Babbitt

"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 a.s.serted that five dollars was not too great a sum, not for a really high-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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."

Rea.s.sured 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 ma.s.sy 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 n.o.ble 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 cas.e.m.e.nts, an oriel, a somewhat musicianless musicians"-gallery, and tapestries believed to ill.u.s.trate the granting of Magna Charta. The open beams had been hand-adzed at Jake Offutt"s car-body works, the hinge; 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 a.s.serted 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sembly. 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 a.s.sociate 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, d.a.m.n 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--G.o.d, 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 cut-throat, 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 bra.s.sy 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 negligee 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 princ.i.p.ally keeping my compet.i.tors 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--compet.i.tion--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?"