to talk! But same time,’ I says, ‘I believe in treating your
-opponent like a gentleman!’ Well, sir, that held ’em! Frink--Chum I
-always call him--he didn’t have another word to say. But at that, I
-guess some of ’em kind o’ thought I was too liberal. What do you think?”
-
-“Oh, you were so wise. And courageous! I love a man to have the courage
-of his convictions!”
-
-“But do you think it was a good stunt? After all, some of these fellows
-are so darn cautious and narrow-minded that they’re prejudiced against a
-fellow that talks right out in meeting.”
-
-“What do you care? In the long run they’re bound to respect a man who
-makes them think, and with your reputation for oratory you--”
-
-“What do you know about my reputation for oratory?”
-
-“Oh, I’m not going to tell you everything I know! But seriously, you
-don’t realize what a famous man you are.”
-
-“Well-- Though I haven’t done much orating this fall. Too kind of
-bothered by this Paul Riesling business, I guess. But-- Do you know,
-you’re the first person that’s really understood what I was getting at,
-Tanis-- Listen to me, will you! Fat nerve I’ve got, calling you Tanis!”
-
-“Oh, do! And shall I call you George? Don’t you think it’s awfully nice
-when two people have so much--what shall I call it?--so much analysis
-that they can discard all these stupid conventions and understand each
-other and become acquainted right away, like ships that pass in the
-night?”
-
-“I certainly do! I certainly do!”
-
-He was no longer quiescent in his chair; he wandered about the room, he
-dropped on the couch beside her. But as he awkwardly stretched his hand
-toward her fragile, immaculate fingers, she said brightly, “Do give me a
-cigarette. Would you think poor Tanis was dreadfully naughty if she
-smoked?”
-
-“Lord, no! I like it!”
-
-He had often and weightily pondered flappers smoking in Zenith
-restaurants, but he knew only one woman who smoked--Mrs. Sam Doppelbrau,
-his flighty neighbor. He ceremoniously lighted Tanis’s cigarette, looked
-for a place to deposit the burnt match, and dropped it into his pocket.
-
-“I’m sure you want a cigar, you poor man!” she crooned.
-
-“Do you mind one?”
-
-“Oh, no! I love the smell of a good cigar; so nice and--so nice and like
-a man. You’ll find an ash-tray in my bedroom, on the table beside the
-bed, if you don’t mind getting it.”
-
-He was embarrassed by her bedroom: the broad couch with a cover of
-violet silk, mauve curtains striped with gold, Chinese Chippendale
-bureau, and an amazing row of slippers, with ribbon-wound shoe-trees,
-and primrose stockings lying across them. His manner of bringing the
-ash-tray had just the right note of easy friendliness, he felt. “A boob
-like Verg Gunch would try to get funny about seeing her bedroom, but I
-take it casually.” He was not casual afterward. The contentment of
-companionship was gone, and he was restless with desire to touch her
-hand. But whenever he turned toward her, the cigarette was in his way.
-It was a shield between them. He waited till she should have finished,
-but as he rejoiced at her quick crushing of its light on the ash-tray
-she said, “Don’t you want to give me another cigarette?” and hopelessly
-he saw the screen of pale smoke and her graceful tilted hand again
-between them. He was not merely curious now to find out whether she
-would let him hold her hand (all in the purest friendship, naturally),
-but agonized with need of it.
-
-On the surface appeared none of all this fretful drama. They were
-talking cheerfully of motors, of trips to California, of Chum Frink.
-Once he said delicately, “I do hate these guys-- I hate these people that
-invite themselves to meals, but I seem to have a feeling I’m going to
-have supper with the lovely Mrs. Tanis Judique to-night. But I suppose
-you probably have seven dates already.”
-
-“Well, I was thinking some of going to the movies. Yes, I really think I
-ought to get out and get some fresh air.”
-
-She did not encourage him to stay, but never did she discourage him. He
-considered, “I better take a sneak! She _will_ let me stay--there _is_
-something doing--and I mustn’t get mixed up with-- I mustn’t-- I’ve got to
-beat it.” Then, “No, it’s too late now.”
-
-Suddenly, at seven, brushing her cigarette away, brusquely taking her
-hand:
-
-“Tanis! Stop teasing me! You know we-- Here we are, a couple of lonely
-birds, and we’re awful happy together. Anyway I am! Never been so happy!
-Do let me stay! I’ll gallop down to the delicatessen and buy some
-stuff--cold chicken maybe--or cold turkey--and we can have a nice little
-supper, and afterwards, if you want to chase me out, I’ll be good and go
-like a lamb.”
-
-“Well--yes--it would be nice,” she said.
-
-Nor did she withdraw her hand. He squeezed it, trembling, and blundered
-toward his coat. At the delicatessen he bought preposterous stores of
-food, chosen on the principle of expensiveness. From the drug store
-across the street he telephoned to his wife, “Got to get a fellow to
-sign a lease before he leaves town on the midnight. Won’t be home till
-late. Don’t wait up for me. Kiss Tinka good-night.” He expectantly
-lumbered back to the flat.
-
-“Oh, you bad thing, to buy so much food!” was her greeting, and her
-voice was gay, her smile acceptant.
-
-He helped her in the tiny white kitchen; he washed the lettuce, he
-opened the olive bottle. She ordered him to set the table, and as he
-trotted into the living-room, as he hunted through the buffet for knives
-and forks, he felt utterly at home.
-
-“Now the only other thing,” he announced, “is what you’re going to wear.
-I can’t decide whether you’re to put on your swellest evening gown, or
-let your hair down and put on short skirts and make-believe you’re a
-little girl.”
-
-“I’m going to dine just as I am, in this old chiffon rag, and if you
-can’t stand poor Tanis that way, you can go to the club for dinner!”
-
-“Stand you!” He patted her shoulder. “Child, you’re the brainiest and
-the loveliest and finest woman I’ve ever met! Come now, Lady Wycombe, if
-you’ll take the Duke of Zenith’s arm, we will proambulate in to the
-magnolious feed!”
-
-“Oh, you do say the funniest, nicest things!”
-
-When they had finished the picnic supper he thrust his head out of the
-window and reported, “It’s turned awful chilly, and I think it’s going
-to rain. You don’t want to go to the movies.”
-
-“Well--”
-
-“I wish we had a fireplace! I wish it was raining like all get-out
-to-night, and we were in a funny little old-fashioned cottage, and the
-trees thrashing like everything outside, and a great big log fire
-and-- I’ll tell you! Let’s draw this couch up to the radiator, and
-stretch our feet out, and pretend it’s a wood-fire.”
-
-“Oh, I think that’s pathetic! You big child!”
-
-But they did draw up to the radiator, and propped their feet against
-it--his clumsy black shoes, her patent-leather slippers. In the dimness
-they talked of themselves; of how lonely she was, how bewildered he, and
-how wonderful that they had found each other. As they fell silent the
-room was stiller than a country lane. There was no sound from the street
-save the whir of motor-tires, the rumble of a distant freight-train.
-Self-contained was the room, warm, secure, insulated from the harassing
-world.
-
-He was absorbed by a rapture in which all fear and doubting were
-smoothed away; and when he reached home, at dawn, the rapture had
-mellowed to contentment serene and full of memories.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIX
-
-
-I
-
-The assurance of Tanis Judique’s friendship fortified Babbitt’s
-self-approval. At the Athletic Club he became experimental. Though
-Vergil Gunch was silent, the others at the Roughnecks’ Table came to
-accept Babbitt as having, for no visible reason, “turned crank.” They
-argued windily with him, and he was cocky, and enjoyed the spectacle of
-his interesting martyrdom. He even praised Seneca Doane. Professor
-Pumphrey said that was carrying a joke too far; but Babbitt argued, “No!
-Fact! I tell you he’s got one of the keenest intellects in the country.
-Why, Lord Wycombe said that--”
-
-“Oh, who the hell is Lord Wycombe? What you always lugging him in for?
-You been touting him for the last six weeks!” protested Orville Jones.
-
-“George ordered him from Sears-Roebuck. You can get those English
-high-muckamucks by mail for two bucks apiece,” suggested Sidney
-Finkelstein.
-
-“That’s all right now! Lord Wycombe, he’s one of the biggest intellects
-in English political life. As I was saying: Of course I’m conservative
-myself, but I appreciate a guy like Senny Doane because--”
-
-Vergil Gunch interrupted harshly, “I wonder if you are so conservative?
-I find I can manage to run my own business without any skunks and reds
-like Doane in it!”
-
-The grimness of Gunch’s voice, the hardness of his jaw, disconcerted
-Babbitt, but he recovered and went on till they looked bored, then
-irritated, then as doubtful as Gunch.
-
-
-II
-
-He thought of Tanis always. With a stir he remembered her every aspect.
-His arms yearned for her. “I’ve found her! I’ve dreamed of her all these
-years and now I’ve found her!” he exulted. He met her at the movies in
-the morning; he drove out to her flat in the late afternoon or on
-evenings when he was believed to be at the Elks. He knew her financial
-affairs and advised her about them, while she lamented her feminine
-ignorance, and praised his masterfulness, and proved to know much more
-about bonds than he did. They had remembrances, and laughter over old
-times. Once they quarreled, and he raged that she was as “bossy” as his
-wife and far more whining when he was inattentive. But that passed
-safely.
-
-Their high hour was a tramp on a ringing December afternoon, through
-snow-drifted meadows down to the icy Chaloosa River. She was exotic in
-an astrachan cap and a short beaver coat; she slid on the ice and
-shouted, and he panted after her, rotund with laughter.... Myra Babbitt
-never slid on the ice.
-
-He was afraid that they would be seen together. In Zenith it is
-impossible to lunch with a neighbor’s wife without the fact being known,
-before nightfall, in every house in your circle. But Tanis was
-beautifully discreet. However appealingly she might turn to him when
-they were alone, she was gravely detached when they were abroad, and he
-hoped that she would be taken for a client. Orville Jones once saw them
-emerging from a movie theater, and Babbitt bumbled, “Let me make you
-’quainted with Mrs. Judique. Now here’s a lady who knows the right
-broker to come to, Orvy!” Mr. Jones, though he was a man censorious of
-morals and of laundry machinery, seemed satisfied.
-
-His predominant fear--not from any especial fondness for her but from
-the habit of propriety--was that his wife would learn of the affair. He
-was certain that she knew nothing specific about Tanis, but he was also
-certain that she suspected something indefinite. For years she had been
-bored by anything more affectionate than a farewell kiss, yet she was
-hurt by any slackening in his irritable periodic interest, and now he
-had no interest; rather, a revulsion. He was completely faithful--to
-Tanis. He was distressed by the sight of his wife’s slack plumpness, by
-her puffs and billows of flesh, by the tattered petticoat which she was
-always meaning and always forgetting to throw away. But he was aware
-that she, so long attuned to him, caught all his repulsions. He
-elaborately, heavily, jocularly tried to check them. He couldn’t.
-
-They had a tolerable Christmas. Kenneth Escott was there, admittedly
-engaged to Verona. Mrs. Babbitt was tearful and called Kenneth her new
-son. Babbitt was worried about Ted, because he had ceased complaining of
-the State University and become suspiciously acquiescent. He wondered
-what the boy was planning, and was too shy to ask. Himself, Babbitt
-slipped away on Christmas afternoon to take his present, a silver
-cigarette-box, to Tanis. When he returned Mrs. Babbitt asked, much too
-innocently, “Did you go out for a little fresh air?”
-
-“Yes, just lil drive,” he mumbled.
-
-After New Year’s his wife proposed, “I heard from my sister to-day,
-George. She isn’t well. I think perhaps I ought to go stay with her for
-a few weeks.”
-
-Now, Mrs. Babbitt was not accustomed to leave home during the winter
-except on violently demanding occasions, and only the summer before, she
-had been gone for weeks. Nor was Babbitt one of the detachable husbands
-who take separations casually. He liked to have her there; she looked
-after his clothes; she knew how his steak ought to be cooked; and her
-clucking made him feel secure. But he could not drum up even a dutiful
-“Oh, she doesn’t really need you, does she?” While he tried to look
-regretful, while he felt that his wife was watching him, he was filled
-with exultant visions of Tanis.
-
-“Do you think I’d better go?” she said sharply.
-
-“You’ve got to decide, honey; I can’t.”
-
-She turned away, sighing, and his forehead was damp.
-
-Till she went, four days later, she was curiously still, he cumbrously
-affectionate. Her train left at noon. As he saw it grow small beyond the
-train-shed he longed to hurry to Tanis.
-
-“No, by golly, I won’t do that!” he vowed. “I won’t go near her for a
-week!”
-
-But he was at her flat at four.
-
-
-III
-
-He who had once controlled or seemed to control his life in a progress
-unimpassioned but diligent and sane was for that fortnight borne on a
-current of desire and very bad whisky and all the complications of new
-acquaintances, those furious new intimates who demand so much more
-attention than old friends. Each morning he gloomily recognized his
-idiocies of the evening before. With his head throbbing, his tongue and
-lips stinging from cigarettes, he incredulously counted the number of
-drinks he had taken, and groaned, “I got to quit!” He had ceased saying,
-“I _will_ quit!” for however resolute he might be at dawn, he could not,
-for a single evening, check his drift.
-
-He had met Tanis’s friends; he had, with the ardent haste of the
-Midnight People, who drink and dance and rattle and are ever afraid to
-be silent, been adopted as a member of her group, which they called “The
-Bunch.” He first met them after a day when he had worked particularly
-hard and when he hoped to be quiet with Tanis and slowly sip her
-admiration.
-
-From down the hall he could hear shrieks and the grind of a phonograph.
-As Tanis opened the door he saw fantastic figures dancing in a haze of
-cigarette smoke. The tables and chairs were against the wall.
-
-“Oh, isn’t this dandy!” she gabbled at him. “Carrie Nork had the
-loveliest idea. She decided it was time for a party, and she ’phoned the
-Bunch and told ’em to gather round.... George, this is Carrie.”
-
-“Carrie” was, in the less desirable aspects of both, at once matronly
-and spinsterish. She was perhaps forty; her hair was an unconvincing
-ash-blond; and if her chest was flat, her hips were ponderous. She
-greeted Babbitt with a giggling “Welcome to our little midst! Tanis says
-you’re a real sport.”
