الفصل الفصل 3 · Chapter III
I
To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his
motor car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism. The office was his
pirate ship but the car his perilous excursion ashore.
Among the tremendous crises of each day none was more dramatic than
starting the engine. It was slow on cold mornings; there was the long,
anxious whirr of the starter; and sometimes he had to drip ether into
the cocks of the cylinders, which was so very interesting that at lunch
he would chronicle it drop by drop, and orally calculate how much each
drop had cost him.
This morning he was darkly prepared to find something wrong, and he felt
belittled when the mixture exploded sweet and strong, and the car didn’t
even brush the door-jamb, gouged and splintery with many bruisings by
fenders, as he backed out of the garage. He was confused. He shouted
“Morning!” to Sam Doppelbrau with more cordiality than he had intended.
Babbitt’s green and white Dutch Colonial house was one of three in that
block on Chatham Road. To the left of it was the residence of Mr. Samuel
Doppelbrau, secretary of an excellent firm of bathroom-fixture jobbers.
His was a comfortable house with no architectural manners whatever; a
large wooden box with a squat tower, a broad porch, and glossy paint
yellow as a yolk. Babbitt disapproved of Mr. and Mrs. Doppelbrau as
“Bohemian.” From their house came midnight music and obscene laughter;
there were neighborhood rumors of bootlegged whisky and fast motor
rides. They furnished Babbitt with many happy evenings of discussion,
during which he announced firmly, “I’m not straitlaced, and I don’t mind
seeing a fellow throw in a drink once in a while, but when it comes to
deliberately trying to get away with a lot of hell-raising all the while
like the Doppelbraus do, it’s too rich for my blood!”
On the other side of Babbitt lived Howard Littlefield, Ph.D., in a
strictly modern house whereof the lower part was dark red tapestry
brick, with a leaded oriel, the upper part of pale stucco like spattered
clay, and the roof red-tiled. Littlefield was the Great Scholar of the
neighborhood; the authority on everything in the world except babies,
cooking, and motors. He was a Bachelor of Arts of Blodgett College, and
a Doctor of Philosophy in economics of Yale. He was the
employment-manager and publicity-counsel of the Zenith Street Traction
Company. He could, on ten hours’ notice, appear before the board of
aldermen or the state legislature and prove, absolutely, with figures
all in rows and with precedents from Poland and New Zealand, that the
street-car company loved the Public and yearned over its employees; that
all its stock was owned by Widows and Orphans; and that whatever it
desired to do would benefit property-owners by increasing rental values,
and help the poor by lowering rents. All his acquaintances turned to
Littlefield when they desired to know the date of the battle of
Saragossa, the definition of the word “sabotage,” the future of the
German mark, the translation of “_hinc illæ lachrimæ_” or the number of
products of coal tar. He awed Babbitt by confessing that he often sat up
till midnight reading the figures and footnotes in Government reports,
or skimming (with amusement at the author’s mistakes) the latest volumes
of chemistry, archaeology, and ichthyology.
But Littlefield’s great value was as a spiritual example. Despite his
strange learnings he was as strict a Presbyterian and as firm a
Republican as George F. Babbitt. He confirmed the business men in the
faith. Where they knew only by passionate instinct that their system of
industry and manners was perfect, Dr. Howard Littlefield proved it to
them, out of history, economics, and the confessions of reformed
radicals.
Babbitt had a good deal of honest pride in being the neighbor of such a
savant, and in Ted’s intimacy with Eunice Littlefield. At sixteen Eunice
was interested in no statistics save those regarding the ages and
salaries of motion-picture stars, but--as Babbitt definitively put
it--“she was her father’s daughter.”
