第 十三 章 · Chapter XIII
I
It was by accident that Babbitt had his opportunity to address the S. A.
R. E. B.
The S. A. R. E. B., as its members called it, with the universal passion
for mysterious and important-sounding initials, was the State
Association of Real Estate Boards; the organization of brokers and
operators. It was to hold its annual convention at Monarch, Zenith’s
chief rival among the cities of the state. Babbitt was an official
delegate; another was Cecil Rountree, whom Babbitt admired for his
picaresque speculative building, and hated for his social position, for
being present at the smartest dances on Royal Ridge. Rountree was
chairman of the convention program-committee.
Babbitt had growled to him, “Makes me tired the way these doctors and
profs and preachers put on lugs about being ‘professional men.’ A good
realtor has to have more knowledge and finesse than any of ’em.”
“Right you are! I say: Why don’t you put that into a paper, and give it
at the S. A. R. E. B.?” suggested Rountree.
“Well, if it would help you in making up the program-- Tell you: the way
I look at it is this: First place, we ought to insist that folks call us
‘realtors’ and not ‘real-estate men.’ Sounds more like a reg’lar
profession. Second place-- What is it distinguishes a profession from a
mere trade, business, or occupation? What is it? Why, it’s the public
service and the skill, the trained skill, and the knowledge and, uh, all
that, whereas a fellow that merely goes out for the jack, he never
considers the--public service and trained skill and so on. Now as a
professional--”
“Rather! That’s perfectly bully! Perfectly corking! Now you write it in
a paper,” said Rountree, as he rapidly and firmly moved away.
II
However accustomed to the literary labors of advertisements and
correspondence, Babbitt was dismayed on the evening when he sat down to
prepare a paper which would take a whole ten minutes to read.
He laid out a new fifteen-cent school exercise-book on his wife’s
collapsible sewing-table, set up for the event in the living-room. The
household had been bullied into silence; Verona and Ted requested to
disappear, and Tinka threatened with “If I hear one sound out of you--if
you holler for a glass of water one single solitary time-- You better
not, that’s all!” Mrs. Babbitt sat over by the piano, making a nightgown
and gazing with respect while Babbitt wrote in the exercise-book, to the
rhythmical wiggling and squeaking of the sewing-table.
When he rose, damp and jumpy, and his throat dusty from cigarettes, she
marveled, “I don’t see how you can just sit down and make up things
right out of your own head!”
“Oh, it’s the training in constructive imagination that a fellow gets in
modern business life.”
He had written seven pages, whereof the first page set forth:
[Illustration]
The other six pages were rather like the first.
For a week he went about looking important. Every morning, as he
dressed, he thought aloud: “Jever stop to consider, Myra, that before a
town can have buildings or prosperity or any of those things, some
realtor has got to sell ’em the land? All civilization starts with him.
Jever realize that?” At the Athletic Club he led unwilling men aside to
inquire, “Say, if you had to read a paper before a big convention, would
you start in with the funny stories or just kind of scatter ’em all
through?” He asked Howard Littlefield for a “set of statistics about
real-estate sales; something good and impressive,” and Littlefield
provided something exceedingly good and impressive.
But it was to T. Cholmondeley Frink that Babbitt most often turned. He
caught Frink at the club every noon, and demanded, while Frink
looked hunted and evasive, “Say, Chum--you’re a shark on this
writing stuff--how would you put this sentence, see here in my
manuscript--manuscript--now where the deuce is that?--oh, yes, here.
Would you say ‘We ought not also to alone think?’ or ‘We ought also not
to think alone?’ or--”
One evening when his wife was away and he had no one to impress, Babbitt
forgot about Style, Order, and the other mysteries, and scrawled off
what he really thought about the real-estate business and about himself,
and he found the paper written. When he read it to his wife she yearned,
“Why, dear, it’s splendid; beautifully written, and so clear and
interesting, and such splendid ideas! Why, it’s just--it’s just
splendid!”
Next day he cornered Chum Frink and crowed, “Well, old son, I finished
it last evening! Just lammed it out! I used to think you writing-guys
must have a hard job making up pieces, but Lord, it’s a cinch. Pretty
soft for you fellows; you certainly earn your money easy! Some day when
I get ready to retire, guess I’ll take to writing and show you boys how
to do it. I always used to think I could write better stuff, and more
punch and originality, than all this stuff you see printed, and now I’m
doggone sure of it!”
