Chương Chương 19 · Chapter XIX

I

The Zenith Street Traction Company planned to build car-repair shops in

the suburb of Dorchester, but when they came to buy the land they found

it held, on options, by the Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company. The

purchasing-agent, the first vice-president, and even the president of

the Traction Company protested against the Babbitt price. They mentioned

their duty toward stockholders, they threatened an appeal to the courts,

though somehow the appeal to the courts was never carried out and the

officials found it wiser to compromise with Babbitt. Carbon copies of

the correspondence are in the company’s files, where they may be viewed

by any public commission.

Just after this Babbitt deposited three thousand dollars in the bank,

the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company bought a five

thousand dollar car, the first vice-president built a home in Devon

Woods, and the president was appointed minister to a foreign country.

To obtain the options, to tie up one man’s land without letting his

neighbor know, had been an unusual strain on Babbitt. It was necessary

to introduce rumors about planning garages and stores, to pretend that

he wasn’t taking any more options, to wait and look as bored as a

poker-player at a time when the failure to secure a key-lot threatened

his whole plan. To all this was added a nerve-jabbing quarrel with his

secret associates in the deal. They did not wish Babbitt and Thompson to

have any share in the deal except as brokers. Babbitt rather agreed.

“Ethics of the business--broker ought to strictly represent his

principles and not get in on the buying,” he said to Thompson.

“Ethics, rats! Think I’m going to see that bunch of holy grafters get

away with the swag and us not climb in?” snorted old Henry.

“Well, I don’t like to do it. Kind of double-crossing.”

“It ain’t. It’s triple-crossing. It’s the public that gets

double-crossed. Well, now we’ve been ethical and got it out of our

systems, the question is where we can raise a loan to handle some of the

property for ourselves, on the Q. T. We can’t go to our bank for it.

Might come out.”

“I could see old Eathorne. He’s close as the tomb.”

“That’s the stuff.”

Eathorne was glad, he said, to “invest in character,” to make Babbitt

the loan and see to it that the loan did not appear on the books of the

bank. Thus certain of the options which Babbitt and Thompson obtained

were on parcels of real estate which they themselves owned, though the

property did not appear in their names.

In the midst of closing this splendid deal, which stimulated business

and public confidence by giving an example of increased real-estate

activity, Babbitt was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person

working for him.

The dishonest one was Stanley Graff, the outside salesman.

For some time Babbitt had been worried about Graff. He did not keep his

word to tenants. In order to rent a house he would promise repairs which

the owner had not authorized. It was suspected that he juggled

inventories of furnished houses so that when the tenant left he had to

pay for articles which had never been in the house and the price of

which Graff put into his pocket. Babbitt had not been able to prove

these suspicions, and though he had rather planned to discharge Graff he

had never quite found time for it.

Now into Babbitt’s private room charged a red-faced man, panting, “Look

here! I’ve come to raise particular merry hell, and unless you have that

fellow pinched, I will!”

“What’s-- Calm down, o’ man. What’s trouble?”

“Trouble! Huh! Here’s the trouble--”

“Sit down and take it easy! They can hear you all over the building!”

“This fellow Graff you got working for you, he leases me a house. I was

in yesterday and signs the lease, all O.K., and he was to get the

owner’s signature and mail me the lease last night. Well, and he did.

This morning I comes down to breakfast and the girl says a fellow had

come to the house right after the early delivery and told her he wanted

an envelope that had been mailed by mistake, big long envelope with

‘Babbitt-Thompson’ in the corner of it. Sure enough, there it was, so

she lets him have it. And she describes the fellow to me, and it was

this Graff. So I ’phones to him and he, the poor fool, he admits it! He

says after my lease was all signed he got a better offer from another

fellow and he wanted my lease back. Now what you going to do about it?”

“Your name is--?”

“William Varney--W. K. Varney.”