The difference between a light man like Sam Doppelbrau and a really fine
character like Littlefield was revealed in their appearances. Doppelbrau
was disturbingly young for a man of forty-eight. He wore his derby on
the back of his head, and his red face was wrinkled with meaningless
laughter. But Littlefield was old for a man of forty-two. He was tall,
broad, thick; his gold-rimmed spectacles were engulfed in the folds of
his long face; his hair was a tossed mass of greasy blackness; he puffed
and rumbled as he talked; his Phi Beta Kappa key shone against a spotty
black vest; he smelled of old pipes; he was altogether funereal and
archidiaconal; and to real-estate brokerage and the jobbing of
bathroom-fixtures he added an aroma of sanctity.
This morning he was in front of his house, inspecting the grass parking
between the curb and the broad cement sidewalk. Babbitt stopped his car
and leaned out to shout “Mornin’!” Littlefield lumbered over and stood
with one foot up on the running-board.
“Fine morning,” said Babbitt, lighting--illegally early--his second
cigar of the day.
“Yes, it’s a mighty fine morning,” said Littlefield.
“Spring coming along fast now.”
“Yes, it’s real spring now, all right,” said Littlefield.
“Still cold nights, though. Had to have a couple blankets, on the
sleeping-porch last night.”
“Yes, it wasn’t any too warm last night,” said Littlefield.
“But I don’t anticipate we’ll have any more real cold weather now.”
“No, but still, there was snow at Tiflis, Montana, yesterday,” said the
Scholar, “and you remember the blizzard they had out West three days
ago--thirty inches of snow at Greeley, Colorado--and two years ago we
had a snow-squall right here in Zenith on the twenty-fifth of April.”
“Is that a fact! Say, old man, what do you think about the Republican
candidate? Who’ll they nominate for president? Don’t you think it’s
about time we had a real business administration?”
“In my opinion, what the country needs, first and foremost, is a good,
sound, business-like conduct of its affairs. What we need is--a business
administration!” said Littlefield.
“I’m glad to hear you say that! I certainly am glad to hear you say
that! I didn’t know how you’d feel about it, with all your associations
with colleges and so on, and I’m glad you feel that way. What the
country needs--just at this present juncture--is neither a college
president nor a lot of monkeying with foreign affairs, but a
good--sound--economical--business--administration, that will give us a
chance to have something like a decent turnover.”
“Yes. It isn’t generally realized that even in China the schoolmen are
giving way to more practical men, and of course you can see what that
implies.”
“Is that a fact! Well, well!” breathed Babbitt, feeling much calmer, and
much happier about the way things were going in the world. “Well, it’s
been nice to stop and parleyvoo a second. Guess I’ll have to get down to
the office now and sting a few clients. Well, so long, old man. See you
to-night. So long.”
II
They had labored, these solid citizens. Twenty years before, the hill
on which Floral Heights was spread, with its bright roofs and immaculate
turf and amazing comfort, had been a wilderness of rank second-growth
elms and oaks and maples. Along the precise streets were still a few
wooded vacant lots, and the fragment of an old orchard. It was brilliant
to-day; the apple boughs were lit with fresh leaves like torches of
green fire. The first white of cherry blossoms flickered down a gully,
and robins clamored.
Babbitt sniffed the earth, chuckled at the hysteric robins as he would
have chuckled at kittens or at a comic movie. He was, to the eye, the
perfect office-going executive--a well-fed man in a correct brown soft
hat and frameless spectacles, smoking a large cigar, driving a good
motor along a semisuburban parkway. But in him was some genius of
authentic love for his neighborhood, his city, his clan. The winter was
over; the time was come for the building, the visible growth, which to
him was glory. He lost his dawn depression; he was ruddily cheerful when
he stopped on Smith Street to leave the brown trousers, and to have the
gasoline-tank filled.
The familiarity of the rite fortified him: the sight of the tall red
iron gasoline-pump, the hollow-tile and terra-cotta garage, the window
full of the most agreeable accessories--shiny casings, spark-plugs with
immaculate porcelain jackets, tire-chains of gold and silver. He was
flattered by the friendliness with which Sylvester Moon, dirtiest and
most skilled of motor mechanics, came out to serve him. “Mornin’, Mr.
