Babbit (15 page)

  "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.

  I

  
T
HE 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. Iike 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 tonight. 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
upstairs 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, hut
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.