-
-He was apparently expected to dance, to be boyish and gay with Carrie,
-and he did his unforgiving best. He towed her about the room, bumping
-into other couples, into the radiator, into chair-legs cunningly
-ambushed. As he danced he surveyed the rest of the Bunch: A thin young
-woman who looked capable, conceited, and sarcastic. Another woman whom
-he could never quite remember. Three overdressed and slightly effeminate
-young men--soda-fountain clerks, or at least born for that profession. A
-man of his own age, immovable, self-satisfied, resentful of Babbitt’s
-presence.
-
-When he had finished his dutiful dance Tanis took him aside and begged,
-“Dear, wouldn’t you like to do something for me? I’m all out of booze,
-and the Bunch want to celebrate. Couldn’t you just skip down to Healey
-Hanson’s and get some?”
-
-“Sure,” he said, trying not to sound sullen.
-
-“I’ll tell you: I’ll get Minnie Sonntag to drive down with you.” Tanis
-was pointing to the thin, sarcastic young woman.
-
-Miss Sonntag greeted him with an astringent “How d’you do, Mr. Babbitt.
-Tanis tells me you’re a very prominent man, and I’m honored by being
-allowed to drive with you. Of course I’m not accustomed to associating
-with society people like you, so I don’t know how to act in such exalted
-circles!”
-
-Thus Miss Sonntag talked all the way down to Healey Hanson’s. To her
-jibes he wanted to reply “Oh, go to the devil!” but he never quite
-nerved himself to that reasonable comment. He was resenting the
-existence of the whole Bunch. He had heard Tanis speak of “darling
-Carrie” and “Min Sonntag--she’s so clever--you’ll adore her,” but they
-had never been real to him. He had pictured Tanis as living in a
-rose-tinted vacuum, waiting for him, free of all the complications of a
-Floral Heights.
-
-When they returned he had to endure the patronage of the young
-soda-clerks. They were as damply friendly as Miss Sonntag was dryly
-hostile. They called him “Old Georgie” and shouted, “Come on now, sport;
-shake a leg” ... boys in belted coats, pimply boys, as young as Ted and
-as flabby as chorus-men, but powerful to dance and to mind the
-phonograph and smoke cigarettes and patronize Tanis. He tried to be one
-of them; he cried “Good work, Pete!” but his voice creaked.
-
-Tanis apparently enjoyed the companionship of the dancing darlings; she
-bridled to their bland flirtation and casually kissed them at the end of
-each dance. Babbitt hated her, for the moment. He saw her as
-middle-aged. He studied the wrinkles in the softness of her throat, the
-slack flesh beneath her chin. The taut muscles of her youth were loose
-and drooping. Between dances she sat in the largest chair, waving her
-cigarette, summoning her callow admirers to come and talk to her. (“She
-thinks she’s a blooming queen!” growled Babbitt.) She chanted to Miss
-Sonntag, “Isn’t my little studio sweet?” (“Studio, rats! It’s a plain
-old-maid-and-chow-dog flat! Oh, God, I wish I was home! I wonder if I
-can’t make a getaway now?”)
-
-His vision grew blurred, however, as he applied himself to Healey
-Hanson’s raw but vigorous whisky. He blended with the Bunch. He began to
-rejoice that Carrie Nork and Pete, the most nearly intelligent of the
-nimble youths, seemed to like him; and it was enormously important to
-win over the surly older man, who proved to be a railway clerk named
-Fulton Bemis.
-
-The conversation of the Bunch was exclamatory, high-colored, full of
-references to people whom Babbitt did not know. Apparently they thought
-very comfortably of themselves. They were the Bunch, wise and beautiful
-and amusing; they were Bohemians and urbanites, accustomed to all the
-luxuries of Zenith: dance-halls, movie-theaters, and roadhouses; and in
-a cynical superiority to people who were “slow” or “tightwad” they
-cackled:
-
-“Oh, Pete, did I tell you what that dub of a cashier said when I came in
-late yesterday? Oh, it was per-fect-ly priceless!”
-
-“Oh, but wasn’t T. D. stewed! Say, he was simply ossified! What did
-Gladys say to him?”
-
-“Think of the nerve of Bob Bickerstaff trying to get us to come to his
-house! Say, the nerve of him! Can you beat it for nerve? Some nerve I
-call it!”
-
-“Did you notice how Dotty was dancing? Gee, wasn’t she the limit!”
-
-Babbitt was to be heard sonorously agreeing with the once-hated Miss
-Minnie Sonntag that persons who let a night go by without dancing to
-jazz music were crabs, pikers, and poor fish; and he roared “You bet!”
-when Mrs. Carrie Nork gurgled, “Don’t you love to sit on the floor? It’s
-so Bohemian!” He began to think extremely well of the Bunch. When he
-mentioned his friends Sir Gerald Doak, Lord Wycombe, William Washington
-Eathorne, and Chum Frink, he was proud of their condescending interest.
-He got so thoroughly into the jocund spirit that he didn’t much mind
-seeing Tanis drooping against the shoulder of the youngest and milkiest
-of the young men, and he himself desired to hold Carrie Nork’s pulpy
-hand, and dropped it only because Tanis looked angry.
-
-When he went home, at two, he was fully a member of the Bunch, and all
-the week thereafter he was bound by the exceedingly straitened
-conventions, the exceedingly wearing demands, of their life of pleasure
-and freedom. He had to go to their parties; he was involved in the
-agitation when everybody telephoned to everybody else that she hadn’t
-meant what she’d said when she’d said that, and anyway, why was Pete
-going around saying she’d said it?
-
-Never was a Family more insistent on learning one another’s movements
-than were the Bunch. All of them volubly knew, or indignantly desired to
-know, where all the others had been every minute of the week. Babbitt
-found himself explaining to Carrie or Fulton Bemis just what he had been
-doing that he should not have joined them till ten o’clock, and
-apologizing for having gone to dinner with a business acquaintance.
-
-Every member of the Bunch was expected to telephone to every other
-member at least once a week. “Why haven’t you called me up?” Babbitt was
-asked accusingly, not only by Tanis and Carrie but presently by new
-ancient friends, Jennie and Capitolina and Toots.
-
-If for a moment he had seen Tanis as withering and sentimental, he lost
-that impression at Carrie Nork’s dance. Mrs. Nork had a large house and
-a small husband. To her party came all of the Bunch, perhaps thirty-five
-of them when they were completely mobilized. Babbitt, under the name of
-“Old Georgie,” was now a pioneer of the Bunch, since each month it
-changed half its membership and he who could recall the prehistoric days
-of a fortnight ago, before Mrs. Absolom, the food-demonstrator, had gone
-to Indianapolis, and Mac had “got sore at” Minnie, was a venerable
-leader and able to condescend to new Petes and Minnies and Gladyses.
-
-At Carrie’s, Tanis did not have to work at being hostess. She was
-dignified and sure, a clear fine figure in the black chiffon frock he
-had always loved; and in the wider spaces of that ugly house Babbitt was
-able to sit quietly with her. He repented of his first revulsion, mooned
-at her feet, and happily drove her home. Next day he bought a violent
-yellow tie, to make himself young for her. He knew, a little sadly, that
-he could not make himself beautiful; he beheld himself as heavy, hinting
-of fatness, but he danced, he dressed, he chattered, to be as young as
-she was... as young as she seemed to be.
-
-
-IV
-
-As all converts, whether to a religion, love, or gardening, find as by
-magic that though hitherto these hobbies have not seemed to exist, now
-the whole world is filled with their fury, so, once he was converted to
-dissipation, Babbitt discovered agreeable opportunities for it
-everywhere.
-
-He had a new view of his sporting neighbor, Sam Doppelbrau. The
-Doppelbraus were respectable people, industrious people, prosperous
-people, whose ideal of happiness was an eternal cabaret. Their life was
-dominated by suburban bacchanalia of alcohol, nicotine, gasoline, and
-kisses. They and their set worked capably all the week, and all week
-looked forward to Saturday night, when they would, as they expressed it,
-“throw a party;” and the thrown party grew noisier and noisier up to
-Sunday dawn, and usually included an extremely rapid motor expedition to
-nowhere in particular.
-
-One evening when Tanis was at the theater, Babbitt found himself being
-lively with the Doppelbraus, pledging friendship with men whom he had
-for years privily denounced to Mrs. Babbitt as a “rotten bunch of
-tin-horns that I wouldn’t go out with, not if they were the last people
-on earth.” That evening he had sulkily come home and poked about in
-front of the house, chipping off the walk the ice-clots, like fossil
-footprints, made by the steps of passers-by during the recent snow.
-Howard Littlefield came up snuffling.
-
-“Still a widower, George?”
-
-“Yump. Cold again to-night.”
-
-“What do you hear from the wife?”
-
-“She’s feeling fine, but her sister is still pretty sick.”
-
-“Say, better come in and have dinner with us to-night, George.”
-
-“Oh--oh, thanks. Have to go out.”
-
-Suddenly he could not endure Littlefield’s recitals of the more
-interesting statistics about totally uninteresting problems. He scraped
-at the walk and grunted.
-
-Sam Doppelbrau appeared.
-
-“Evenin’, Babbitt. Working hard?”
-
-“Yuh, lil exercise.”
-
-“Cold enough for you to-night?”
-
-“Well, just about.”
-
-“Still a widower?”
-
-“Uh-huh.”
-
-“Say, Babbitt, while she’s away-- I know you don’t care much for
-booze-fights, but the Missus and I’d be awfully glad if you could come
-in some night. Think you could stand a good cocktail for once?”
-
-“Stand it? Young fella, I bet old Uncle George can mix the best cocktail
-in these United States!”
-
-“Hurray! That’s the way to talk! Look here: There’s some folks coming to
-the house to-night, Louetta Swanson and some other live ones, and I’m
-going to open up a bottle of pre-war gin, and maybe we’ll dance a while.
-Why don’t you drop in and jazz it up a little, just for a change?”
-
-“Well-- What time they coming?”
-
-He was at Sam Doppelbrau’s at nine. It was the third time he had entered
-the house. By ten he was calling Mr. Doppelbrau “Sam, old hoss.”
-
-At eleven they all drove out to the Old Farm Inn. Babbitt sat in the
-back of Doppelbrau’s car with Louetta Swanson. Once he had timorously
-tried to make love to her. Now he did not try; he merely made love; and
-Louetta dropped her head on his shoulder, told him what a nagger Eddie
-was, and accepted Babbitt as a decent and well-trained libertine.
-
-With the assistance of Tanis’s Bunch, the Doppelbraus, and other
-companions in forgetfulness, there was not an evening for two weeks when
-he did not return home late and shaky. With his other faculties blurred
-he yet had the motorist’s gift of being able to drive when he could
-scarce walk; of slowing down at corners and allowing for approaching
-cars. He came wambling into the house. If Verona and Kenneth Escott were
-about, he got past them with a hasty greeting, horribly aware of their
-level young glances, and hid himself up-stairs. He found when he came
-into the warm house that he was hazier than he had believed. His head
-whirled. He dared not lie down. He tried to soak out the alcohol in a
-hot bath. For the moment his head was clearer but when he moved about
-the bathroom his calculations of distance were wrong, so that he dragged
-down the towels, and knocked over the soap-dish with a clatter which, he
-feared, would betray him to the children. Chilly in his dressing-gown he
-tried to read the evening paper. He could follow every word; he seemed
-to take in the sense of things; but a minute afterward he could not have
-told what he had been reading. When he went to bed his brain flew in
-circles, and he hastily sat up, struggling for self-control. At last he
-was able to lie still, feeling only a little sick and dizzy--and
-enormously ashamed. To hide his “condition” from his own children! To
-have danced and shouted with people whom he despised! To have said
-foolish things, sung idiotic songs, tried to kiss silly girls!
-Incredulously he remembered that he had by his roaring familiarity with
-them laid himself open to the patronizing of youths whom he would have
-kicked out of his office; that by dancing too ardently he had exposed
-himself to rebukes from the rattiest of withering women. As it came
-relentlessly back to him he snarled, “I hate myself! God how I hate
-myself!” But, he raged, “I’m through! No more! Had enough, plenty!”
-
-He was even surer about it the morning after, when he was trying to be
-grave and paternal with his daughters at breakfast. At noontime he was
-less sure. He did not deny that he had been a fool; he saw it almost as
-clearly as at midnight; but anything, he struggled, was better than
-going back to a life of barren heartiness. At four he wanted a drink. He
-kept a whisky flask in his desk now, and after two minutes of battle he
-had his drink. Three drinks later he began to see the Bunch as tender
-and amusing friends, and by six he was with them... and the tale was to
-be told all over.
-
-Each morning his head ached a little less. A bad head for drinks had
-been his safeguard, but the safeguard was crumbling. Presently he could
-be drunk at dawn, yet not feel particularly wretched in his
-conscience--or in his stomach--when he awoke at eight. No regret, no
-desire to escape the toil of keeping up with the arduous merriment of
-the Bunch, was so great as his feeling of social inferiority when he
-failed to keep up. To be the “livest” of them was as much his ambition
-now as it had been to excel at making money, at playing golf, at
-motor-driving, at oratory, at climbing to the McKelvey set. But
-occasionally he failed.
-
-He found that Pete and the other young men considered the Bunch too
-austerely polite and the Carrie who merely kissed behind doors too
-embarrassingly monogamic. As Babbitt sneaked from Floral Heights down to
-the Bunch, so the young gallants sneaked from the proprieties of the
-Bunch off to “times” with bouncing young women whom they picked up in
-department stores and at hotel coatrooms. Once Babbitt tried to
-accompany them. There was a motor car, a bottle of whisky, and for him a
-grubby shrieking cash-girl from Parcher and Stein’s. He sat beside her
-and worried. He was apparently expected to “jolly her along,” but when
-she sang out, “Hey, leggo, quit crushing me cootie-garage,” he did not
-quite know how to go on. They sat in the back room of a saloon, and
-Babbitt had a headache, was confused by their new slang, looked at them
-benevolently, wanted to go home, and had a drink--a good many drinks.