Babbitt!” said Moon, and Babbitt felt himself a person of importance,
one whose name even busy garagemen remembered--not one of these
cheap-sports flying around in flivvers. He admired the ingenuity of the
automatic dial, clicking off gallon by gallon; admired the smartness of
the sign: “A fill in time saves getting stuck--gas to-day 31 cents”;
admired the rhythmic gurgle of the gasoline as it flowed into the tank,
and the mechanical regularity with which Moon turned the handle.
“How much we takin’ to-day?” asked Moon, in a manner which combined the
independence of the great specialist, the friendliness of a familiar
gossip, and respect for a man of weight in the community, like George F.
Babbitt.
“Fill ’er up.”
“Who you rootin’ for for Republican candidate, Mr. Babbitt?”
“It’s too early to make any predictions yet. After all, there’s still a
good month and two weeks--no, three weeks--must be almost three
weeks--well, there’s more than six weeks in all before the Republican
convention, and I feel a fellow ought to keep an open mind and give all
the candidates a show--look ’em all over and size ’em up, and then
decide carefully.”
“That’s a fact, Mr. Babbitt.”
“But I’ll tell you--and my stand on this is just the same as it was four
years ago, and eight years ago, and it’ll be my stand four years from
now--yes, and eight years from now! What I tell everybody, and it can’t
be too generally understood, is that what we need first, last, and all
the time is a good, sound business administration!”
“By golly, that’s right!”
“How do those front tires look to you?”
“Fine! Fine! Wouldn’t be much work for garages if everybody looked after
their car the way you do.”
“Well, I do try and have some sense about it.” Babbitt paid his bill,
said adequately, “Oh, keep the change,” and drove off in an ecstasy of
honest self-appreciation. It was with the manner of a Good Samaritan
that he shouted at a respectable-looking man who was waiting for a
trolley car, “Have a lift?” As the man climbed in Babbitt condescended,
“Going clear down-town? Whenever I see a fellow waiting for a trolley, I
always make it a practice to give him a lift--unless, of course, he
looks like a bum.”
“Wish there were more folks that were so generous with their machines,”
dutifully said the victim of benevolence.
“Oh, no, ’tain’t a question of generosity, hardly. Fact, I always
feel-- I was saying to my son just the other night--it’s a fellow’s duty
to share the good things of this world with his neighbors, and it gets
my goat when a fellow gets stuck on himself and goes around tooting his
horn merely because he’s charitable.”
The victim seemed unable to find the right answer. Babbitt boomed on:
“Pretty punk service the Company giving us on these carlines. Nonsense
to only run the Portland Road cars once every seven minutes. Fellow gets
mighty cold on a winter morning, waiting on a street corner with the
wind nipping at his ankles.”
“That’s right. The Street Car Company don’t care a damn what kind of a
deal they give us. Something ought to happen to ’em.”
Babbitt was alarmed. “But still, of course it won’t do to just keep
knocking the Traction Company and not realize the difficulties they’re
operating under, like these cranks that want municipal ownership. The
way these workmen hold up the Company for high wages is simply a crime,
and of course the burden falls on you and me that have to pay a
seven-cent fare! Fact, there’s remarkable service on all their
lines--considering.”
“Well--” uneasily.
“Darn fine morning,” Babbitt explained. “Spring coming along fast.”
“Yes, it’s real spring now.”
The victim had no originality, no wit, and Babbitt fell into a great
silence and devoted himself to the game of beating trolley cars to the
corner: a spurt, a tail-chase, nervous speeding between the huge yellow
side of the trolley and the jagged row of parked motors, shooting past
just as the trolley stopped--a rare game and valiant.
And all the while he was conscious of the loveliness of Zenith. For
weeks together he noticed nothing but clients and the vexing To Rent
signs of rival brokers. To-day, in mysterious malaise, he raged or
rejoiced with equal nervous swiftness, and to-day the light of spring
was so winsome that he lifted his head and saw.