He had four copies of the paper typed in black with a gorgeous red
title, had them bound in pale blue manilla, and affably presented one to
old Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the _Advocate-Times_, who said
yes, indeed yes, he was very glad to have it, and he certainly would
read it all through--as soon as he could find time.
Mrs. Babbitt could not go to Monarch. She had a women’s-club meeting.
Babbitt said that he was very sorry.
III
Besides the five official delegates to the convention--Babbitt,
Rountree, W. A. Rogers, Alvin Thayer, and Elbert Wing--there were fifty
unofficial delegates, most of them with their wives.
They met at the Union Station for the midnight train to Monarch. All of
them, save Cecil Rountree, who was such a snob that he never wore
badges, displayed celluloid buttons the size of dollars and lettered “We
zoom for Zenith.” The official delegates were magnificent with silver
and magenta ribbons. Martin Lumsen’s little boy Willy carried a tasseled
banner inscribed “Zenith the Zip City--Zeal, Zest and Zowie--1,000,000
in 1935.” As the delegates arrived, not in taxicabs but in the family
automobile driven by the oldest son or by Cousin Fred, they formed
impromptu processions through the station waiting-room.
It was a new and enormous waiting-room, with marble pilasters, and
frescoes depicting the exploration of the Chaloosa River Valley by Père
Emile Fauthoux in 1740. The benches were shelves of ponderous mahogany;
the news-stand a marble kiosk with a brass grill. Down the echoing
spaces of the hall the delegates paraded after Willy Lumsen’s banner,
the men waving their cigars, the women conscious of their new frocks
and strings of beads, all singing to the tune of Auld Lang Syne the
official City Song, written by Chum Frink:
Good old Zenith,
Our kin and kith,
Wherever we may be,
Hats in the ring,
We blithely sing
Of thy Prosperity.
Warren Whitby, the broker, who had a gift of verse for banquets and
birthdays, had added to Frink’s City Song a special verse for the
realtors’ convention:
Oh, here we come,
The fellows from
Zenith, the Zip Citee.
We wish to state
In real estate
There’s none so live as we.
Babbitt was stirred to hysteric patriotism. He leaped on a bench,
shouting to the crowd:
“What’s the matter with Zenith?”
“She’s all right!”
“What’s best ole town in the U. S. A.?”
“Zeeeeeen-ith!”
The patient poor people waiting for the midnight train stared in
unenvious wonder--Italian women with shawls, old weary men with broken
shoes, roving road-wise boys in suits which had been flashy when they
were new but which were faded now and wrinkled.
Babbitt perceived that as an official delegate he must be more
dignified. With Wing and Rogers he tramped up and down the cement
platform beside the waiting Pullmans. Motor-driven baggage-trucks and
red-capped porters carrying bags sped down the platform with an
agreeable effect of activity. Arc-lights glared and stammered overhead.
The glossy yellow sleeping-cars shone impressively. Babbitt made his
voice to be measured and lordly; he thrust out his abdomen and rumbled,
“We got to see to it that the convention lets the Legislature understand
just where they get off in this matter of taxing realty transfers.” Wing
uttered approving grunts and Babbitt swelled--gloated--
The blind of a Pullman compartment was raised, and Babbitt looked into
an unfamiliar world. The occupant of the compartment was Lucile
McKelvey, the pretty wife of the millionaire contractor. Possibly,
Babbitt thrilled, she was going to Europe! On the seat beside her was a
bunch of orchids and violets, and a yellow paper-bound book which seemed
foreign. While he stared, she picked up the book, then glanced out of
the window as though she was bored. She must have looked straight at
him, and he had met her, but she gave no sign. She languidly pulled down
the blind, and he stood still, a cold feeling of insignificance in his
heart.
