Babbit (35 page)

  "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 soiree - "

  "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!"

  I

  
H
E 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.