He admired each district along his familiar route to the office: The
bungalows and shrubs and winding irregular driveways of Floral Heights.
The one-story shops on Smith Street, a glare of plate-glass and new
yellow brick; groceries and laundries and drug-stores to supply the more
immediate needs of East Side housewives. The market gardens in Dutch
Hollow, their shanties patched with corrugated iron and stolen doors.
Billboards with crimson goddesses nine feet tall advertising cinema
films, pipe tobacco, and talcum powder. The old “mansions” along Ninth
Street, S.E., like aged dandies in filthy linen; wooden castles turned
into boarding-houses, with muddy walks and rusty hedges, jostled by
fast-intruding garages, cheap apartment-houses, and fruit-stands
conducted by bland, sleek Athenians. Across the belt of railroad-tracks,
factories with high-perched water-tanks and tall stacks--factories
producing condensed milk, paper boxes, lighting-fixtures, motor cars.
Then the business center, the thickening darting traffic, the crammed
trolleys unloading, and high doorways of marble and polished granite.
It was big--and Babbitt respected bigness in anything; in mountains,
jewels, muscles, wealth, or words. He was, for a spring-enchanted
moment, the lyric and almost unselfish lover of Zenith. He thought of
the outlying factory suburbs; of the Chaloosa River with its strangely
eroded banks; of the orchard-dappled Tonawanda Hills to the North, and
all the fat dairy land and big barns and comfortable herds. As he
dropped his passenger he cried, “Gosh, I feel pretty good this
morning!”
III
Epochal as starting the car was the drama of parking it before he
entered his office. As he turned from Oberlin Avenue round the corner
into Third Street, N.E., he peered ahead for a space in the line of
parked cars. He angrily just missed a space as a rival driver slid into
it. Ahead, another car was leaving the curb, and Babbitt slowed up,
holding out his hand to the cars pressing on him from behind, agitatedly
motioning an old woman to go ahead, avoiding a truck which bore down on
him from one side. With front wheels nicking the wrought-steel bumper of
the car in front, he stopped, feverishly cramped his steering-wheel,
slid back into the vacant space and, with eighteen inches of room,
manœuvered to bring the car level with the curb. It was a virile
adventure masterfully executed. With satisfaction he locked a
thief-proof steel wedge on the front wheel, and crossed the street to
his real-estate office on the ground floor of the Reeves Building.
The Reeves Building was as fireproof as a rock and as efficient as a
typewriter; fourteen stories of yellow pressed brick, with clean,
upright, unornamented lines. It was filled with the offices of lawyers,
doctors, agents for machinery, for emery wheels, for wire fencing, for
mining-stock. Their gold signs shone on the windows. The entrance was
too modern to be flamboyant with pillars; it was quiet, shrewd, neat.
Along the Third Street side were a Western Union Telegraph Office, the
Blue Delft Candy Shop, Shotwell’s Stationery Shop, and the
Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company.
Babbitt could have entered his office from the street, as customers did,
but it made him feel an insider to go through the corridor of the
building and enter by the back door. Thus he was greeted by the
villagers.
The little unknown people who inhabited the Reeves Building
corridors--elevator-runners, starter, engineers, superintendent, and the
doubtful-looking lame man who conducted the news and cigar stand--were
in no way city-dwellers. They were rustics, living in a constricted
valley, interested only in one another and in The Building. Their Main
Street was the entrance hall, with its stone floor, severe marble
ceiling, and the inner windows of the shops. The liveliest place on the
street was the Reeves Building Barber Shop, but this was also Babbitt’s
one embarrassment. Himself, he patronized the glittering Pompeian Barber
Shop in the Hotel Thornleigh, and every time he passed the Reeves
shop--ten times a day, a hundred times--he felt untrue to his own
village.
Now, as one of the squirearchy, greeted with honorable salutations by
the villagers, he marched into his office, and peace and dignity were
upon him, and the morning’s dissonances all unheard.
They were heard again, immediately.