“Oh, yes. That was the Garrison house.” Babbitt sounded the buzzer. When

Miss McGoun came in, he demanded, “Graff gone out?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you look through his desk and see if there is a lease made out to

Mr. Varney on the Garrison house?” To Varney: “Can’t tell you how sorry

I am this happened. Needless to say, I’ll fire Graff the minute he comes

in. And of course your lease stands. But there’s one other thing I’d

like to do. I’ll tell the owner not to pay us the commission but apply

it to your rent. No! Straight! I want to. To be frank, this thing shakes

me up bad. I suppose I’ve always been a Practical Business Man. Probably

I’ve told one or two fairy stories in my time, when the occasion called

for it--you know: sometimes you have to lay things on thick, to impress

boneheads. But this is the first time I’ve ever had to accuse one of my

own employees of anything more dishonest than pinching a few stamps.

Honest, it would hurt me if we profited by it. So you’ll let me hand you

the commission? Good!”

II

He walked through the February city, where trucks flung up a spattering

of slush and the sky was dark above dark brick cornices. He came back

miserable. He, who respected the law, had broken it by concealing the

Federal crime of interception of the mails. But he could not see Graff

go to jail and his wife suffer. Worse, he had to discharge Graff, and

this was a part of office routine which he feared. He liked people so

much, he so much wanted them to like him, that he could not bear

insulting them.

Miss McGoun dashed in to whisper, with the excitement of an approaching

scene, “He’s here!”

“Mr. Graff? Ask him to come in.”

He tried to make himself heavy and calm in his chair, and to keep his

eyes expressionless. Graff stalked in--a man of thirty-five, dapper,

eye-glassed, with a foppish mustache.

“Want me?” said Graff.

“Yes. Sit down.”

Graff continued to stand, grunting, “I suppose that old nut Varney has

been in to see you. Let me explain about him. He’s a regular tightwad,

and he sticks out for every cent, and he practically lied to me about

his ability to pay the rent-- I found that out just after we signed up.

And then another fellow comes along with a better offer for the house,

and I felt it was my duty to the firm to get rid of Varney, and I was so

worried about it I skun up there and got back the lease. Honest, Mr.

Babbitt, I didn’t intend to pull anything crooked. I just wanted the

firm to have all the commis--”

“Wait now, Stan. This may all be true, but I’ve been having a lot of

complaints about you. Now I don’t s’pose you ever mean to do wrong, and

I think if you just get a good lesson that’ll jog you up a little,

you’ll turn out a first-class realtor yet. But I don’t see how I can

keep you on.”

Graff leaned against the filing-cabinet, his hands in his pockets, and

laughed. “So I’m fired! Well, old Vision and Ethics, I’m tickled to

death! But I don’t want you to think you can get away with any

holier-than-thou stuff. Sure I’ve pulled some raw stuff--a little of

it--but how could I help it, in this office?”

“Now, by God, young man--”

“Tut, tut! Keep the naughty temper down, and don’t holler, because

everybody in the outside office will hear you. They’re probably

listening right now. Babbitt, old dear, you’re crooked in the first

place and a damn skinflint in the second. If you paid me a decent salary

I wouldn’t have to steal pennies off a blind man to keep my wife from

starving. Us married just five months, and her the nicest girl living,

and you keeping us flat broke all the time, you damned old thief, so you

can put money away for your saphead of a son and your wishywashy fool of

a daughter! Wait, now! You’ll by God take it, or I’ll bellow so the

whole office will hear it! And crooked-- Say, if I told the prosecuting

attorney what I know about this last Street Traction option steal, both

you and me would go to jail, along with some nice, clean, pious, high-up

traction guns!”

“Well, Stan, looks like we were coming down to cases. That deal-- There

was nothing crooked about it. The only way you can get progress is for

the broad-gauged men to get things done; and they got to be rewarded--”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, don’t get virtuous on me! As I gather it, I’m

fired. All right. It’s a good thing for me. And if I catch you knocking

me to any other firm, I’ll squeal all I know about you and Henry T. and

the dirty little lickspittle deals that you corporals of industry pull

off for the bigger and brainier crooks, and you’ll get chased out of

town. And me--you’re right, Babbitt, I’ve been going crooked, but now

I’m going straight, and the first step will be to get a job in some

office where the boss doesn’t talk about Ideals. Bad luck, old dear, and

you can stick your job up the sewer!”