-
-Two evenings after, Fulton Bemis, the surly older man of the Bunch, took
-Babbitt aside and grunted, “Look here, it’s none of my business, and God
-knows I always lap up my share of the hootch, but don’t you think you
-better watch yourself? You’re one of these enthusiastic chumps that
-always overdo things. D’you realize you’re throwing in the booze as fast
-as you can, and you eat one cigarette right after another? Better cut it
-out for a while.”
-
-Babbitt tearfully said that good old Fult was a prince, and yes, he
-certainly would cut it out, and thereafter he lighted a cigarette and
-took a drink and had a terrific quarrel with Tanis when she caught him
-being affectionate with Carrie Nork.
-
-Next morning he hated himself that he should have sunk into a position
-where a fifteenth-rater like Fulton Bemis could rebuke him. He perceived
-that, since he was making love to every woman possible, Tanis was no
-longer his one pure star, and he wondered whether she had ever been
-anything more to him than A Woman. And if Bemis had spoken to him, were
-other people talking about him? He suspiciously watched the men at the
-Athletic Club that noon. It seemed to him that they were uneasy. They
-had been talking about him then? He was angry. He became belligerent. He
-not only defended Seneca Doane but even made fun of the Y. M. C. A.
-Vergil Gunch was rather brief in his answers.
-
-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. Every one 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 head-waiter 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 Vergil 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 to-day,” 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 Vergil 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 Vergil 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 fleeing. He fumbled:
-
-“I suppose you’d especially light on fellows like Seneca Doane and try
-to make ’em--”
-
-“You bet your sweet life we would! Look here, old Georgie: I’ve never
-for one moment believed you meant it when you’ve defended Doane, and the
-strikers and so on, at the Club. I knew you were simply kidding those
-poor galoots like Sid Finkelstein.... At least I certainly hope you were
-kidding!”
-
-“Oh, well--sure-- Course you might say--” Babbitt was conscious of how
-feeble he sounded, conscious of Gunch’s mature and relentless eye.
-“Gosh, you know where I stand! I’m no labor agitator! I’m a business
-man, first, last, and all the time! But--but honestly, I don’t think
-Doane means so badly, and you got to remember he’s an old friend of
-mine.”
-
-“George, when it comes right down to a struggle between decency and the
-security of our homes on the one hand, and red ruin and those lazy dogs
-plotting for free beer on the other, you got to give up even old
-friendships. ‘He that is not with me is against me.’”
-
-“Ye-es, I suppose--”
-
-“How about it? Going to join us in the Good Citizens’ League?”
-
-“I’ll have to think it over, Verg.”
-
-“All right, just as you say.” Babbitt was relieved to be let off so
-easily, but Gunch went on: “George, I don’t know what’s come over you;
-none of us do; and we’ve talked a lot about you. For a while we figured
-out you’d been upset by what happened to poor Riesling, and we forgave
-you for any fool things you said, but that’s old stuff now, George, and
-we can’t make out what’s got into you. Personally, I’ve always defended
-you, but I must say it’s getting too much for me. All the boys at the
-Athletic Club and the Boosters’ are sore, the way you go on deliberately
-touting Doane and his bunch of hell-hounds, and talking about being
-liberal--which means being wishy-washy--and even saying this preacher
-guy Ingram isn’t a professional free-love artist. And then the way you
-been carrying on personally! Joe Pumphrey says he saw you out the other
-night with a gang of totties, all stewed to the gills, and here to-day
-coming right into the Thornleigh with a--well, she may be all right and
-a perfect lady, but she certainly did look like a pretty gay skirt for a
-fellow with his wife out of town to be taking to lunch. Didn’t look
-well. What the devil has come over you, George?”
-
-“Strikes me there’s a lot of fellows that know more about my personal
-business than I do myself!”
-
-“Now don’t go getting sore at me because I come out flatfooted like a
-friend and say what I think instead of tattling behind your back, the
-way a whole lot of ’em do. I tell you, George, you got a position in the
-community, and the community expects you to live up to it. And-- Better
-think over joining the Good Citizens’ League. See you about it later.”
-
-He was gone.
-
-That evening Babbitt dined alone. He saw all the Clan of Good Fellows
-peering through the restaurant window, spying on him. Fear sat beside
-him, and he told himself that to-night he would not go to Tanis’s flat;
-and he did not go... till late.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXX
-
-
-I
-
-The summer before, Mrs. Babbitt’s letters had crackled with desire to
-return to Zenith. Now they said nothing of returning, but a wistful “I
-suppose everything is going on all right without me” among her dry
-chronicles of weather and sicknesses hinted to Babbitt that he hadn’t
-been very urgent about her coming. He worried it:
-
-“If she were here, and I went on raising cain like I been doing, she’d
-have a fit. I got to get hold of myself. I got to learn to play around
-and yet not make a fool of myself. I can do it, too, if folks like Verg
-Gunch’ll let me alone, and Myra’ll stay away. But--poor kid, she sounds
-lonely. Lord, I don’t want to hurt her!”
-
-Impulsively he wrote that they missed her, and her next letter said
-happily that she was coming home.
-
-He persuaded himself that he was eager to see her. He bought roses for
-the house, he ordered squab for dinner, he had the car cleaned and
-polished. All the way home from the station with her he was adequate in
-his accounts of Ted’s success in basket-ball at the university, but
-before they reached Floral Heights there was nothing more to say, and
-already he felt the force of her stolidity, wondered whether he could
-remain a good husband and still sneak out of the house this evening for
-half an hour with the Bunch. When he had housed the car he blundered
-upstairs, into the familiar talcum-scented warmth of her presence,
-blaring, “Help you unpack your bag?”
-
-“No, I can do it.”
-
-Slowly she turned, holding up a small box, and slowly she said, “I
-brought you a present, just a new cigar-case. I don’t know if you’d care
-to have it--”
-
-She was the lonely girl, the brown appealing Myra Thompson, whom he had
-married, and he almost wept for pity as he kissed her and besought, “Oh,
-honey, honey, _care_ to have it? Of course I do! I’m awful proud you
-brought it to me. And I needed a new case badly.”
-
-He wondered how he would get rid of the case he had bought the week
-before.
-
-“And you really are glad to see me back?”
-
-“Why, you poor kiddy, what you been worrying about?”
-
-“Well, you didn’t seem to miss me very much.”
-
-By the time he had finished his stint of lying they were firmly bound
-again. By ten that evening it seemed improbable that she had ever been
-away. There was but one difference: the problem of remaining a
-respectable husband, a Floral Heights husband, yet seeing Tanis and the
-Bunch with frequency. He had promised to telephone to Tanis that
-evening, and now it was melodramatically impossible. He prowled about
-the telephone, impulsively thrusting out a hand to lift the receiver,
-but never quite daring to risk it. Nor could he find a reason for
-slipping down to the drug store on Smith Street, with its
-telephone-booth. He was laden with responsibility till he threw it off
-with the speculation: “Why the deuce should I fret so about not being
-able to ’phone Tanis? She can get along without me. I don’t owe her
-anything. She’s a fine girl, but I’ve given her just as much as she has
-me.... Oh, damn these women and the way they get you all tied up in
-complications!”
-
-
-II
-
-For a week he was attentive to his wife, took her to the theater, to
-dinner at the Littlefields’; then the old weary dodging and shifting
-began, and at least two evenings a week he spent with the Bunch. He
-still made pretense of going to the Elks and to committee-meetings but
-less and less did he trouble to have his excuses interesting, less and
-less did she affect to believe them. He was certain that she knew he was
-associating with what Floral Heights called “a sporty crowd,” yet
-neither of them acknowledged it. In matrimonial geography the distance
-between the first mute recognition of a break and the admission thereof
-is as great as the distance between the first naïve faith and the first
-doubting.
-
-As he began to drift away he also began to see her as a human being, to
-like and dislike her instead of accepting her as a comparatively movable
-part of the furniture, and he compassionated that husband-and-wife
-relation which, in twenty-five years of married life, had become a
-separate and real entity. He recalled their high lights: the summer
-vacation in Virginia meadows under the blue wall of the mountains; their
-motor tour through Ohio, and the exploration of Cleveland, Cincinnati,
-and Columbus; the birth of Verona; their building of this new house,
-planned to comfort them through a happy old age--chokingly they had said
-that it might be the last home either of them would ever have. Yet his
-most softening remembrance of these dear moments did not keep him from
-barking at dinner, “Yep, going out f’ few hours. Don’t sit up for me.”
-
-He did not dare now to come home drunk, and though he rejoiced in his
-return to high morality and spoke with gravity to Pete and Fulton Bemis
-about their drinking, he prickled at Myra’s unexpressed criticisms and
-sulkily meditated that a “fellow couldn’t ever learn to handle himself
-if he was always bossed by a lot of women.”
-
-He no longer wondered if Tanis wasn’t a bit worn and sentimental. In
-contrast to the complacent Myra he saw her as swift and air-borne and
-radiant, a fire-spirit tenderly stooping to the hearth, and however
-pitifully he brooded on his wife, he longed to be with Tanis.
-
-Then Mrs. Babbitt tore the decent cloak from her unhappiness and the
-astounded male discovered that she was having a small determined
-rebellion of her own.
-
-
-III
-
-They were beside the fireless fire-place, in the evening.
-
-“Georgie,” she said, “you haven’t given me the list of your household
-expenses while I was away.”
-
-“No, I-- Haven’t made it out yet.” Very affably: “Gosh, we must try to
-keep down expenses this year.”
-
-“That’s so. I don’t know where all the money goes to. I try to
-economize, but it just seems to evaporate.”
-
-“I suppose I oughtn’t to spend so much on cigars. Don’t know but what
-I’ll cut down my smoking, maybe cut it out entirely. I was thinking of a
-good way to do it, the other day: start on these cubeb cigarettes, and
-they’d kind of disgust me with smoking.”
-
-“Oh, I do wish you would! It isn’t that I care, but honestly, George, it
-is so bad for you to smoke so much. Don’t you think you could reduce the
-amount? And George-- I notice now, when you come home from these lodges
-and all, that sometimes you smell of whisky. Dearie, you know I don’t
-worry so much about the moral side of it, but you have a weak stomach
-and you can’t stand all this drinking.”
-
-“Weak stomach, hell! I guess I can carry my booze about as well as most
-folks!”
-
-“Well, I do think you ought to be careful. Don’t you see, dear, I don’t
-want you to get sick.”
-
-“Sick, rats! I’m not a baby! I guess I ain’t going to get sick just
-because maybe once a week I shoot a highball! That’s the trouble with
-women. They always exaggerate so.”
-
-“George, I don’t think you ought to talk that way when I’m just speaking
-for your own good.”
-
-“I know, but gosh all fishhooks, that’s the trouble with women! They’re
-always criticizing and commenting and bringing things up, and then they
-say it’s ‘for your own good’!”
-
-“Why, George, that’s not a nice way to talk, to answer me so short.”
-
-“Well, I didn’t mean to answer short, but gosh, talking as if I was a
-kindergarten brat, not able to tote one highball without calling for the
-St. Mary’s ambulance! A fine idea you must have of me!”
-
-“Oh, it isn’t that; it’s just-- I don’t want to see you get sick and-- My,
-I didn’t know it was so late! Don’t forget to give me those household
-accounts for the time while I was away.”
-
-“Oh, thunder, what’s the use of taking the trouble to make ’em out now?
-Let’s just skip ’em for that period.”
-
-“Why, George Babbitt, in all the years we’ve been married we’ve never
-failed to keep a complete account of every penny we’ve spent!”
-
-“No. Maybe that’s the trouble with us.”
-
-“What in the world do you mean?”
-
-“Oh, I don’t mean anything, only-- Sometimes I get so darn sick and tired
-of all this routine and the accounting at the office and expenses at
-home and fussing and stewing and fretting and wearing myself out
-worrying over a lot of junk that doesn’t really mean a doggone thing,
-and being so careful and-- Good Lord, what do you think I’m made for? I
-could have been a darn good orator, and here I fuss and fret and
-worry--”
-
-“Don’t you suppose I ever get tired of fussing? I get so bored with
-ordering three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year,
-and ruining my eyes over that horrid sewing-machine, and looking after
-your clothes and Rone’s and Ted’s and Tinka’s and everybody’s, and the
-laundry, and darning socks, and going down to the Piggly Wiggly to
-market, and bringing my basket home to save money on the cash-and-carry
-and--_everything!_”
-
-“Well, gosh,” with a certain astonishment, “I suppose maybe you do! But
-talk about-- Here I have to be in the office every single day, while you
-can go out all afternoon and see folks and visit with the neighbors and
-do any blinkin’ thing you want to!”
-
-“Yes, and a fine lot of good that does me! Just talking over the same
-old things with the same old crowd, while you have all sorts of
-interesting people coming in to see you at the office.”
-
-“Interesting! Cranky old dames that want to know why I haven’t rented
-their dear precious homes for about seven times their value, and bunch
-of old crabs panning the everlasting daylights out of me because they
-don’t receive every cent of their rentals by three G.M. on the second of
-the month! Sure! Interesting! Just as interesting as the small pox!”
-
-“Now, George, I will not have you shouting at me that way!”
-
-“Well, it gets my goat the way women figure out that a man doesn’t do a
-darn thing but sit on his chair and have lovey-dovey conferences with a
-lot of classy dames and give ’em the glad eye!”
-
-“I guess you manage to give them a glad enough eye when they do come
-in.”
-
-“What do you mean? Mean I’m chasing flappers?”
-
-“I should hope not--at your age!”
-
-“Now you look here! You may not believe it-- Of course all you see is fat
-little Georgie Babbitt. Sure! Handy man around the house! Fixes the
-furnace when the furnace-man doesn’t show up, and pays the bills, but
-dull, awful dull! Well, you may not believe it, but there’s some women
-that think old George Babbitt isn’t such a bad scout! They think he’s
-not so bad-looking, not so bad that it hurts anyway, and he’s got a
-pretty good line of guff, and some even think he shakes a darn wicked
-Walkover at dancing!”
-
-“Yes.” She spoke slowly. “I haven’t much doubt that when I’m away you
-manage to find people who properly appreciate you.”
-
-“Well, I just mean--” he protested, with a sound of denial. Then he was
-angered into semi-honesty. “You bet I do! I find plenty of folks, and
-doggone nice ones, that don’t think I’m a weak-stomached baby!”