Stanley Graff, the outside salesman, was talking on the telephone with
tragic lack of that firm manner which disciplines clients: “Say, uh, I
think I got just the house that would suit you--the Percival House, in
Linton.... Oh, you’ve seen it. Well, how’d it strike you?... Huh?...
Oh,” irresolutely, “oh, I see.”
As Babbitt marched into his private room, a coop with semi-partition of
oak and frosted glass, at the back of the office, he reflected how hard
it was to find employees who had his own faith that he was going to make
sales.
There were nine members of the staff, besides Babbitt and his partner
and father-in-law, Henry Thompson, who rarely came to the office. The
nine were Stanley Graff, the outside salesman--a youngish man given to
cigarettes and the playing of pool; old Mat Penniman, general utility
man, collector of rents and salesman of insurance--broken, silent, gray;
a mystery, reputed to have been a “crack” real-estate man with a firm of
his own in haughty Brooklyn; Chester Kirby Laylock, resident salesman
out at the Glen Oriole acreage development--an enthusiastic person with
a silky mustache and much family; Miss Theresa McGoun, the swift and
rather pretty stenographer; Miss Wilberta Bannigan, the thick, slow,
laborious accountant and file-clerk; and four freelance part-time
commission salesmen.
As he looked from his own cage into the main room Babbitt mourned,
“McGoun’s a good stenog., smart’s a whip, but Stan Graff and all those
bums--” The zest of the spring morning was smothered in the stale office
air.
Normally he admired the office, with a pleased surprise that he should
have created this sure lovely thing; normally he was stimulated by the
clean newness of it and the air of bustle; but to-day it seemed
flat--the tiled floor, like a bathroom, the ocher-colored metal ceiling,
the faded maps on the hard plaster walls, the chairs of varnished pale
oak, the desks and filing-cabinets of steel painted in olive drab. It
was a vault, a steel chapel where loafing and laughter were raw sin.
He hadn’t even any satisfaction in the new water-cooler! And it was the
very best of water-coolers, up-to-date, scientific, and right-thinking.
It had cost a great deal of money (in itself a virtue). It possessed a
non-conducting fiber ice-container, a porcelain water-jar (guaranteed
hygienic), a dripless non-clogging sanitary faucet, and machine-painted
decorations in two tones of gold. He looked down the relentless stretch
of tiled floor at the water-cooler, and assured himself that no tenant
of the Reeves Building had a more expensive one, but he could not
recapture the feeling of social superiority it had given him. He
astoundingly grunted, “I’d like to beat it off to the woods right now.
And loaf all day. And go to Gunch’s again to-night, and play poker, and
cuss as much as I feel like, and drink a hundred and nine-thousand
bottles of beer.”
He sighed; he read through his mail; he shouted “Msgoun,” which meant
“Miss McGoun”; and began to dictate.
This was his own version of his first letter:
“Omar Gribble, send it to his office, Miss McGoun, yours of twentieth to
hand and in reply would say look here, Gribble, I’m awfully afraid if we
go on shilly-shallying like this we’ll just naturally lose the Allen
sale, I had Allen up on carpet day before yesterday and got right down
to cases and think I can assure you--uh, uh, no, change that: all my
experience indicates he is all right, means to do business, looked into
his financial record which is fine--that sentence seems to be a little
balled up, Miss McGoun; make a couple sentences out of it if you have
to, period, new paragraph.
“He is perfectly willing to pro rate the special assessment and strikes
me, am dead sure there will be no difficulty in getting him to pay for
title insurance, so now for heaven’s sake let’s get busy--no, make that:
so now let’s go to it and get down--no, that’s enough--you can tie those
sentences up a little better when you type ’em, Miss McGoun--your
sincerely, etcetera.”
This is the version of his letter which he received, typed, from Miss
McGoun that afternoon:
BABBITT-THOMPSON REALTY CO.
Homes for Folks
Reeves Bldg., Oberlin Avenue & 3d St., N.E.