Babbitt sat for a long time, alternately raging, “I’ll have him

arrested,” and yearning “I wonder-- No, I’ve never done anything that

wasn’t necessary to keep the Wheels of Progress moving.”

Next day he hired in Graff’s place Fritz Weilinger, the salesman of his

most injurious rival, the East Side Homes and Development Company, and

thus at once annoyed his competitor and acquired an excellent man. Young

Fritz was a curly-headed, merry, tennis-playing youngster. He made

customers welcome to the office. Babbitt thought of him as a son, and in

him had much comfort.

III

An abandoned race-track on the outskirts of Chicago, a plot excellent

for factory sites, was to be sold, and Jake Offut asked Babbitt to bid

on it for him. The strain of the Street Traction deal and his

disappointment in Stanley Graff had so shaken Babbitt that he found it

hard to sit at his desk and concentrate. He proposed to his family,

“Look here, folks! Do you know who’s going to trot up to Chicago for a

couple of days--just week-end; won’t lose but one day of school--know

who’s going with that celebrated business-ambassador, George F. Babbitt?

Why, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt!”

“Hurray!” Ted shouted, and “Oh, maybe the Babbitt men won’t paint that

lil ole town red!”

And, once away from the familiar implications of home, they were two men

together. Ted was young only in his assumption of oldness, and the only

realms, apparently, in which Babbitt had a larger and more grown-up

knowledge than Ted’s were the details of real estate and the phrases of

politics. When the other sages of the Pullman smoking-compartment had

left them to themselves, Babbitt’s voice did not drop into the playful

and otherwise offensive tone in which one addresses children but

continued its overwhelming and monotonous rumble, and Ted tried to

imitate it in his strident tenor:

“Gee, dad, you certainly did show up that poor boot when he got flip

about the League of Nations!”

“Well, the trouble with a lot of these fellows is, they simply don’t

know what they’re talking about. They don’t get down to facts.... What

do you think of Ken Escott?”

“I’ll tell you, dad: it strikes me Ken is a nice lad; no special faults

except he smokes too much; but slow, Lord! Why, if we don’t give him a

shove the poor dumb-bell never will propose! And Rone just as bad.

Slow.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right. They’re slow. They haven’t either one of ’em

got our pep.”

“That’s right. They’re slow. I swear, dad, I don’t know how Rone got

into our family! I’ll bet, if the truth were known, you were a bad old

egg when you were a kid!”

“Well, I wasn’t so slow!”

“I’ll bet you weren’t! I’ll bet you didn’t miss many tricks!”

“Well, when I was out with the girls I didn’t spend all the time telling

’em about the strike in the knitting industry!”

They roared together, and together lighted cigars.

“What are we going to do with ’em?” Babbitt consulted.

“Gosh, I don’t know. I swear, sometimes I feel like taking Ken aside and

putting him over the jumps and saying to him, ‘Young fella me lad, are

you going to marry young Rone, or are you going to talk her to death?

Here you are getting on toward thirty, and you’re only making twenty or

twenty-five a week. When you going to develop a sense of responsibility

and get a raise? If there’s anything that George F. or I can do to help

you, call on us, but show a little speed, anyway!’”

“Well, at that, it might not be so bad if you or I talked to him, except

he might not understand. He’s one of these highbrows. He can’t come

down to cases and lay his cards on the table and talk straight out from

the shoulder, like you or I can.”

“That’s right, he’s like all these highbrows.”

“That’s so, like all of ’em.”

“That’s a fact.”

They sighed, and were silent and thoughtful and happy.

The conductor came in. He had once called at Babbitt’s office, to ask

about houses. “H’ are you, Mr. Babbitt! We going to have you with us to

Chicago? This your boy?”

“Yes, this is my son Ted.”

“Well now, what do you know about that! Here I been thinking you were a

youngster yourself, not a day over forty, hardly, and you with this

great big fellow!”

“Forty? Why, brother, I’ll never see forty-five again!”

“Is that a fact! Wouldn’t hardly ’a’ thought it!”

“Yes, sir, it’s a bad give-away for the old man when he has to travel

with a young whale like Ted here!”

“You’re right, it is.” To Ted: “I suppose you’re in college now.”