But on the train his pride was restored by meeting delegates from
Sparta, Pioneer, and other smaller cities of the state, who listened
respectfully when, as a magnifico from the metropolis of Zenith, he
explained politics and the value of a Good Sound Business
Administration. They fell joyfully into shop-talk, the purest and most
rapturous form of conversation:
“How’d this fellow Rountree make out with this big apartment-hotel he
was going to put up? Whadde do? Get out bonds to finance it?” asked a
Sparta broker.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Babbitt. “Now if I’d been handling it--”
“So,” Elbert Wing was droning, “I hired this shop-window for a week, and
put up a big sign, ‘Toy Town for Tiny Tots,’ and stuck in a lot of doll
houses and some dinky little trees, and then down at the bottom, ‘Baby
Likes This Dollydale, but Papa and Mama Will Prefer Our Beautiful
Bungalows,’ and you know, that certainly got folks talking, and first
week we sold--”
The trucks sang “lickety-lick, lickety-lick” as the train ran through
the factory district. Furnaces spurted flame, and power-hammers were
clanging. Red lights, green lights, furious white lights rushed past,
and Babbitt was important again, and eager.
IV
He did a voluptuous thing: he had his clothes pressed on the train. In
the morning, half an hour before they reached Monarch, the porter came
to his berth and whispered, “There’s a drawing-room vacant, sir. I put
your suit in there.” In tan autumn overcoat over his pajamas, Babbitt
slipped down the green-curtain-lined aisle to the glory of his first
private compartment. The porter indicated that he knew Babbitt was used
to a man-servant; he held the ends of Babbitt’s trousers, that the
beautifully sponged garment might not be soiled, filled the bowl in the
private washroom, and waited with a towel.
To have a private washroom was luxurious. However enlivening a Pullman
smoking-compartment was by night, even to Babbitt it was depressing in
the morning, when it was jammed with fat men in woolen undershirts,
every hook filled with wrinkled cottony shirts, the leather seat piled
with dingy toilet-kits, and the air nauseating with the smell of soap
and toothpaste. Babbitt did not ordinarily think much of privacy, but
now he reveled in it, reveled in his valet, and purred with pleasure as
he gave the man a tip of a dollar and a half.
He rather hoped that he was being noticed as, in his newly pressed
clothes, with the adoring porter carrying his suit-case, he disembarked
at Monarch.
He was to share a room at the Hotel Sedgwick with W. A. Rogers, that
shrewd, rustic-looking Zenith dealer in farm-lands. Together they had a
noble breakfast, with waffles, and coffee not in exiguous cups but in
large pots. Babbitt grew expansive, and told Rogers about the art of
writing; he gave a bellboy a quarter to fetch a morning newspaper from
the lobby, and sent to Tinka a post-card: “Papa wishes you were here to
bat round with him.”
V
The meetings of the convention were held in the ballroom of the Allen
House. In an anteroom was the office of the chairman of the executive
committee. He was the busiest man in the convention; he was so busy that
he got nothing done whatever. He sat at a marquetry table, in a room
littered with crumpled paper and, all day long, town-boosters and
lobbyists and orators who wished to lead debates came and whispered to
him, whereupon he looked vague, and said rapidly, “Yes, yes, that’s a
fine idea; we’ll do that,” and instantly forgot all about it, lighted a
cigar and forgot that too, while the telephone rang mercilessly and
about him men kept beseeching, “Say, Mr. Chairman--say, Mr. Chairman!”
without penetrating his exhausted hearing.
In the exhibit-room were plans of the new suburbs of Sparta, pictures of
the new state capitol, at Galop de Vache, and large ears of corn with
the label, “Nature’s Gold, from Shelby County, the Garden Spot of God’s
Own Country.”
The real convention consisted of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in
groups amid the badge-spotted crowd in the hotel-lobby, but there was a
show of public meetings.
The first of them opened with a welcome by the mayor of Monarch. The
pastor of the First Christian Church of Monarch, a large man with a long
damp frontal lock, informed God that the real-estate men were here now.
The venerable Minnemagantic realtor, Major Carlton Tuke, read a paper in
which he denounced coöperative stores. William A. Larkin of Eureka gave
a comforting prognosis of “The Prospects for Increased Construction,”
and reminded them that plate-glass prices were two points lower.
The convention was on.
The delegates were entertained, incessantly and firmly. The Monarch
Chamber of Commerce gave them a banquet, and the Manufacturers’
Association an afternoon reception, at which a chrysanthemum was
presented to each of the ladies, and to each of the men a leather
bill-fold inscribed “From Monarch the Mighty Motor Mart.”