-
-“That’s exactly what I was saying! You can run around with anybody you
-please, but I’m supposed to sit here and wait for you. You have the
-chance to get all sorts of culture and everything, and I just stay
-home--”
-
-“Well, gosh almighty, there’s nothing to prevent your reading books and
-going to lectures and all that junk, is there?”
-
-“George, I _told_ you, I won’t have you shouting at me like that! I
-don’t know what’s come over you. You never used to speak to me in this
-cranky way.”
-
-“I didn’t mean to sound cranky, but gosh, it certainly makes me sore to
-get the blame because you don’t keep up with things.”
-
-“I’m going to! Will you help me?”
-
-“Sure. Anything I can do to help you in the culture-grabbing line--yours
-to oblige, G. F. Babbitt.”
-
-“Very well then, I want you to go to Mrs. Mudge’s New Thought meeting
-with me, next Sunday afternoon.”
-
-“Mrs. Who’s which?”
-
-“Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge. The field-lecturer for the American New
-Thought League. She’s going to speak on ‘Cultivating the Sun Spirit’
-before the League of the Higher Illumination, at the Thornleigh.”
-
-“Oh, punk! New Thought! Hashed thought with a poached egg! ‘Cultivating
-the--’ It sounds like ‘Why is a mouse when it spins?’ That’s a fine
-spiel for a good Presbyterian to be going to, when you can hear Doc
-Drew!”
-
-“Reverend Drew is a scholar and a pulpit orator and all that, but he
-hasn’t got the Inner Ferment, as Mrs. Mudge calls it; he hasn’t any
-inspiration for the New Era. Women need inspiration now. So I want you
-to come, as you promised.”
-
-
-IV
-
-The Zenith branch of the League of the Higher Illumination met in the
-smaller ballroom at the Hotel Thornleigh, a refined apartment with pale
-green walls and plaster wreaths of roses, refined parquet flooring, and
-ultra-refined frail gilt chairs. Here were gathered sixty-five women and
-ten men. Most of the men slouched in their chairs and wriggled, while
-their wives sat rigidly at attention, but two of them--red-necked, meaty
-men--were as respectably devout as their wives. They were newly rich
-contractors who, having bought houses, motors, hand-painted pictures,
-and gentlemanliness, were now buying a refined ready-made philosophy. It
-had been a toss-up with them whether to buy New Thought, Christian
-Science, or a good standard high-church model of Episcopalianism.
-
-In the flesh, Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge fell somewhat short of a prophetic
-aspect. She was pony-built and plump, with the face of a haughty
-Pekingese, a button of a nose, and arms so short that, despite her most
-indignant endeavors, she could not clasp her hands in front of her as
-she sat on the platform waiting. Her frock of taffeta and green velvet,
-with three strings of glass beads, and large folding eye-glasses
-dangling from a black ribbon, was a triumph of refinement.
-
-Mrs. Mudge was introduced by the president of the League of the Higher
-Illumination, an oldish young woman with a yearning voice, white spats,
-and a mustache. She said that Mrs. Mudge would now make it plain to the
-simplest intellect how the Sun Spirit could be cultivated, and they who
-had been thinking about cultivating one would do well to treasure Mrs.
-Mudge’s words, because even Zenith (and everybody knew that Zenith stood
-in the van of spiritual and New Thought progress) didn’t often have the
-opportunity to sit at the feet of such an inspiring Optimist and
-Metaphysical Seer as Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, who had lived the Life of
-Wider Usefulness through Concentration, and in the Silence found those
-Secrets of Mental Control and the Inner Key which were immediately going
-to transform and bring Peace, Power, and Prosperity to the unhappy
-nations; and so, friends, would they for this precious gem-studded hour
-forget the Illusions of the Seeming Real, and in the actualization of
-the deep-lying Veritas pass, along with Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, to the
-Realm Beautiful.
-
-If Mrs. Mudge was rather pudgier than one would like one’s swamis,
-yogis, seers, and initiates, yet her voice had the real professional
-note. It was refined and optimistic; it was overpoweringly calm; it
-flowed on relentlessly, without one comma, till Babbitt was hypnotized.
-Her favorite word was “always,” which she pronounced olllllle-ways. Her
-principal gesture was a pontifical but thoroughly ladylike blessing with
-two stubby fingers.
-
-She explained about this matter of Spiritual Saturation:
-
-“There are those--”
-
-Of “those” she made a linked sweetness long drawn out; a far-off
-delicate call in a twilight minor. It chastely rebuked the restless
-husbands, yet brought them a message of healing.
-
-“There are those who have seen the rim and outer seeming of the Logos
-there are those who have glimpsed and in enthusiasm possessed themselves
-of some segment and portion of the Logos there are those who thus
-flicked but not penetrated and radioactivated by the Dynamis go always
-to and fro assertative that they possess and are possessed of the Logos
-and the Metaphysikos but this word I bring you this concept I enlarge
-that those that are not utter are not even inceptive and that holiness
-is in its definitive essence always always always whole-iness and--”
-
-It proved that the Essence of the Sun Spirit was Truth, but its Aura and
-Effluxion were Cheerfulness:
-
-“Face always the day with the dawn-laugh with the enthusiasm of the
-initiate who perceives that all works together in the revolutions of the
-Wheel and who answers the strictures of the Soured Souls of the
-Destructionists with a Glad Affirmation--”
-
-It went on for about an hour and seven minutes.
-
-At the end Mrs. Mudge spoke with more vigor and punctuation:
-
-“Now let me suggest to all of you the advantages of the Theosophical and
-Pantheistic Oriental Reading Circle, which I represent. Our object is to
-unite all the manifestations of the New Era into one cohesive whole--New
-Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy, Vedanta, Bahaism, and the other
-sparks from the one New Light. The subscription is but ten dollars a
-year, and for this mere pittance the members receive not only the
-monthly magazine, _Pearls of Healing_, but the privilege of sending
-right to the president, our revered Mother Dobbs, any questions
-regarding spiritual progress, matrimonial problems, health and
-well-being questions, financial difficulties, and--”
-
-They listened to her with adoring attention. They looked genteel. They
-looked ironed-out. They coughed politely, and crossed their legs with
-quietness, and in expensive linen handkerchiefs they blew their noses
-with a delicacy altogether optimistic and refined.
-
-As for Babbitt, he sat and suffered.
-
-When they were blessedly out in the air again, when they drove home
-through a wind smelling of snow and honest sun, he dared not speak. They
-had been too near to quarreling, these days. Mrs. Babbitt forced it:
-
-“Did you enjoy Mrs. Mudge’s talk?”
-
-“Well I-- What did you get out of it?”
-
-“Oh, it starts a person thinking. It gets you out of a routine of
-ordinary thoughts.”
-
-“Well, I’ll hand it to Opal she isn’t ordinary, but gosh-- Honest, did
-that stuff mean anything to you?”
-
-“Of course I’m not trained in metaphysics, and there was lots I couldn’t
-quite grasp, but I did feel it was inspiring. And she speaks so readily.
-I do think you ought to have got something out of it.”
-
-“Well, I didn’t! I swear, I was simply astonished, the way those women
-lapped it up! Why the dickens they want to put in their time listening
-to all that blaa when they--”
-
-“It’s certainly better for them than going to roadhouses and smoking and
-drinking!”
-
-“I don’t know whether it is or not! Personally I don’t see a whole lot
-of difference. In both cases they’re trying to get away from
-themselves--most everybody is, these days, I guess. And I’d certainly
-get a whole lot more out of hoofing it in a good lively dance, even in
-some dive, than sitting looking as if my collar was too tight, and
-feeling too scared to spit, and listening to Opal chewing her words.”
-
-“I’m sure you do! You’re very fond of dives. No doubt you saw a lot of
-them while I was away!”
-
-“Look here! You been doing a hell of a lot of insinuating and hinting
-around lately, as if I were leading a double life or something, and I’m
-damn sick of it, and I don’t want to hear anything more about it!”
-
-“Why, George Babbitt! Do you realize what you’re saying? Why, George, in
-all our years together you’ve never talked to me like that!”
-
-“It’s about time then!”
-
-“Lately you’ve been getting worse and worse, and now, finally, you’re
-cursing and swearing at me and shouting at me, and your voice so ugly
-and hateful-- I just shudder!”
-
-“Oh, rats, quit exaggerating! I wasn’t shouting, or swearing either.”
-
-“I wish you could hear your own voice! Maybe you don’t realize how it
-sounds. But even so-- You never used to talk like that. You simply
-_couldn’t_ talk this way if something dreadful hadn’t happened to you.”
-
-His mind was hard. With amazement he found that he wasn’t particularly
-sorry. It was only with an effort that he made himself more agreeable:
-“Well, gosh, I didn’t mean to get sore.”
-
-“George, do you realize that we can’t go on like this, getting farther
-and farther apart, and you ruder and ruder to me? I just don’t know
-what’s going to happen.”
-
-He had a moment’s pity for her bewilderment; he thought of how many deep
-and tender things would be hurt if they really “couldn’t go on like
-this.” But his pity was impersonal, and he was wondering, “Wouldn’t it
-maybe be a good thing if-- Not a divorce and all that, o’ course, but
-kind of a little more independence?”
-
-While she looked at him pleadingly he drove on in a dreadful silence.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXI
-
-
-I
-
-When he was away from her, while he kicked about the garage and swept
-the snow off the running-board and examined a cracked hose-connection,
-he repented, he was alarmed and astonished that he could have flared out
-at his wife, and thought fondly how much more lasting she was than the
-flighty Bunch. He went in to mumble that he was “sorry, didn’t mean to
-be grouchy,” and to inquire as to her interest in movies. But in the
-darkness of the movie theater he brooded that he’d “gone and tied
-himself up to Myra all over again.” He had some satisfaction in taking
-it out on Tanis Judique. “Hang Tanis anyway! Why’d she gone and got him
-into these mix-ups and made him all jumpy and nervous and cranky? Too
-many complications! Cut ’em out!”
-
-He wanted peace. For ten days he did not see Tanis nor telephone to her,
-and instantly she put upon him the compulsion which he hated. When he
-had stayed away from her for five days, hourly taking pride in his
-resoluteness and hourly picturing how greatly Tanis must miss him, Miss
-McGoun reported, “Mrs. Judique on the ’phone. Like t’ speak t’ you ’bout
-some repairs.”
-
-Tanis was quick and quiet:
-
-“Mr. Babbitt? Oh, George, this is Tanis. I haven’t seen you for
-weeks--days, anyway. You aren’t sick, are you?”
-
-“No, just been terribly rushed. I, uh, I think there’ll be a big revival
-of building this year. Got to, uh, got to work hard.”
-
-“Of course, my man! I want you to. You know I’m terribly ambitious for
-you; much more than I am for myself. I just don’t want you to forget
-poor Tanis. Will you call me up soon?”
-
-“Sure! Sure! You bet!”
-
-“Please do. I sha’n’t call you again.”
-
-He meditated, “Poor kid!... But gosh, she oughtn’t to ’phone me at the
-office.... She’s a wonder--sympathy--‘ambitious for me.’... But gosh, I
-won’t be made and compelled to call her up till I get ready. Darn these
-women, the way they make demands! It’ll be one long old time before I
-see her!... But gosh, I’d like to see her to-night--sweet little
-thing.... Oh, cut that, son! Now you’ve broken away, be wise!”
-
-She did not telephone again, nor he, but after five more days she wrote
-to him:
-
-     Have I offended you? You must know, dear, I didn’t mean to. I’m so
-     lonely and I need somebody to cheer me up. Why didn’t you come to
-     the nice party we had at Carrie’s last evening I remember she
-     invited you. Can’t you come around here to-morrow Thur evening? I
-     shall be alone and hope to see you.
-
-His reflections were numerous:
-
-“Doggone it, why can’t she let me alone? Why can’t women ever learn a
-fellow hates to be bulldozed? And they always take advantage of you by
-yelling how lonely they are.
-
-“Now that isn’t nice of you, young fella. She’s a fine, square, straight
-girl, and she does get lonely. She writes a swell hand. Nice-looking
-stationery. Plain. Refined. I guess I’ll have to go see her. Well, thank
-God, I got till to-morrow night free of her, anyway.
-
-“She’s nice but-- Hang it, I won’t be _made_ to do things! I’m not
-married to her. No, nor by golly going to be!
-
-“Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her.”
-
-
-II
-
-Thursday, the to-morrow of Tanis’s note, was full of emotional crises.
-At the Roughnecks’ Table at the club, Verg Gunch talked of the Good
-Citizens’ League and (it seemed to Babbitt) deliberately left him out of
-the invitations to join. Old Mat Penniman, the general utility man at
-Babbitt’s office, had Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his
-oldest boy was “no good,” his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with
-his brother-in-law. Conrad Lyte also had Troubles, and since Lyte was
-one of his best clients, Babbitt had to listen to them. Mr. Lyte, it
-appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and the
-garage had overcharged him. When Babbitt came home, everybody had
-Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the
-impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave; and Tinka desired to
-denounce her teacher.
-
-“Oh, quit fussing!” Babbitt fussed. “You never hear me whining about my
-Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office-- Why, to-day I
-found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched
-my finger in my desk, and Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever.”
-
-He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape
-to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, “Got to go out. Be back by
-eleven, should think.”
-
-“Oh! You’re going out again?”
-
-“Again! What do you mean ‘again’! Haven’t hardly been out of the house
-for a week!”
-
-“Are you--are you going to the Elks?”
-
-“Nope. Got to see some people.”
-
-Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt,
-though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into
-the hall, jerked on his ulster and fur-lined gloves, and went out to
-start the car.
-
-He was relieved to find Tanis cheerful, unreproachful, and brilliant in
-a frock of brown net over gold tissue. “You poor man, having to come out
-on a night like this! It’s terribly cold. Don’t you think a small
-highball would be nice?”
-
-“Now, by golly, there’s a woman with savvy! I think we could more or
-less stand a highball if it wasn’t too long a one--not over a foot
-tall!”