Proudly, “No, not till next fall. I’m just kind of giving the diff’rent

colleges the once-over now.”

As the conductor went on his affable way, huge watch-chain jingling

against his blue chest, Babbitt and Ted gravely considered colleges.

They arrived at Chicago late at night; they lay abed in the morning,

rejoicing, “Pretty nice not to have to get up and get down to breakfast,

heh?” They were staying at the modest Eden Hotel, because Zenith

business men always stayed at the Eden, but they had dinner in the

brocade and crystal Versailles Room of the Regency Hotel. Babbitt

ordered Blue Point oysters with cocktail sauce, a tremendous steak with

a tremendous platter of French fried potatoes, two pots of coffee, apple

pie with ice cream for both of them and, for Ted, an extra piece of

mince pie.

“Hot stuff! Some feed, young fella!” Ted admired.

“Huh! You stick around with me, old man, and I’ll show you a good time!”

They went to a musical comedy and nudged each other at the matrimonial

jokes and the prohibition jokes; they paraded the lobby, arm in arm,

between acts, and in the glee of his first release from the shame which

dissevers fathers and sons Ted chuckled, “Dad, did you ever hear the one

about the three milliners and the judge?”

When Ted had returned to Zenith, Babbitt was lonely. As he was trying to

make alliance between Offutt and certain Milwaukee interests which

wanted the race-track plot, most of his time was taken up in waiting for

telephone calls.... Sitting on the edge of his bed, holding the portable

telephone, asking wearily, “Mr. Sagen not in yet? Didn’ he leave any

message for me? All right, I’ll hold the wire.” Staring at a stain on

the wall, reflecting that it resembled a shoe, and being bored by this

twentieth discovery that it resembled a shoe. Lighting a cigarette;

then, bound to the telephone with no ash-tray in reach, wondering what

to do with this burning menace and anxiously trying to toss it into the

tiled bathroom. At last, on the telephone, “No message, eh? All right,

I’ll call up again.”

One afternoon he wandered through snow-rutted streets of which he had

never heard, streets of small tenements and two-family houses and

marooned cottages. It came to him that he had nothing to do, that there

was nothing he wanted to do. He was bleakly lonely in the evening, when

he dined by himself at the Regency Hotel. He sat in the lobby afterward,

in a plush chair bedecked with the Saxe-Coburg arms, lighting a cigar

and looking for some one who would come and play with him and save him

from thinking. In the chair next to him (showing the arms of Lithuania)

was a half-familiar man, a large red-faced man with pop eyes and a

deficient yellow mustache. He seemed kind and insignificant, and as

lonely as Babbitt himself. He wore a tweed suit and a reluctant orange

tie.

It came to Babbitt with a pyrotechnic crash. The melancholy stranger was

Sir Gerald Doak.

Instinctively Babbitt rose, bumbling, “How’re you, Sir Gerald? ’Member

we met in Zenith, at Charley McKelvey’s? Babbitt’s my name--real

estate.”

“Oh! How d’you do.” Sir Gerald shook hands flabbily.

Embarrassed, standing, wondering how he could retreat, Babbitt

maundered, “Well, I suppose you been having a great trip since we saw

you in Zenith.”

“Quite. British Columbia and California and all over the place,” he said

doubtfully, looking at Babbitt lifelessly.

“How did you find business conditions in British Columbia? Or I suppose

maybe you didn’t look into ’em. Scenery and sport and so on?”

“Scenery? Oh, capital. But business conditions-- You know, Mr. Babbitt,

they’re having almost as much unemployment as we are.” Sir Gerald was

speaking warmly now.

“So? Business conditions not so doggone good, eh?”

“No, business conditions weren’t at all what I’d hoped to find them.”

“Not good, eh?”

“No, not--not really good.”

“That’s a darn shame. Well-- I suppose you’re waiting for somebody to

take you out to some big shindig, Sir Gerald.”

“Shindig? Oh. Shindig. No, to tell you the truth, I was wondering what

the deuce I could do this evening. Don’t know a soul in Tchicahgo. I

wonder if you happen to know whether there’s a good theater in this

city?”

“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 soirée--”

“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!”