Mrs. Crosby Knowlton, wife of the manufacturer of Fleetwing Automobiles,
opened her celebrated Italian garden and served tea. Six hundred
real-estate men and wives ambled down the autumnal paths. Perhaps three
hundred of them were quietly inconspicuous; perhaps three hundred
vigorously exclaimed, “This is pretty slick, eh?” surreptitiously picked
the late asters and concealed them in their pockets, and tried to get
near enough to Mrs. Knowlton to shake her lovely hand. Without request,
the Zenith delegates (except Rountree) gathered round a marble dancing
nymph and sang “Here we come, the fellows from Zenith, the Zip Citee.”
It chanced that all the delegates from Pioneer belonged to the Brotherly
and Protective Order of Elks, and they produced an enormous banner
lettered: “B. P. O. E.--Best People on Earth--Boost Pioneer, Oh Eddie.”
Nor was Galop de Vache, the state capital, to be slighted. The leader of
the Galop de Vache delegation was a large, reddish, roundish man, but
active. He took off his coat, hurled his broad black felt hat on the
ground, rolled up his sleeves, climbed upon the sundial, spat, and
bellowed:
“We’ll tell the world, and the good lady who’s giving the show this
afternoon, that the bonniest burg in this man’s state is Galop de Vache.
You boys can talk about your zip, but jus’ lemme murmur that old Galop
has the largest proportion of home-owning citizens in the state; and
when folks own their homes, they ain’t starting labor-troubles, and
they’re raising kids instead of raising hell! Galop de Vache! The town
for homey folks! The town that eats ’em alive oh, Bosco!
We’ll--tell--the--world!”
The guests drove off; the garden shivered into quiet. But Mrs. Crosby
Knowlton sighed as she looked at a marble seat warm from five hundred
summers of Amalfi. On the face of a winged sphinx which supported it
some one had drawn a mustache in lead-pencil. Crumpled paper napkins
were dumped among the Michaelmas daisies. On the walk, like shredded
lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose. Cigarette stubs
floated in the goldfish pool, trailing an evil stain as they swelled and
disintegrated, and beneath the marble seat, the fragments carefully put
together, was a smashed teacup.
VI
As he rode back to the hotel Babbitt reflected, “Myra would have enjoyed
all this social agony.” For himself he cared less for the garden party
than for the motor tours which the Monarch Chamber of Commerce had
arranged. Indefatigably he viewed water-reservoirs, suburban
trolley-stations, and tanneries. He devoured the statistics which were
given to him, and marveled to his roommate, W. A. Rogers, “Of course
this town isn’t a patch on Zenith; it hasn’t got our outlook and natural
resources; but did you know--I nev’ did till to-day--that they
manufactured seven hundred and sixty-three million feet of lumber last
year? What d’ you think of that!”
He was nervous as the time for reading his paper approached. When he
stood on the low platform before the convention, he trembled and saw
only a purple haze. But he was in earnest, and when he had finished the
formal paper he talked to them, his hands in his pockets, his spectacled
face a flashing disk, like a plate set up on edge in the lamplight. They
shouted “That’s the stuff!” and in the discussion afterward they
referred with impressiveness to “our friend and brother, Mr. George F.
Babbitt.” He had in fifteen minutes changed from a minor delegate to a
personage almost as well known as that diplomat of business, Cecil
Rountree. After the meeting, delegates from all over the state said,
“Hower you, Brother Babbitt?” Sixteen complete strangers called him
“George,” and three men took him into corners to confide, “Mighty glad
you had the courage to stand up and give the Profession a real boost.
Now I’ve always maintained--”
Next morning, with tremendous casualness, Babbitt asked the girl at the
hotel news-stand for the newspapers from Zenith. There was nothing in
the _Press_, but in the _Advocate-Times_, on the third page-- He gasped.
They had printed his picture and a half-column account. The heading was
“Sensation at Annual Land-men’s Convention. G. F. Babbitt, Prominent
Ziptown Realtor, Keynoter in Fine Address.”
He murmured reverently, “I guess some of the folks on Floral Heights
will sit up and take notice now, and pay a little attention to old
Georgie!”