-
-He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot the compulsion of her
-demands, he stretched in a large chair and felt that he had beautifully
-come home. He was suddenly loquacious; he told her what a noble and
-misunderstood man he was, and how superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and
-the other men of their acquaintance; and she, bending forward, chin in
-charming hand, brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to ask,
-“Well, honey, how’s things with _you_,” she took his duty-question
-seriously, and he discovered that she too had Troubles:
-
-“Oh, all right but-- I did get so angry with Carrie. She told Minnie that
-I told her that Minnie was an awful tightwad, and Minnie told me Carrie
-had told her, and of course I told her I hadn’t said anything of the
-kind, and then Carrie found Minnie had told me, and she was simply
-furious because Minnie had told me, and of course I was just boiling
-because Carrie had told her I’d told her, and then we all met up at
-Fulton’s--his wife is away--thank heavens!--oh, there’s the dandiest
-floor in his house to dance on--and we were all of us simply furious at
-each other and-- Oh, I do hate that kind of a mix-up, don’t you? I
-mean--it’s so lacking in refinement, but-- And Mother wants to come and
-stay with me for a whole month, and of course I do love her, I suppose I
-do, but honestly, she’ll cramp my style something dreadful--she never
-can learn not to comment, and she always wants to know where I’m going
-when I go out evenings, and if I lie to her she always spies around and
-ferrets around and finds out where I’ve been, and then she looks like
-Patience on a Monument till I could just scream. And oh, I _must_ tell
-you-- You know I _never_ talk about myself; I just hate people who do,
-don’t you? But-- I feel so stupid to-night, and I know I must be boring
-you with all this but-- What would you do about Mother?”
-
-He gave her facile masculine advice. She was to put off her mother’s
-stay. She was to tell Carrie to go to the deuce. For these valuable
-revelations she thanked him, and they ambled into the familiar gossip of
-the Bunch. Of what a sentimental fool was Carrie. Of what a lazy brat
-was Pete. Of how nice Fulton Bemis could be--“course lots of people
-think he’s a regular old grouch when they meet him because he doesn’t
-give ’em the glad hand the first crack out of the box, but when they get
-to know him, he’s a corker.”
-
-But as they had gone conscientiously through each of these analyses
-before, the conversation staggered. Babbitt tried to be intellectual and
-deal with General Topics. He said some thoroughly sound things about
-Disarmament, and broad-mindedness and liberalism; but it seemed to him
-that General Topics interested Tanis only when she could apply them to
-Pete, Carrie, or themselves. He was distressingly conscious of their
-silence. He tried to stir her into chattering again, but silence rose
-like a gray presence and hovered between them.
-
-“I, uh--” he labored. “It strikes me--it strikes me that unemployment is
-lessening.”
-
-“Maybe Pete will get a decent job, then.”
-
-Silence.
-
-Desperately he essayed, “What’s the trouble, old honey? You seem kind of
-quiet to-night.”
-
-“Am I? Oh, I’m not. But--do you really care whether I am or not?”
-
-“Care? Sure! Course I do!”
-
-“Do you really?” She swooped on him, sat on the arm of his chair.
-
-He hated the emotional drain of having to appear fond of her. He
-stroked her hand, smiled up at her dutifully, and sank back.
-
-“George, I wonder if you really like me at all?”
-
-“Course I do, silly.”
-
-“Do you really, precious? Do you care a bit?”
-
-“Why certainly! You don’t suppose I’d be here if I didn’t!”
-
-“Now see here, young man, I won’t have you speaking to me in that huffy
-way!”
-
-“I didn’t mean to sound huffy. I just--” In injured and rather childish
-tones: “Gosh almighty, it makes me tired the way everybody says I sound
-huffy when I just talk natural! Do they expect me to sing it or
-something?”
-
-“Who do you mean by ‘everybody’? How many other ladies have you been
-consoling?”
-
-“Look here now, I won’t have this hinting!”
-
-Humbly: “I know, dear. I was only teasing. I know it didn’t mean to talk
-huffy--it was just tired. Forgive bad Tanis. But say you love me, say
-it!”
-
-“I love you.... Course I do.”
-
-“Yes, you do!” cynically. “Oh, darling, I don’t mean to be rude but-- I
-get so lonely. I feel so useless. Nobody needs me, nothing I can do for
-anybody. And you know, dear, I’m so active-- I could be if there was
-something to do. And I _am_ young, aren’t I! I’m not an old thing! I’m
-not old and stupid, am I?”
-
-He had to assure her. She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased
-under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness. He was
-impatient. He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world.
-Through her delicate and caressing fingers she may have caught something
-of his shrugging distaste. She left him--he was for the moment buoyantly
-relieved--she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking
-beseechingly up at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the
-flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and
-jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now as
-middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own
-thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how the
-soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her
-eyes, at the base of her wrists. A patch of her throat had a minute
-roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old! She was younger in
-years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him
-with rolling great eyes--as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making
-love to him.
-
-He fretted inwardly, “I’m through with this asinine fooling around. I’m
-going to cut her out. She’s a darn decent nice woman, and I don’t want
-to hurt her, but it’ll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good
-clean surgical operation.”
-
-He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By every rule of
-self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself, that it was her
-fault.
-
-“I suppose maybe I’m kind of out of sorts to-night, but honest, honey,
-when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and
-figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited
-till I came back. Can’t you see, dear, when you _made_ me come, I--being
-about an average bull-headed chump--my tendency was to resist? Listen,
-dear, I’m going now--”
-
-“Not for a while, precious! No!”
-
-“Yep. Right now. And then sometime we’ll see about the future.”
-
-“What do you mean, dear, ‘about the future’? Have I done something I
-oughtn’t to? Oh, I’m so dreadfully sorry!”
-
-He resolutely put his hands behind him. “Not a thing, God bless you, not
-a thing. You’re as good as they make ’em. But it’s just-- Good Lord, do
-you realize I’ve got things to do in the world? I’ve got a business to
-attend to and, you might not believe it, but I’ve got a wife and kids
-that I’m awful fond of!” Then only during the murder he was committing
-was he able to feel nobly virtuous. “I want us to be friends but, gosh,
-I can’t go on this way feeling I _got_ to come up here every so often--”
-
-“Oh, darling, darling, and I’ve always told you, so carefully, that you
-were absolutely free. I just wanted you to come around when you were
-tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you could enjoy our parties--”
-
-She was so reasonable, she was so gently right! It took him an hour to
-make his escape, with nothing settled and everything horribly settled.
-In a barren freedom of icy Northern wind he sighed, “Thank God that’s
-over! Poor Tanis, poor darling decent Tanis! But it is over. Absolute!
-I’m free!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXII
-
-
-I
-
-His wife was up when he came in. “Did you have a good time?” she
-sniffed.
-
-“I did not. I had a rotten time! Anything else I got to explain?”
-
-“George, how can you speak like-- Oh, I don’t know what’s come over you!”
-
-“Good Lord, there’s nothing come over me! Why do you look for trouble
-all the time?” He was warning himself, “Careful! Stop being so
-disagreeable. Course she feels it, being left alone here all evening.”
-But he forgot his warning as she went on:
-
-“Why do you go out and see all sorts of strange people? I suppose you’ll
-say you’ve been to another committee-meeting this evening!”
-
-“Nope. I’ve been calling on a woman. We sat by the fire and kidded each
-other and had a whale of a good time, if you want to know!”
-
-“Well-- From the way you say it, I suppose it’s my fault you went there!
-I probably sent you!”
-
-“You did!”
-
-“Well, upon my word--”
-
-“You hate ‘strange people’ as you call ’em. If you had your way, I’d be
-as much of an old stick-in-the-mud as Howard Littlefield. You never want
-to have anybody with any git to ’em at the house; you want a bunch of
-old stiffs that sit around and gas about the weather. You’re doing your
-level best to make me old. Well, let me tell you, I’m not going to
-have--”
-
-Overwhelmed she bent to his unprecedented tirade, and in answer she
-mourned:
-
-“Oh, dearest, I don’t think that’s true. I don’t mean to make you old, I
-know. Perhaps you’re partly right. Perhaps I am slow about getting
-acquainted with new people. But when you think of all the dear good
-times we have, and the supper-parties and the movies and all--”
-
-With true masculine wiles he not only convinced himself that she had
-injured him but, by the loudness of his voice and the brutality of his
-attack, he convinced her also, and presently he had her apologizing for
-his having spent the evening with Tanis. He went up to bed well pleased,
-not only the master but the martyr of the household. For a distasteful
-moment after he had lain down he wondered if he had been altogether
-just. “Ought to be ashamed, bullying her. Maybe there is her side to
-things. Maybe she hasn’t had such a bloomin’ hectic time herself. But I
-don’t care! Good for her to get waked up a little. And I’m going to keep
-free. Of her and Tanis and the fellows at the club and everybody. I’m
-going to run my own life!”
-
-
-II
-
-In this mood he was particularly objectionable at the Boosters’ Club
-lunch next day. They were addressed by a congressman who had just
-returned from an exhaustive three-months study of the finances,
-ethnology, political systems, linguistic divisions, mineral resources,
-and agriculture of Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Austria,
-Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Bulgaria. He told them all about those
-subjects, together with three funny stories about European
-misconceptions of America and some spirited words on the necessity of
-keeping ignorant foreigners out of America.
-
-“Say, that was a mighty informative talk. Real he-stuff,” said Sidney
-Finkelstein.
-
-But the disaffected Babbitt grumbled, “Four-flusher! Bunch of hot air!
-And what’s the matter with the immigrants? Gosh, they aren’t all
-ignorant, and I got a hunch we’re all descended from immigrants
-ourselves.”
-
-“Oh, you make me tired!” said Mr. Finkelstein.
-
-Babbitt was aware that Dr. A. I. Dilling was sternly listening from
-across the table. Dr. Dilling was one of the most important men in the
-Boosters’. He was not a physician but a surgeon, a more romantic and
-sounding occupation. He was an intense large man with a boiling of black
-hair and a thick black mustache. The newspapers often chronicled his
-operations; he was professor of surgery in the State University; he went
-to dinner at the very best houses on Royal Ridge; and he was said to be
-worth several hundred thousand dollars. It was dismaying to Babbitt to
-have such a person glower at him. He hastily praised the congressman’s
-wit, to Sidney Finkelstein, but for Dr. Dilling’s benefit.
-
-
-III
-
-That afternoon three men shouldered into Babbitt’s office with the air
-of a Vigilante committee in frontier days. They were large, resolute,
-big-jawed men, and they were all high lords in the land of Zenith--Dr.
-Dilling the surgeon, Charles McKelvey the contractor, and, most
-dismaying of all, the white-bearded Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of
-the _Advocate-Times_. In their whelming presence Babbitt felt small and
-insignificant.
-
-“Well, well, great pleasure, have chairs, what c’n I do for you?” he
-babbled.
-
-They neither sat nor offered observations on the weather.
-
-“Babbitt,” said Colonel Snow, “we’ve come from the Good Citizens’
-League. We’ve decided we want you to join. Vergil Gunch says you don’t
-care to, but I think we can show you a new light. The League is going to
-combine with the Chamber of Commerce in a campaign for the Open Shop,
-so it’s time for you to put your name down.”
-
-In his embarrassment Babbitt could not recall his reasons for not
-wishing to join the League, if indeed he had ever definitely known them,
-but he was passionately certain that he did not wish to join, and at the
-thought of their forcing him he felt a stirring of anger against even
-these princes of commerce.
-
-“Sorry, Colonel, have to think it over a little,” he mumbled.
-
-McKelvey snarled, “That means you’re not going to join, George?”
-
-Something black and unfamiliar and ferocious spoke from Babbitt: “Now,
-you look here, Charley! I’m damned if I’m going to be bullied into
-joining anything, not even by you plutes!”
-
-“We’re not bullying anybody,” Dr. Billing began, but Colonel Snow thrust
-him aside with, “Certainly we are! We don’t mind a little bullying, if
-it’s necessary. Babbitt, the G.C.L. has been talking about you a good
-deal. You’re supposed to be a sensible, clean, responsible man; you
-always have been; but here lately, for God knows what reason, I hear
-from all sorts of sources that you’re running around with a loose crowd,
-and what’s a whole lot worse, you’ve actually been advocating and
-supporting some of the most dangerous elements in town, like this fellow
-Doane.”
-
-“Colonel, that strikes me as my private business.”
-
-“Possibly, but we want to have an understanding. You’ve stood in, you
-and your father-in-law, with some of the most substantial and
-forward-looking interests in town, like my friends of the Street
-Traction Company, and my papers have given you a lot of boosts. Well,
-you can’t expect the decent citizens to go on aiding you if you intend
-to side with precisely the people who are trying to undermine us.”
-
-Babbitt was frightened, but he had an agonized instinct that if he
-yielded in this he would yield in everything. He protested:
-
-“You’re exaggerating, Colonel. I believe in being broad-minded and
-liberal, but, of course, I’m just as much agin the cranks and
-blatherskites and labor unions and so on as you are. But fact is, I
-belong to so many organizations now that I can’t do ’em justice, and I
-want to think it over before I decide about coming into the G.C.L.”
-
-Colonel Snow condescended, “Oh, no, I’m not exaggerating! Why the doctor
-here heard you cussing out and defaming one of the finest types of
-Republican congressmen, just this noon! And you have entirely the wrong
-idea about ‘thinking over joining.’ We’re not begging you to join the
-G.C.L.--we’re permitting you to join. I’m not sure, my boy, but what if
-you put it off it’ll be too late. I’m not sure we’ll want you then.
-Better think quick--better think quick!”
-
-The three Vigilantes, formidable in their righteousness, stared at him
-in a taut silence. Babbitt waited through. He thought nothing at all, he
-merely waited, while in his echoing head buzzed, “I don’t want to
-join-- I don’t want to join-- I don’t want to.”
-
-“All right. Sorry for you!” said Colonel Snow, and the three men
-abruptly turned their beefy backs.
-
-
-IV
-
-As Babbitt went out to his car that evening he saw Vergil Gunch coming
-down the block. He raised his hand in salutation, but Gunch ignored it
-and crossed the street. He was certain that Gunch had seen him. He drove
-home in sharp discomfort.