Zenith
Omar Gribble, Esq.,
576 North American Building,
Zenith.
Dear Mr. Gribble:
Your letter of the twentieth to hand. I must say I’m awfully afraid
that if we go on shilly-shallying like this we’ll just naturally
lose the Allen sale. I had Allen up on the carpet day before
yesterday, and got right down to cases. All my experience indicates
that he means to do business. I have also looked into his financial
record, which is fine.
He is perfectly willing to pro rate the special assessment and
there will be no difficulty in getting him to pay for title
insurance.
_So let’s go!_
Yours sincerely,
As he read and signed it, in his correct flowing business-college hand,
Babbitt reflected, “Now that’s a good, strong letter, and clear’s a
bell. Now what the-- I never told McGoun to make a third paragraph there!
Wish she’d quit trying to improve on my dictation! But what I can’t
understand is: why can’t Stan Graff or Chet Laylock write a letter like
that? With punch! With a kick!”
The most important thing he dictated that morning was the fortnightly
form-letter, to be mimeographed and sent out to a thousand “prospects.”
It was diligently imitative of the best literary models of the day; of
heart-to-heart-talk advertisements, “sales-pulling” letters, discourses
on the “development of Will-power,” and hand-shaking house-organs, as
richly poured forth by the new school of Poets of Business. He had
painfully written out a first draft, and he intoned it now like a poet
delicate and distrait:
SAY, OLD MAN!
I just want to know can I do you a whaleuva favor? Honest! No
kidding! I know you’re interested in getting a house, not merely a
place where you hang up the old bonnet but a love-nest for the wife
and kiddies--and maybe for the flivver out beyant (be sure and
spell that b-e-y-a-n-t, Miss McGoun) the spud garden. Say, did you
ever stop to think that we’re here to save you trouble? That’s how
we make a living--folks don’t pay us for our lovely beauty! Now
take a look:
Sit right down at the handsome carved mahogany escritoire and shoot
us in a line telling us just what you want, and if we can find it
we’ll come hopping down your lane with the good tidings, and if we
can’t, we won’t bother you. To save your time, just fill out the
blank enclosed. On request will also send blank regarding store
properties in Floral Heights, Silver Grove, Linton, Bellevue, and
all East Side residential districts.
Yours for service,
P.S.--Just a hint of some plums we can pick for you--some genuine
bargains that came in to-day:
SILVER GROVE.--Cute four-room California bungalow, a.m.i., garage,
dandy shade tree, swell neighborhood, handy car line. $3700, $780
down and balance liberal, Babbitt-Thompson terms, cheaper than
rent.
DORCHESTER.--A corker! Artistic two-family house, all oak trim,
parquet floors, lovely gas log, big porches, colonial, HEATED
ALL-WEATHER GARAGE, a bargain at $11,250.
Dictation over, with its need of sitting and thinking instead of
bustling around and making a noise and really doing something, Babbitt
sat creakily back in his revolving desk-chair and beamed on Miss McGoun.
He was conscious of her as a girl, of black bobbed hair against demure
cheeks. A longing which was indistinguishable from loneliness enfeebled
him. While she waited, tapping a long, precise pencil-point on the
desk-tablet, he half identified her with the fairy girl of his dreams.
He imagined their eyes meeting with terrifying recognition; imagined
touching her lips with frightened reverence and-- She was chirping, “Any
more, Mist’ Babbitt?” He grunted, “That winds it up, I guess,” and
turned heavily away.
For all his wandering thoughts, they had never been more intimate than
this. He often reflected, “Nev’ forget how old Jake Offutt said a wise
bird never goes love-making in his own office or his own home. Start
trouble. Sure. But--”
In twenty-three years of married life he had peered uneasily at every
graceful ankle, every soft shoulder; in thought he had treasured them;
but not once had he hazarded respectability by adventuring. Now, as he
calculated the cost of repapering the Styles house, he was restless
again, discontented about nothing and everything, ashamed of his
discontentment, and lonely for the fairy girl.