VII
It was the last meeting. The delegations were presenting the claims of
their several cities to the next year’s convention. Orators were
announcing that “Galop de Vache, the Capital City, the site of Kremer
College and of the Upholtz Knitting Works, is the recognized center of
culture and high-class enterprise;” and that “Hamburg, the Big Little
City with the Logical Location, where every man is open-handed and every
woman a heaven-born hostess, throws wide to you her hospitable gates.”
In the midst of these more diffident invitations, the golden doors of
the ballroom opened with a blatting of trumpets, and a circus parade
rolled in. It was composed of the Zenith brokers, dressed as
cowpunchers, bareback riders, Japanese jugglers. At the head was big
Warren Whitby, in the bearskin and gold-and-crimson coat of a
drum-major. Behind him, as a clown, beating a bass drum, extraordinarily
happy and noisy, was Babbitt.
Warren Whitby leaped on the platform, made merry play with his baton,
and observed, “Boyses and girlses, the time has came to get down to
cases. A dyed-in-the-wool Zenithite sure loves his neighbors, but we’ve
made up our minds to grab this convention off our neighbor burgs like
we’ve grabbed the condensed-milk business and the paper-box business
and--”
J. Harry Barmhill, the convention chairman, hinted, “We’re grateful to
you, Mr. Uh, but you must give the other boys a chance to hand in their
bids now.”
A fog-horn voice blared, “In Eureka we’ll promise free motor rides
through the prettiest country--”
Running down the aisle, clapping his hands, a lean bald young man cried,
“I’m from Sparta! Our Chamber of Commerce has wired me they’ve set aside
eight thousand dollars, in real money, for the entertainment of the
convention!”
A clerical-looking man rose to clamor, “Money talks! Move we accept the
bid from Sparta!”
It was accepted.
VIII
The Committee on Resolutions was reporting. They said that Whereas
Almighty God in his beneficent mercy had seen fit to remove to a sphere
of higher usefulness some thirty-six realtors of the state the past
year, Therefore it was the sentiment of this convention assembled that
they were sorry God had done it, and the secretary should be, and hereby
was, instructed to spread these resolutions on the minutes, and to
console the bereaved families by sending them each a copy.
A second resolution authorized the president of the S.A.R.E.B. to spend
fifteen thousand dollars in lobbying for sane tax measures in the State
Legislature. This resolution had a good deal to say about Menaces to
Sound Business and clearing the Wheels of Progress from ill-advised and
short-sighted obstacles.
The Committee on Committees reported, and with startled awe Babbitt
learned that he had been appointed a member of the Committee on Torrens
Titles.
He rejoiced, “I said it was going to be a great year! Georgie, old son,
you got big things ahead of you! You’re a natural-born orator and a good
mixer and-- Zowie!”
IX
There was no formal entertainment provided for the last evening. Babbitt
had planned to go home, but that afternoon the Jered Sassburgers of
Pioneer suggested that Babbitt and W. A. Rogers have tea with them at
the Catalpa Inn.
Teas were not unknown to Babbitt--his wife and he earnestly attended
them at least twice a year--but they were sufficiently exotic to make
him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of
the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and
waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce
sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as
smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met two
days before, so they were calling each other “Georgie” and “Sassy.”
Sassburger said prayerfully, “Say, boys, before you go, seeing this is
the last chance, I’ve _got it_, up in my room, and Miriam here is the
best little mixologist in the Stati Unidos, like us Italians say.”
With wide flowing gestures, Babbitt and Rogers followed the Sassburgers
to their room. Mrs. Sassburger shrieked, “Oh, how terrible!” when she
saw that she had left a chemise of sheer lavender crêpe on the bed. She
tucked it into a bag, while Babbitt giggled, “Don’t mind us; we’re a
couple o’ little divvils!”
Sassburger telephoned for ice, and the bell-boy who brought it said,
prosaically and unprompted, “Highball glasses or cocktail?” Miriam
Sassburger mixed the cocktails in one of those dismal, nakedly white
water-pitchers which exist only in hotels. When they had finished the
first round she proved by intoning “Think you boys could stand
another--you got a dividend coming” that, though she was but a woman,
she knew the complete and perfect rite of cocktail-drinking.
Outside, Babbitt hinted to Rogers, “Say, W. A., old rooster, it comes
over me that I could stand it if we didn’t go back to the lovin’ wives,
this handsome _Abend_, but just kind of stayed in Monarch and threw a
party, heh?”