-
-His wife attacked at once: “Georgie dear, Muriel Frink was in this
-afternoon, and she says that Chum says the committee of this Good
-Citizens’ League especially asked you to join and you wouldn’t. Don’t
-you think it would be better? You know all the nicest people belong, and
-the League stands for--”
-
-“I know what the League stands for! It stands for the suppression of
-free speech and free thought and everything else! I don’t propose to be
-bullied and rushed into joining anything, and it isn’t a question of
-whether it’s a good league or a bad league or what the hell kind of a
-league it is; it’s just a question of my refusing to be told I got to--”
-
-“But dear, if you don’t join, people might criticize you.”
-
-“Let ’em criticize!”
-
-“But I mean _nice_ people!”
-
-“Rats, I-- Matter of fact, this whole League is just a fad. It’s like all
-these other organizations that start off with such a rush and let on
-they’re going to change the whole works, and pretty soon they peter out
-and everybody forgets all about ’em!”
-
-“But if it’s _the_ fad now, don’t you think you--”
-
-“No, I don’t! Oh, Myra, please quit nagging me about it. I’m sick of
-hearing about the confounded G.C.L. I almost wish I’d joined it when
-Verg first came around, and got it over. And maybe I’d’ve come in to-day
-if the committee hadn’t tried to bullyrag me, but, by God, as long as
-I’m a free-born independent American cit--”
-
-“Now, George, you’re talking exactly like the German furnace-man.”
-
-“Oh, I am, am I! Then, I won’t talk at all!”
-
-He longed, that evening, to see Tanis Judique, to be strengthened by her
-sympathy. When all the family were up-stairs he got as far as
-telephoning to her apartment-house, but he was agitated about it and
-when the janitor answered he blurted, “Nev’ mind-- I’ll call later,” and
-hung up the receiver.
-
-
-V
-
-If Babbitt had not been certain about Vergil Gunch’s avoiding him, there
-could be little doubt about William Washington Eathorne, next morning.
-When Babbitt was driving down to the office he overtook Eathorne’s car,
-with the great banker sitting in anemic solemnity behind his chauffeur.
-Babbitt waved and cried, “Mornin’!” Eathorne looked at him deliberately,
-hesitated, and gave him a nod more contemptuous than a direct cut.
-
-Babbitt’s partner and father-in-law came in at ten:
-
-“George, what’s this I hear about some song and dance you gave Colonel
-Snow about not wanting to join the G.C.L.? What the dickens you trying
-to do? Wreck the firm? You don’t suppose these Big Guns will stand your
-bucking them and springing all this ‘liberal’ poppycock you been getting
-off lately, do you?”
-
-“Oh, rats, Henry T., you been reading bum fiction. There ain’t any such
-a thing as these plots to keep folks from being liberal. This is a free
-country. A man can do anything he wants to.”
-
-“Course th’ ain’t any plots. Who said they was? Only if folks get an
-idea you’re scatter-brained and unstable, you don’t suppose they’ll want
-to do business with you, do you? One little rumor about your being a
-crank would do more to ruin this business than all the plots and stuff
-that these fool story-writers could think up in a month of Sundays.”
-
-That afternoon, when the old reliable Conrad Lyte, the merry miser,
-Conrad Lyte, appeared, and Babbitt suggested his buying a parcel of land
-in the new residential section of Dorchester, Lyte said hastily, too
-hastily, “No, no, don’t want to go into anything new just now.”
-
-A week later Babbitt learned, through Henry Thompson, that the officials
-of the Street Traction Company were planning another real-estate coup,
-and that Sanders, Torrey and Wing, not the Babbitt-Thompson Company,
-were to handle it for them.
-
-“I figure that Jake Offutt is kind of leery about the way folks are
-talking about you. Of course Jake is a rock-ribbed old die-hard, and he
-probably advised the Traction fellows to get some other broker. George,
-you got to do something!” trembled Thompson.
-
-And, in a rush, Babbitt agreed. All nonsense the way people misjudged
-him, but still-- He determined to join the Good Citizens’ League the next
-time he was asked, and in furious resignation he waited. He wasn’t
-asked. They ignored him. He did not have the courage to go to the League
-and beg in, and he took refuge in a shaky boast that he had “gotten away
-with bucking the whole city. Nobody could dictate to _him_ how he was
-going to think and act!”
-
-He was jarred as by nothing else when the paragon of stenographers, Miss
-McGoun, suddenly left him, though her reasons were excellent--she needed
-a rest, her sister was sick, she might not do any more work for six
-months. He was uncomfortable with her successor, Miss Havstad. What Miss
-Havstad’s given name was, no one in the office ever knew. It seemed
-improbable that she had a given name, a lover, a powder-puff, or a
-digestion. She was so impersonal, this slight, pale, industrious Swede,
-that it was vulgar to think of her as going to an ordinary home to eat
-hash. She was a perfectly oiled and enameled machine, and she ought,
-each evening, to have been dusted off and shut in her desk beside her
-too-slim, too-frail pencil points. She took dictation swiftly, her
-typing was perfect, but Babbitt became jumpy when he tried to work with
-her. She made him feel puffy, and at his best-beloved daily jokes she
-looked gently inquiring. He longed for Miss McGoun’s return, and thought
-of writing to her.
-
-Then he heard that Miss McGoun had, a week after leaving him, gone over
-to his dangerous competitors, Sanders, Torrey and Wing.
-
-He was not merely annoyed; he was frightened. “Why did she quit, then?”
-he worried. “Did she have a hunch my business is going on the rocks? And
-it was Sanders got the Street Traction deal. Rats--sinking ship!”
-
-Gray fear loomed always by him now. He watched Fritz Weilinger, the
-young salesman, and wondered if he too would leave. Daily he fancied
-slights. He noted that he was not asked to speak at the annual Chamber
-of Commerce dinner. When Orville Jones gave a large poker party and he
-was not invited, he was certain that he had been snubbed. He was afraid
-to go to lunch at the Athletic Club, and afraid not to go. He believed
-that he was spied on; that when he left the table they whispered about
-him. Everywhere he heard the rustling whispers: in the offices of
-clients, in the bank when he made a deposit, in his own office, in his
-own home. Interminably he wondered what They were saying of him. All day
-long in imaginary conversations he caught them marveling, “Babbitt? Why,
-say, he’s a regular anarchist! You got to admire the fellow for his
-nerve, the way he turned liberal and, by golly, just absolutely runs his
-life to suit himself, but say, he’s dangerous, that’s what he is, and
-he’s got to be shown up.”
-
-He was so twitchy that when he rounded a corner and chanced on two
-acquaintances talking--whispering--his heart leaped, and he stalked by
-like an embarrassed schoolboy. When he saw his neighbors Howard
-Littlefield and Orville Jones together, he peered at them, went indoors
-to escape their spying, and was miserably certain that they had been
-whispering--plotting--whispering.
-
-Through all his fear ran defiance. He felt stubborn. Sometimes he
-decided that he had been a very devil of a fellow, as bold as Seneca
-Doane; sometimes he planned to call on Doane and tell him what a
-revolutionist he was, and never got beyond the planning. But just as
-often, when he heard the soft whispers enveloping him he wailed, “Good
-Lord, what have I done? Just played with the Bunch, and called down
-Clarence Drum about being such a high-and-mighty sodger. Never catch
-_me_ criticizing people and trying to make them accept _my_ ideas!”
-
-He could not stand the strain. Before long he admitted that he would
-like to flee back to the security of conformity, provided there was a
-decent and creditable way to return. But, stubbornly, he would not be
-forced back; he would not, he swore, “eat dirt.”
-
-Only in spirited engagements with his wife did these turbulent fears
-rise to the surface. She complained that he seemed nervous, that she
-couldn’t understand why he did not want to “drop in at the
-Littlefields’” for the evening. He tried, but he could not express to
-her the nebulous facts of his rebellion and punishment. And, with Paul
-and Tanis lost, he had no one to whom he could talk. “Good Lord, Tinka
-is the only real friend I have, these days,” he sighed, and he clung to
-the child, played floor-games with her all evening.
-
-He considered going to see Paul in prison, but, though he had a pale
-curt note from him every week, he thought of Paul as dead. It was Tanis
-for whom he was longing.
-
-“I thought I was so smart and independent, cutting Tanis out, and I need
-her, Lord how I need her!” he raged. “Myra simply can’t understand. All
-she sees in life is getting along by being just like other folks. But
-Tanis, she’d tell me I was all right.”
-
-Then he broke, and one evening, late, he did run to Tanis. He had not
-dared to hope for it, but she was in, and alone. Only she wasn’t Tanis.
-She was a courteous, brow-lifting, ice-armored woman who looked like
-Tanis. She said, “Yes, George, what is it?” in even and uninterested
-tones, and he crept away, whipped.
-
-His first comfort was from Ted and Eunice Littlefield.
-
-They danced in one evening when Ted was home from the university, and
-Ted chuckled, “What’s this I hear from Euny, dad? She says her dad says
-you raised Cain by boosting old Seneca Doane. Hot dog! Give ’em fits!
-Stir ’em up! This old burg is asleep!” Eunice plumped down on Babbitt’s
-lap, kissed him, nestled her bobbed hair against his chin, and crowed,
-“I think you’re lots nicer than Howard. Why is it,” confidentially,
-“that Howard is such an old grouch? The man has a good heart, and
-honestly, he’s awfully bright, but he never will learn to step on the
-gas, after all the training I’ve given him. Don’t you think we could do
-something with him, dearest?”
-
-“Why, Eunice, that isn’t a nice way to speak of your papa,” Babbitt
-observed, in the best Floral Heights manner, but he was happy for the
-first time in weeks. He pictured himself as the veteran liberal
-strengthened by the loyalty of the young generation. They went out to
-rifle the ice-box. Babbitt gloated, “If your mother caught us at this,
-we’d certainly get our come-uppance!” and Eunice became maternal,
-scrambled a terrifying number of eggs for them, kissed Babbitt on the
-ear, and in the voice of a brooding abbess marveled, “It beats the devil
-why feminists like me still go on nursing these men!”
-
-Thus stimulated, Babbitt was reckless when he encountered Sheldon
-Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A. and choir-leader of the
-Chatham Road Church. With one of his damp hands Smeeth imprisoned
-Babbitt’s thick paw while he chanted, “Brother Babbitt, we haven’t seen
-you at church very often lately. I know you’re busy with a multitude of
-details, but you mustn’t forget your dear friends at the old church
-home.”
-
-Babbitt shook off the affectionate clasp--Sheldy liked to hold hands for
-a long time--and snarled, “Well, I guess you fellows can run the show
-without me. Sorry, Smeeth; got to beat it. G’day.”
-
-But afterward he winced, “If that white worm had the nerve to try to
-drag me back to the Old Church Home, then the holy outfit must have been
-doing a lot of talking about me, too.”
-
-He heard them whispering--whispering--Dr. John Jennison Drew,
-Cholmondeley Frink, even William Washington Eathorne. The independence
-seeped out of him and he walked the streets alone, afraid of men’s
-cynical eyes and the incessant hiss of whispering.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIII
-
-
-I
-
-He tried to explain to his wife, as they prepared for bed, how
-objectionable was Sheldon Smeeth, but all her answer was, “He has such a
-beautiful voice--so spiritual. I don’t think you ought to speak of him
-like that just because you can’t appreciate music!” He saw her then as a
-stranger; he stared bleakly at this plump and fussy woman with the broad
-bare arms, and wondered how she had ever come here.
-
-In his chilly cot, turning from aching side to side, he pondered of
-Tanis. “He’d been a fool to lose her. He had to have somebody he could
-really talk to. He’d--oh, he’d _bust_ if he went on stewing about things
-by himself. And Myra, useless to expect her to understand. Well, rats,
-no use dodging the issue. Darn shame for two married people to drift
-apart after all these years; darn rotten shame; but nothing could bring
-them together now, as long as he refused to let Zenith bully him into
-taking orders--and he was by golly not going to let anybody bully him
-into anything, or wheedle him or coax him either!”
-
-He woke at three, roused by a passing motor, and struggled out of bed
-for a drink of water. As he passed through the bedroom he heard his wife
-groan. 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 at
-me.”
-
-“Bad indigestion? Shall I get you some bicarb?”
-
-“Don’t think--that would help. I felt funny last evening and yesterday,
-and then--oh!--it passed away and I got to sleep and-- That auto woke me
-up.”
-
-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 the
-chunk 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 into
-place 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 he did
-not inform her, but he creaked down-stairs, telephoned to Dr. Earl
-Patten, and waited, shivering, trying with fuzzy eyes to read a
-magazine, till he heard the doctor’s car.
-
-The doctor was youngish and professionally breezy. He came in as though
-it were sunny noontime. “Well, George, little trouble, eh? How is she
-now?” he said busily as, with tremendous and rather irritating
-cheerfulness, he tossed his coat on a chair and warmed his hands at a
-radiator. He took charge of the house. Babbitt felt ousted and
-unimportant as he followed the doctor up to the bedroom, and it was the
-doctor who chuckled, “Oh, just little stomach-ache” when Verona peeped
-through her door, begging, “What is it, Dad, what is it?”
-
-To Mrs. Babbitt the doctor said with amiable belligerence, after his
-examination, “Kind of a bad old pain, eh? I’ll give you something to
-make you sleep, and I think you’ll feel better in the morning. I’ll come
-in right after breakfast.” But to Babbitt, lying in wait in the lower
-hall, the doctor sighed, “I don’t like the feeling there in her belly.
-There’s some rigidity and some inflammation. She’s never had her
-appendix out, has she? Um. Well, no use worrying. I’ll be here first
-thing in the morning, and meantime she’ll get some rest. I’ve given her
-a hypo. Good night.”
-
-Then was Babbitt caught up in the black tempest.
-
-Instantly all the indignations which had been dominating him and the
-spiritual dramas through which he had struggled became pallid and absurd
-before the ancient and overwhelming realities, the standard and
-traditional realities, of sickness and menacing death, the long night,
-and the thousand steadfast implications of married life. He crept back
-to her. As she drowsed away in the tropic languor of morphia, he sat on
-the edge of her bed, holding her hand, and for the first time in many
-weeks her hand abode trustfully in his.
