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 beforetheir 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, whoselaundry 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’ssupposedto 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 betickled 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 thesedemi-viergesin stories—”
“Thesewhats?”
“—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’realways 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 hisdefense 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 youwantme to go to Maine with you? I shouldn’t dream of going unlessyou 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!”
Heforgot 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, “Igotto 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, andthey 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 aboutCity 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—”
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 forour 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 thatwould 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.
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 precedencewere 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 thebon tonand 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 andread’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 theEvening 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 theAdvocate-Times, theEvening Advocate, nor theBulletin of the Zenith Chamber of Commercehad 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 SPEAKINGA Yarn Told at the Club
WHAT WE TEACHYOU!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!
WHAT WE TEACHYOU!
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!
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!
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.
PROF. W. F. PEETauthor 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 giveYOUall the secrets of his culture and hammering Force, in a few easy lessons that will not interfere with other occupations.
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 giveYOUall the secrets of his culture and hammering Force, in a few easy lessons that will not interfere with other occupations.
“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 (juston 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 WASandpit, Iowa.ARE YOU A 100 PERCENTER OR A 10 PERCENTER?
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 bestgirl and some one passes a slighting remark or usesimproper language, won’t you be ashamed if you can’ttake her part? Well, can you?We teach boxing and self-defense by mail. Manypupils have written saying that after a few lessonsthey’ve outboxed bigger and heavier opponents. Thelessons start with simple movements practised beforeyour mirror—holding out your hand for a coin, thebreast-stroke in swimming, etc. Before you realize ityou are striking scientifically, ducking, guarding andfeinting, just as if you had a real opponent before you.
CAN YOU PLAY A MAN’S PART?
If you are walking with your mother, sister or bestgirl and some one passes a slighting remark or usesimproper language, won’t you be ashamed if you can’ttake her part? Well, can you?We teach boxing and self-defense by mail. Manypupils have written saying that after a few lessonsthey’ve outboxed bigger and heavier opponents. Thelessons start with simple movements practised beforeyour mirror—holding out your hand for a coin, thebreast-stroke in swimming, etc. Before you realize ityou are striking scientifically, ducking, guarding andfeinting, just as if you had a real opponent before you.
If you are walking with your mother, sister or bestgirl and some one passes a slighting remark or usesimproper language, won’t you be ashamed if you can’ttake her part? Well, can you?We teach boxing and self-defense by mail. Manypupils have written saying that after a few lessonsthey’ve outboxed bigger and heavier opponents. Thelessons start with simple movements practised beforeyour mirror—holding out your hand for a coin, thebreast-stroke in swimming, etc. Before you realize ityou are striking scientifically, ducking, guarding andfeinting, 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!”
“Iwouldnot! I’d stand right up to any mucker that passed a slighting remark onmysister 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 withyou, 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 youweresometime! Justsuppose! 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 youdid!”
“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 Iweregoing 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 andjump 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 menand 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 ofbookworms 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, whenshe 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— Iknow! 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-orderUniversity!’ 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.
“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 enoughdevilment 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 Idid 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 wasalways 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.