“George, you speak with the tongue of wisdom and sagashiteriferousness.
El Wing’s wife has gone on to Pittsburg. Let’s see if we can’t gather
him in.”
At half-past seven they sat in their room, with Elbert Wing and two
up-state delegates. Their coats were off, their vests open, their faces
red, their voices emphatic. They were finishing a bottle of corrosive
bootlegged whisky and imploring the bell-boy, “Say, son, can you get us
some more of this embalming fluid?” They were smoking large cigars and
dropping ashes and stubs on the carpet. With windy guffaws they were
telling stories. They were, in fact, males in a happy state of nature.
Babbitt sighed, “I don’t know how it strikes you hellions, but
personally I like this busting loose for a change, and kicking over a
couple of mountains and climbing up on the North Pole and waving the
aurora borealis around.”
The man from Sparta, a grave, intense youngster, babbled, “Say! I guess
I’m as good a husband as the run of the mill, but God, I do get so tired
of going home every evening, and nothing to see but the movies. That’s
why I go out and drill with the National Guard. I guess I got the
nicest little wife in my burg, but-- Say! Know what I wanted to do as a
kid? Know what I wanted to do? Wanted to be a big chemist. Tha’s what I
wanted to do. But Dad chased me out on the road selling kitchenware, and
here I’m settled down--settled for _life_--not a chance! Oh, who the
devil started this funeral talk? How ’bout ’nother lil drink? ‘And
a-noth-er drink wouldn’ do ’s ’ny harmmmmmmm.’”
“Yea. Cut the sob-stuff,” said W. A. Rogers genially. “You boys know I’m
the village songster? Come on now--sing up:
Said the old Obadiah to the young Obadiah,
‘I am dry, Obadiah, I am dry.’
Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah,
‘So am I, Obadiah, so am I.’”
X
They had dinner in the Moorish Grillroom of the Hotel Sedgwick.
Somewhere, somehow, they seemed to have gathered in two other comrades:
a manufacturer of fly-paper and a dentist. They all drank whisky from
tea-cups, and they were humorous, and never listened to one another,
except when W. A. Rogers “kidded” the Italian waiter.
“Say, Gooseppy,” he said innocently, “I want a couple o’ fried
elephants’ ears.”
“Sorry, sir, we haven’t any.”
“Huh? No elephants’ ears? What do you know about that!” Rogers turned to
Babbitt. “Pedro says the elephants’ ears are all out!”
“Well, I’ll be switched!” said the man from Sparta, with difficulty
hiding his laughter.
“Well, in that case, Carlo, just bring me a hunk o’ steak and a couple
o’ bushels o’ French fried potatoes and some peas,” Rogers went on. “I
suppose back in dear old sunny It’ the Eyetalians get their fresh
garden peas out of the can.”
“No, sir, we have very nice peas in Italy.”
“Is that a fact! Georgie, do you hear that? They get their fresh garden
peas out of the garden, in Italy! By golly, you live and learn, don’t
you, Antonio, you certainly do live and learn, if you live long enough
and keep your strength. All right, Garibaldi, just shoot me in that
steak, with about two printers’-reams of French fried spuds on the
promenade deck, _comprehenez-vous_, Michelovitch Angeloni?”
Afterward Elbert Wing admired, “Gee, you certainly did have that poor
Dago going, W. A. He couldn’t make you out at all!”
In the _Monarch Herald_, Babbitt found an advertisement which he read
aloud, to applause and laughter:
Old Colony Theatre
Shake the Old Dogs to the
WROLLICKING WRENS
The bonniest bevy of beauteous
bathing babes in burlesque.
Pete Menutti and his
Oh, Gee, Kids.
This is the straight steer, Benny, the painless chicklets of the
Wrollicking Wrens are the cuddlingest bunch that ever hit town.
Steer the feet, get the card board, and twist the pupils to the
PDQest show ever. You will get 111% on your kale in this fun-fest.
The Calroza Sisters are sure some lookers and will give you a run
for your gelt. Jock Silbersteen is one of the pepper lads and slips
you a dose of real laughter. Shoot the up and down to Jackson and
West for graceful tappers. They run 1-2 under the wire. Provin and
Adams will blow the blues in their laugh skit “Hootch Mon!”