-
-He draped himself grotesquely in his toweling bathrobe and a pink and
-white couch-cover, and sat lumpishly in a wing-chair. The bedroom was
-uncanny in its half-light, which turned the curtains to lurking robbers,
-the dressing-table to a turreted castle. It smelled of cosmetics, of
-linen, 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 some
-officious brisk thing he could do for her, and before he could quite
-form the thought he was asleep, racked and aching. The night was
-infinite. When dawn came and the waiting seemed at an end, he fell
-asleep, and was vexed to have been caught off his guard, to have been
-aroused 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 might
-criticize her and nag her, it was only as he might criticize and nag
-himself, interestedly, unpatronizingly, without the expectation of
-changing--or any real desire to change--the eternal essence.
-
-With Verona he sounded fatherly again, and firm. He consoled Tinka, who
-satisfactorily pointed the excitement of the hour by wailing. He ordered
-early breakfast, and wanted to look at the newspaper, and felt somehow
-heroic and useful in not looking at it. But there were still crawling
-and totally unheroic hours of waiting before Dr. Patten returned.
-
-“Don’t see much change,” said Patten. “I’ll be back about eleven, and if
-you don’t mind, I think I’ll bring in some other world-famous
-pill-pedler for consultation, just to be on the safe side. Now George,
-there’s nothing you can do. I’ll have Verona keep the ice-bag
-filled--might as well leave that on, I guess--and you, you better beat
-it to the office instead of standing around her looking as if you were
-the 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 when
-their wives are ailing. Now have another nice cup of coffee and git!”
-
-Under this derision Babbitt became more matter-of-fact. He drove to the
-office, tried to dictate letters, tried to telephone and, before the
-call was answered, forgot to whom he was telephoning. At a quarter after
-ten he returned home. As he left the down-town traffic and sped up the
-car, his face was as grimly creased as the mask of tragedy.
-
-His wife greeted him with surprise. “Why did you come back, dear? I
-think 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 were
-curiously happy when he heard Dr. Patten’s car in front. He looked out
-of the window. He was frightened. With Patten was an impatient man with
-turbulent black hair and a hussar mustache--Dr. A. I. Dilling, the
-surgeon. Babbitt sputtered with anxiety, tried to conceal it, and
-hurried down to the door.
-
-Dr. Patten was profusely casual: “Don’t want to worry you, old man, but
-I thought it might be a good stunt to have Dr. Dilling examine her.” He
-gestured toward Dilling as toward a master.
-
-Billing nodded in his curtest manner and strode up-stairs. Babbitt
-tramped the living-room in agony. Except for his wife’s confinements
-there had never been a major operation in the family, and to him surgery
-was at once a miracle and an abomination of fear. But when Dilling and
-Patten came down again he knew that everything was all right, and he
-wanted to laugh, for the two doctors were exactly like the bearded
-physicians in a musical comedy, both of them rubbing their hands and
-looking 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 be
-done.”
-
-Babbitt did not get all the force of it. He mumbled, “Well, I suppose we
-could get her ready in a couple o’ days. Probably Ted ought to come down
-from 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 say
-go ahead, I’ll ’phone for the St. Mary’s ambulance at once, and we’ll
-have 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’t
-get her clothes ready and everything in two seconds, you know! And in
-her state, so wrought-up and weak--”
-
-“Just throw her hair-brush and comb and tooth-brush in a bag; that’s all
-she’ll need for a day or two,” said Dr. Dilling, and went to the
-telephone.
-
-Babbitt galloped desperately up-stairs. He sent the frightened Tinka out
-of the room. He said gaily to his wife, “Well, old thing, the doc thinks
-maybe we better have a little operation and get it over. Just take a
-few minutes--not half as serious as a confinement--and you’ll be all
-right in a jiffy.”
-
-She gripped his hand till the fingers ached. She said patiently, like a
-cowed child, “I’m afraid--to go into the dark, all alone!” Maturity was
-wiped from her eyes; they were pleading and terrified. “Will you stay
-with me? Darling, you don’t have to go to the office now, do you? Could
-you just go down to the hospital with me? Could you come see me this
-evening--if everything’s all right? You won’t have to go out this
-evening, will you?”
-
-He was on his knees by the bed. While she feebly ruffled his hair, he
-sobbed, he kissed the lawn of her sleeve, and swore, “Old honey, I love
-you more than anything in the world! I’ve kind of been worried by
-business 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 a
-good 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
-been getting so stupid and ugly--”
-
-“Why, you old humbug! Fishing for compliments when I ought to be packing
-your bag! Me, sure, I’m young and handsome and a regular village cut-up
-and--” He could not go on. He sobbed again; and in muttered
-incoherencies they found each other.
-
-As he packed, his brain was curiously clear and swift. He’d have no more
-wild evenings, he realized. He admitted that he would regret them. A
-little grimly he perceived that this had been his last despairing fling
-before the paralyzed contentment of middle-age. Well, and he grinned
-impishly, “it was one doggone good party while it lasted!” And--how much
-was the operation going to cost? “I ought to have fought that out with
-Dilling. 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 who
-admired all technical excellences was interested in the kindly skill
-with which the attendants slid Mrs. Babbitt upon a stretcher and carried
-her down-stairs. The ambulance was a huge, suave, varnished, white
-thing. 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 be
-inside?”
-
-“Sure, ma’am, you bet. There’s a fine little camp-stool in there,” the
-older attendant said, with professional pride.
-
-He sat beside her in that traveling cabin with its cot, its stool, its
-active little electric radiator, and its quite unexplained calendar,
-displaying a girl eating cherries, and the name of an enterprising
-grocer. But as he flung out his hand in hopeless cheerfulness it touched
-the radiator, and he squealed:
-
-“Ouch! Jesus!”
-
-“Why, George Babbitt, I won’t have you cursing and swearing and
-blaspheming!”
-
-“I know, awful sorry but-- Gosh all fish-hooks, look how I burned my
-hand! Gee whiz, it hurts! It hurts like the mischief! Why, that damn
-radiator 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 already
-laying out the instruments for an operation to save her life, it was she
-who consoled him and kissed the place to make it well, and though he
-tried to be gruff and mature, he yielded to her and was glad to be
-babied.
-
-The ambulance whirled under the hooded carriage-entrance of the
-hospital, and instantly he was reduced to a zero in the nightmare
-succession of cork-floored halls, endless doors open on old women
-sitting up in bed, an elevator, the anesthetizing room, a young interne
-contemptuous of husbands. He was permitted to kiss his wife; he saw a
-thin dark nurse fit the cone over her mouth and nose; he stiffened at a
-sweet and treacherous odor; then he was driven out, and on a high stool
-in a laboratory he sat dazed, longing to see her once again, to insist
-that he had always loved her, had never for a second loved anybody else
-or looked at anybody else. In the laboratory he was conscious only of a
-decayed object preserved in a bottle of yellowing alcohol. It made him
-very sick, but he could not take his eyes from it. He was more aware of
-it than of waiting. His mind floated in abeyance, coming back always to
-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 was
-looking into the operating-room; in one glance he took in Dr. Dilling,
-strange in white gown and bandaged head, bending over the steel table
-with its screws and wheels, then nurses holding basins and cotton
-sponges, and a swathed thing, just a lifeless chin and a mound of white
-in the midst of which was a square of sallow flesh with a gash a little
-bloody at the edges, protruding from the gash a cluster of forceps like
-clinging parasites.
-
-He shut the door with haste. It may be that his frightened repentance of
-the night and morning had not eaten in, but this dehumanizing interment
-of her who had been so pathetically human shook him utterly, and as he
-crouched again on the high stool in the laboratory he swore faith to his
-wife... 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 out
-fine! She’ll be out from under the anesthetic soon, and you can see
-her.”
-
-He found her on a curious tilted bed, her face an unwholesome yellow but
-her purple lips moving slightly. Then only did he really believe that
-she was alive. She was muttering. He bent, and heard her sighing, “Hard
-get real maple syrup for pancakes.” He laughed inexhaustibly; he beamed
-on the nurse and proudly confided, “Think of her talking about maple
-syrup! By golly, I’m going to go and order a hundred gallons of it,
-right from Vermont!”
-
-
-II
-
-She was out of the hospital in seventeen days. He went to see her each
-afternoon, and in their long talks they drifted back to intimacy. Once
-he hinted something of his relations to Tanis and the Bunch, and she was
-inflated 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 Good
-Fellows, he was convinced now. You didn’t, he noted, “see Seneca Doane
-coming around with any flowers or dropping in to chat with the Missus,”
-but Mrs. Howard Littlefield brought to the hospital her priceless wine
-jelly (flavored with real wine); Orville Jones spent hours in picking
-out the kind of novels Mrs. Babbitt liked--nice love stories about New
-York millionaries and Wyoming cowpunchers; Louetta Swanson knitted a
-pink bed-jacket; Sidney Finkelstein and his merry brown-eyed flapper of
-a wife selected the prettiest nightgown in all the stock of Parcher and
-Stein.
-
-All his friends ceased whispering about him, suspecting him. At the
-Athletic Club they asked after her daily. Club members whose names he
-did 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 rich
-warm air of a valley pleasant with cottages.
-
-One noon Vergil Gunch suggested, “You planning to be at the hospital
-about six? The wife and I thought we’d drop in.” They did drop in. Gunch
-was so humorous that Mrs. Babbitt said he must “stop making her laugh
-because honestly it was hurting her incision.” As they passed down the
-hall Gunch demanded amiably, “George, old scout, you were soreheaded
-about something, here a while back. I don’t know why, and it’s none of
-my business. But you seem to be feeling all hunky-dory again, and why
-don’t you come join us in the Good Citizens’ League, old man? We have
-some corking times together, and we need your advice.”
-
-Then did Babbitt, almost tearful with joy at being coaxed instead of
-bullied, at being permitted to stop fighting, at being able to desert
-without injuring his opinion of himself, cease utterly to be a domestic
-revolutionist. He patted Gunch’s shoulder, and next day he became a
-member of the Good Citizens’ League.
-
-Within two weeks no one in the League was more violent regarding the
-wickedness of Seneca Doane, the crimes of labor unions, the perils of
-immigration, and the delights of golf, morality, and bank-accounts than
-was George F. Babbitt.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIV
-
-
-I
-
-The Good Citizens’ League had spread through the country, but nowhere
-was it so effective and well esteemed as in cities of the type of
-Zenith, commercial cities of a few hundred thousand inhabitants, most of
-which--though not all--lay inland, against a background of cornfields
-and mines and of small towns which depended upon them for
-mortgage-loans, table-manners, art, social philosophy and millinery.
-
-To the League belonged most of the prosperous citizens of Zenith. They
-were not all of the kind who called themselves “Regular Guys.” Besides
-these hearty fellows, these salesmen of prosperity, there were the
-aristocrats, that is, the men who were richer or had been rich for more
-generations: the presidents of banks and of factories, the land-owners,
-the corporation lawyers, the fashionable doctors, and the few young-old
-men who worked not at all but, reluctantly remaining in Zenith,
-collected luster-ware and first editions as though they were back in
-Paris. All of them agreed that the working-classes must be kept in their
-place; and all of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply
-any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought,
-dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary.
-
-In this they were like the ruling-class of any other country,
-particularly of Great Britain, but they differed in being more vigorous
-and in actually trying to produce the accepted standards which all
-classes, everywhere, desire, but usually despair of realizing.
-
-The longest struggle of the Good Citizens’ League was against the Open
-Shop--which was secretly a struggle against all union labor.
-Accompanying it was an Americanization Movement, with evening classes in
-English and history and economics, and daily articles in the newspapers,
-so that newly arrived foreigners might learn that the true-blue and one
-hundred per cent. American way of settling labor-troubles was for
-workmen to trust and love their employers.
-
-The League was more than generous in approving other organizations which
-agreed with its aims. It helped the Y.M.C.A. to raise a
-two-hundred-thousand-dollar fund for a new building. Babbitt, Vergil
-Gunch, Sidney Finkelstein, and even Charles McKelvey told the spectators
-at movie theaters how great an influence for manly Christianity the
-“good old Y.” had been in their own lives; and the hoar and mighty
-Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the _Advocate-Times_, was photographed
-clasping the hand of Sheldon Smeeth of the Y.M.C.A. It is true that
-afterward, when Smeeth lisped, “You must come to one of our
-prayer-meetings,” the ferocious Colonel bellowed, “What the hell would I
-do that for? I’ve got a bar of my own,” but this did not appear in the
-public prints.
-
-The League was of value to the American Legion at a time when certain of
-the lesser and looser newspapers were criticizing that organization of
-veterans of the Great War. One evening a number of young men raided the
-Zenith Socialist Headquarters, burned its records, beat the office
-staff, and agreeably dumped desks out of the window. All of the
-newspapers save the _Advocate-Times_ and the _Evening Advocate_
-attributed this valuable but perhaps hasty direct-action to the American
-Legion. Then a flying squadron from the Good Citizens’ League called on
-the unfair papers and explained that no ex-soldier could possibly do
-such a thing, and the editors saw the light, and retained their
-advertising. When Zenith’s lone Conscientious Objector came home from
-prison and was righteously run out of town, the newspapers referred to
-the perpetrators as an “unidentified mob.”
-
-
-II
-
-In all the activities and triumphs of the Good Citizens’ League Babbitt
-took part, and completely won back to self-respect, placidity, and the
-affection of his friends. But he began to protest, “Gosh, I’ve done my
-share in cleaning up the city. I want to tend to business. Think I’ll
-just kind of slacken up on this G.C.L. stuff now.”
-
-He had returned to the church as he had returned to the Boosters’ Club.
-He had even endured the lavish greeting which Sheldon Smeeth gave him.
-He was worried lest during his late discontent he had imperiled his
-salvation. He was not quite sure there was a Heaven to be attained, but
-Dr. John Jennison Drew said there was, and Babbitt was not going to take
-a chance.
-
-One evening when he was walking past Dr. Drew’s parsonage he impulsively
-went in and found the pastor in his study.
-
-“Jus’ minute--getting ’phone call,” said Dr. Drew in business-like
-tones, then, aggressively, to the telephone: “’Lo--’lo! This Berkey and
-Hannis? Reverend Drew speaking. Where the dickens is the proof for next
-Sunday’s calendar? Huh? Y’ ought to have it here. Well, I can’t help it
-if they’re _all_ sick! I got to have it to-night. Get an A.D.T. boy and
-shoot it up here quick.”
-
-He turned, without slackening his briskness. “Well, Brother Babbitt,
-what c’n I do for you?”
-
-“I just wanted to ask-- Tell you how it is, dominie: Here a while ago I
-guess I got kind of slack. Took a few drinks and so on. What I wanted to
-ask is: How is it if a fellow cuts that all out and comes back to his
-senses? Does it sort of, well, you might say, does it score against him
-in the long run?”
-
-The Reverend Dr. Drew was suddenly interested. “And, uh, brother--the
-other things, too? Women?”
-
-“No, practically, you might say, practically not at all.”
-
-“Don’t hesitate to tell me, brother! That’s what I’m here for. Been
-going on joy-rides? Squeezing girls in cars?” The reverend eyes
-glistened.
-
-“No--no--”
-
-“Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve got a deputation from the Don’t Make
-Prohibition a Joke Association coming to see me in a quarter of an hour,
-and one from the Anti-Birth-Control Union at a quarter of ten.” He
-busily glanced at his watch. “But I can take five minutes off and pray
-with you. Kneel right down by your chair, brother. Don’t be ashamed to
-seek the guidance of God.”
-
-Babbitt’s scalp itched and he longed to flee, but Dr. Drew had already
-flopped down beside his desk-chair and his voice had changed from
-rasping efficiency to an unctuous familiarity with sin and with the
-Almighty. Babbitt also knelt, while Drew gloated:
-
-“O Lord, thou seest our brother here, who has been led astray by
-manifold temptations. O Heavenly Father, make his heart to be pure, as
-pure as a little child’s. Oh, let him know again the joy of a manly
-courage to abstain from evil--”
-
-Sheldon Smeeth came frolicking into the study. At the sight of the two
-men he smirked, forgivingly patted Babbitt on the shoulder, and knelt
-beside him, his arm about him, while he authorized Dr. Drew’s
-imprecations with moans of “Yes, Lord! Help our brother, Lord!”
-
-Though he was trying to keep his eyes closed, Babbitt squinted between
-his fingers and saw the pastor glance at his watch as he concluded with
-a triumphant, “And let him never be afraid to come to Us for counsel and
-tender care, and let him know that the church can lead him as a little
-lamb.”
-
-Dr. Drew sprang up, rolled his eyes in the general direction of Heaven,
-chucked his watch into his pocket, and demanded, “Has the deputation
-come yet, Sheldy?”
-
-“Yep, right outside,” Sheldy answered, with equal liveliness; then,
-caressingly, to Babbitt, “Brother, if it would help, I’d love to go
-into the next room and pray with you while Dr. Drew is receiving the
-brothers from the Don’t Make Prohibition a Joke Association.”
-
-“No--no thanks--can’t take the time!” yelped Babbitt, rushing toward the
-door.
-
-Thereafter he was often seen at the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church,
-but it is recorded that he avoided shaking hands with the pastor at the
-door.
-
-
-III
-
-If his moral fiber had been so weakened by rebellion that he was not
-quite dependable in the more rigorous campaigns of the Good Citizens’
-League nor quite appreciative of the church, yet there was no doubt of
-the joy with which Babbitt returned to the pleasures of his home and of
-the Athletic Club, the Boosters, the Elks.
-
-Verona and Kenneth Escott were eventually and hesitatingly married. For
-the wedding Babbitt was dressed as carefully as was Verona; he was
-crammed into the morning-coat he wore to teas thrice a year; and with a
-certain relief, after Verona and Kenneth had driven away in a limousine,
-he returned to the house, removed the morning coat, sat with his aching
-feet up on the davenport, and reflected that his wife and he could have
-the living-room to themselves now, and not have to listen to Verona and
-Kenneth worrying, in a cultured collegiate manner, about minimum wages
-and the Drama League.
-
-But even this sinking into peace was less consoling than his return to
-being one of the best-loved men in the Boosters’ Club.
-
-
-IV
-
-President Willis Ijams began that Boosters’ Club luncheon by standing
-quiet and staring at them so unhappily that they feared he was about to
-announce the death of a Brother Booster. He spoke slowly then, and
-gravely:
-
-“Boys, I have something shocking to reveal to you; something terrible
-about one of our own members.”
-
-Several Boosters, including Babbitt, looked disconcerted.
-
-“A knight of the grip, a trusted friend of mine, recently made a trip
-up-state, and in a certain town, where a certain Booster spent his
-boyhood, he found out something which can no longer be concealed. In
-fact, he discovered the inward nature of a man whom we have accepted as
-a Real Guy and as one of us. Gentlemen, I cannot trust my voice to say
-it, so I have written it down.”
-
-He uncovered a large blackboard and on it, in huge capitals, was the
-legend:
-
-               George Follansbee Babbitt--oh you Folly!
-
-The Boosters cheered, they laughed, they wept, they threw rolls at
-Babbitt, they cried, “Speech, speech! Oh you Folly!”
-
-President Ijams continued:
-
-“That, gentlemen, is the awful thing Georgie Babbitt has been concealing
-all these years, when we thought he was just plain George F. Now I want
-you to tell us, taking it in turn, what you’ve always supposed the F.
-stood for.”
-
-Flivver, they suggested, and Frog-face and Flathead and Farinaceous and
-Freezone and Flapdoodle and Foghorn. By the joviality of their insults
-Babbitt knew that he had been taken back to their hearts, and happily he
-rose.
-
-“Boys, I’ve got to admit it. I’ve never worn a wrist-watch, or parted my
-name in the middle, but I will confess to ‘Follansbee.’ My only
-justification is that my old dad--though otherwise he was perfectly
-sane, and packed an awful wallop when it came to trimming the City
-Fellers at checkers--named me after the family doc, old Dr. Ambrose
-Follansbee. I apologize, boys. In my next what-d’you-call-it I’ll see to
-it that I get named something really practical--something that sounds
-swell and yet is good and virile--something, in fact, like that grand
-old name so familiar to every household--that bold and almost
-overpowering name, Willis Jimjams Ijams!”
-
-He knew by the cheer that he was secure again and popular; he knew that
-he would no more endanger his security and popularity by straying from
-the Clan of Good Fellows.
-
-
-V
-
-Henry Thompson dashed into the office, clamoring, “George! Big news!
-Jake Offutt says the Traction Bunch are dissatisfied with the way
-Sanders, Torrey and Wing handled their last deal, and they’re willing to
-dicker with us!”
-
-Babbitt was pleased in the realization that the last scar of his
-rebellion was healed, yet as he drove home he was annoyed by such
-background thoughts as had never weakened him in his days of belligerent
-conformity. He discovered that he actually did not consider the Traction
-group quite honest. “Well, he’d carry out one more deal for them, but as
-soon as it was practicable, maybe as soon as old Henry Thompson died,
-he’d break away from all association from them. He was forty-eight; in
-twelve years he’d be sixty; he wanted to leave a clean business to his
-grandchildren. Course there was a lot of money in negotiating for the
-Traction people, and a fellow had to look at things in a practical way,
-only--” He wriggled uncomfortably. He wanted to tell the Traction group
-what he thought of them. “Oh, he couldn’t do it, not now. If he offended
-them this second time, they would crush him. But--”
-
-He was conscious that his line of progress seemed confused. He wondered
-what he would do with his future. He was still young; was he through
-with all adventuring? He felt that he had been trapped into the very net
-from which he had with such fury escaped and, supremest jest of all,
-been made to rejoice in the trapping.
-
-“They’ve licked me; licked me to a finish!” he whimpered.
-
-The house was peaceful, that evening, and he enjoyed a game of pinochle
-with his wife. He indignantly told the Tempter that he was content to
-do things in the good old-fashioned way. The day after, he went to see
-the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company and they made plans
-for the secret purchase of lots along the Evanston Road. But as he drove
-to his office he struggled, “I’m going to run things and figure out
-things to suit myself--when I retire.”
-
-
-VI
-
-Ted had come down from the University for the week-end. Though he no
-longer spoke of mechanical engineering and though he was reticent about
-his opinion of his instructors, he seemed no more reconciled to college,
-and his chief interest was his wireless telephone set.
-
-On Saturday evening he took Eunice Littlefield to a dance at Devon
-Woods. Babbitt had a glimpse of her, bouncing in the seat of the car,
-brilliant in a scarlet cloak over a frock of thinnest creamy silk. They
-two had not returned when the Babbitts went to bed, at half-past eleven.
-At a blurred indefinite time of late night Babbitt was awakened by the
-ring of the telephone and gloomily crawled down-stairs. Howard
-Littlefield was speaking:
-
-“George, Euny isn’t back yet. Is Ted?”
-
-“No--at least his door is open--”
-
-“They ought to be home. Eunice said the dance would be over at midnight.
-What’s the name of those people where they’re going?”
-
-“Why, gosh, tell the truth, I don’t know, Howard. It’s some classmate of
-Ted’s, out in Devon Woods. Don’t see what we can do. Wait, I’ll skip up
-and ask Myra if she knows their name.”
-
-Babbitt turned on the light in Ted’s room. It was a brown boyish room;
-disordered dresser, worn books, a high-school pennant, photographs of
-basket-ball teams and baseball teams. Ted was decidedly not there.
-
-Mrs. Babbitt, awakened, irritably observed that she certainly did not
-know the name of Ted’s host, that it was late, that Howard Littlefield
-was but little better than a born fool, and that she was sleepy. But she
-remained awake and worrying while Babbitt, on the sleeping-porch,
-struggled back into sleep through the incessant soft rain of her
-remarks. It was after dawn when he was aroused by her shaking him and
-calling “George! George!” in something like horror.
-
-“Wha--wha--what is it?”
-
-“Come here quick and see. Be quiet!”
-
-She led him down the hall to the door of Ted’s room and pushed it gently
-open. On the worn brown rug he saw a froth of rose-colored chiffon
-lingerie; on the sedate Morris chair a girl’s silver slipper. And on the
-pillows were two sleepy heads--Ted’s and Eunice’s.
-
-Ted woke to grin, and to mutter with unconvincing defiance, “Good
-morning! Let me introduce my wife--Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Eunice
-Littlefield Babbitt, Esquiress.”
-
-“Good God!” from Babbitt, and from his wife a long wailing, “You’ve gone
-and--”
-
-“We got married last evening. Wife! Sit up and say a pretty good morning
-to mother-in-law.”
-
-But Eunice hid her shoulders and her charming wild hair under the
-pillow.
-
-By nine o’clock the assembly which was gathered about Ted and Eunice in
-the living-room included Mr. and Mrs. George Babbitt, Dr. and Mrs.
-Howard Littlefield, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Escott, Mr. and Mrs. Henry T.
-Thompson, and Tinka Babbitt, who was the only pleased member of the
-inquisition.
-
-A crackling shower of phrases filled the room:
-
-“At their age--” “Ought to be annulled--” “Never heard of such a thing
-in--” “Fault of both of them and--” “Keep it out of the papers--” “Ought
-to be packed off to school--” “Do something about it at once, and what I
-say is--” “Damn good old-fashioned spanking--”
-
-Worst of them all was Verona. “_Ted!_ Some way _must_ be found to make
-you under_stand_ how dreadfully _serious_ this is, instead of standing
-_around_ with that silly foolish _smile_ on your face!”
-
-He began to revolt. “Gee whittakers, Rone, you got married yourself,
-didn’t you?”
-
-“That’s entirely different.”
-
-“You bet it is! They didn’t have to work on Eu and me with a chain and
-tackle to get us to hold hands!”
-
-“Now, young man, we’ll have no more flippancy,” old Henry Thompson
-ordered. “You listen to me.”
-
-“You listen to Grandfather!” said Verona.
-
-“Yes, listen to your Grandfather!” said Mrs. Babbitt.
-
-“Ted, you listen to Mr. Thompson!” said Howard Littlefield.
-
-“Oh, for the love o’ Mike, I am listening!” Ted shouted. “But you look
-here, all of you! I’m getting sick and tired of being the corpse in this
-post mortem! If you want to kill somebody, go kill the preacher that
-married us! Why, he stung me five dollars, and all the money I had in
-the world was six dollars and two bits. I’m getting just about enough of
-being hollered at!”
-
-A new voice, booming, authoritative, dominated the room. It was Babbitt.
-“Yuh, there’s too darn many putting in their oar! Rone, you dry up.
-Howard and I are still pretty strong, and able to do our own cussing.
-Ted, come into the dining-room and we’ll talk this over.”
-
-In the dining-room, the door firmly closed, Babbitt walked to his son,
-put both hands on his shoulders. “You’re more or less right. They all
-talk too much. Now what do you plan to do, old man?”
-
-“Gosh, dad, are you really going to be human?”
-
-“Well, I-- Remember one time you called us ‘the Babbitt men’ and said we
-ought to stick together? I want to. I don’t pretend to think this isn’t
-serious. The way the cards are stacked against a young fellow to-day, I
-can’t say I approve of early marriages. But you couldn’t have married a
-better girl than Eunice; and way I figure it, Littlefield is darn lucky
-to get a Babbitt for a son-in-law! But what do you plan to do? Course
-you could go right ahead with the U., and when you’d finished--”
-
-“Dad, I can’t stand it any more. Maybe it’s all right for some fellows.
-Maybe I’ll want to go back some day. But me, I want to get into
-mechanics. I think I’d get to be a good inventor. There’s a fellow that
-would give me twenty dollars a week in a factory right now.”
-
-“Well--” Babbitt crossed the floor, slowly, ponderously, seeming a
-little old. “I’ve always wanted you to have a college degree.” He
-meditatively stamped across the floor again. “But I’ve never-- Now, for
-heaven’s sake, don’t repeat this to your mother, or she’d remove what
-little hair I’ve got left, but practically, I’ve never done a single
-thing I’ve wanted to in my whole life! I don’t know ’s I’ve accomplished
-anything except just get along. I figure out I’ve made about a quarter
-of an inch out of a possible hundred rods. Well, maybe you’ll carry
-things on further. I don’t know. But I do get a kind of sneaking
-pleasure out of the fact that you knew what you wanted to do and did it.
-Well, those folks in there will try to bully you, and tame you down.
-Tell ’em to go to the devil! I’ll back you. Take your factory job, if
-you want to. Don’t be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor
-of yourself, the way I’ve been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!”
-
-Arms about each other’s shoulders, the Babbitt men marched into the
-living-room and faced the swooping family.
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BABBITT ***
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