Something doing, boys. Listen to what the Hep Bird twitters.
“Sounds like a juicy show to me. Let’s all take it in,” said Babbitt.
But they put off departure as long as they could. They were safe while
they sat here, legs firmly crossed under the table, but they felt
unsteady; they were afraid of navigating the long and slippery floor of
the grillroom under the eyes of the other guests and the too-attentive
waiters.
When they did venture, tables got in their way, and they sought to cover
embarrassment by heavy jocularity at the coatroom. As the girl handed
out their hats, they smiled at her, and hoped that she, a cool and
expert judge, would feel that they were gentlemen. They croaked at one
another, “Who owns the bum lid?” and “You take a good one, George; I’ll
take what’s left,” and to the check-girl they stammered, “Better come
along, sister! High, wide, and fancy evening ahead!” All of them tried
to tip her, urging one another, “No! Wait! Here! I got it right here!”
Among them, they gave her three dollars.
XI
Flamboyantly smoking cigars they sat in a box at the burlesque show,
their feet up on the rail, while a chorus of twenty daubed, worried, and
inextinguishably respectable grandams swung their legs in the more
elementary chorus-evolutions, and a Jewish comedian made vicious fun of
Jews. In the entr’actes they met other lone delegates. A dozen of them
went in taxicabs out to Bright Blossom Inn, where the blossoms were made
of dusty paper festooned along a room low and stinking, like a
cow-stable no longer wisely used.
Here, whisky was served openly, in glasses. Two or three clerks, who on
pay-day longed to be taken for millionaires, sheepishly danced with
telephone-girls and manicure-girls in the narrow space between the
tables. Fantastically whirled the professionals, a young man in sleek
evening-clothes and a slim mad girl in emerald silk, with amber hair
flung up as jaggedly as flames. Babbitt tried to dance with her. He
shuffled along the floor, too bulky to be guided, his steps unrelated to
the rhythm of the jungle music, and in his staggering he would have
fallen, had she not held him with supple kindly strength. He was blind
and deaf from prohibition-era alcohol; he could not see the tables, the
faces. But he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant warmth.
When she had firmly returned him to his group, he remembered, by a
connection quite untraceable, that his mother’s mother had been Scotch,
and with head thrown back, eyes closed, wide mouth indicating ecstasy,
he sang, very slowly and richly, “Loch Lomond.”
But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly companionship. The man
from Sparta said he was a “bum singer,” and for ten minutes Babbitt
quarreled with him, in a loud, unsteady, heroic indignation. They called
for drinks till the manager insisted that the place was closed. All the
while Babbitt felt a hot raw desire for more brutal amusements. When W.
A. Rogers drawled, “What say we go down the line and look over the
girls?” he agreed savagely. Before they went, three of them secretly
made appointments with the professional dancing girl, who agreed “Yes,
yes, sure, darling” to everything they said, and amiably forgot them.
As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch, down streets of
small brown wooden cottages of workmen, characterless as cells, as they
rattled across warehouse-districts which by drunken night seemed vast
and perilous, as they were borne toward the red lights and violent
automatic pianos and the stocky women who simpered, Babbitt was
frightened. He wanted to leap from the taxicab, but all his body was a
murky fire, and he groaned, “Too late to quit now,” and knew that he did
not want to quit.
There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on the way. A broker
from Minnemagantic said, “Monarch is a lot sportier than Zenith. You
Zenith tightwads haven’t got any joints like these here.” Babbitt raged,
“That’s a dirty lie! Snothin’ you can’t find in Zenith. Believe me, we
got more houses and hootch-parlors an’ all kinds o’ dives than any burg
in the state.”
He realized they were laughing at him; he desired to fight; and forgot
it in such musty unsatisfying experiments as he had not known since
college.
In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his desire for rebellion was
partly satisfied. He had retrograded to a shame-faced contentment. He
was irritable. He did not smile when W. A. Rogers complained, “Ow, what
a head! I certainly do feel like the wrath of God this morning. Say! I
know what was the trouble! Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze
last night.”
Babbitt’s excursion was never known to his family, nor to any one in
Zenith save Rogers and Wing. It was not officially recognized even by
himself. If it had any consequences, they have not been discovered.