V
Babbitt's father-and mother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Henry
T. Thompson, rented their old house in the Bellevue district
and moved to the Hotel Hatton, that glorified boarding-house
filled with widows, red-plush furniture, and the sound of ice-water
pitchers. They were lonely there, and every other Sunday
evening the Babbitts had to dine with them, on fricasseed
chicken, discouraged celery, and cornstarch ice cream, and
afterward sit, polite and restrained, in the hotel lounge, while
a young woman violinist played songs from the German via
Broadway.
Then Babbitt's own mother came down from Catawba to
spend three weeks.
She was a kind woman and magnificently uncomprehending.
She congratulated the convention-defying Verona on being a
"nice, loyal home-body without all these Ideas that so many
girls seem to have nowadays;'' and when Ted filled the
differential with grease, out of pure love of mechanics and
filthiness, she rejoiced that he was "so handy around the house—
and helping his father and all, and not going out with the girls
all the time and trying to pretend he was a society fellow.''
Babbitt loved his mother, and sometimes he rather liked
her, but he was annoyed by her Christian Patience, and he
was reduced to pulpiness when she discoursed about a quite
mythical hero called "Your Father'':
"You won't remember it, Georgie, you were such a little
fellow at the time—my, I remember just how you looked that
day, with your goldy brown curls and your lace collar, you
always were such a dainty child, and kind of puny and sickly,
and you loved pretty things so much and the red tassels on
your little bootees and all—and Your Father was taking us
to church and a man stopped us and said `Major'—so many
of the neighbors used to call Your Father `Major;' of course
he was only a private in The War but everybody knew that
was because of the jealousy of his captain and he ought to
have been a high-ranking officer, he had that natural ability
to command that so very, very few men have—and this man
came out into the road and held up his hand and stopped
the buggy and said, `Major,' he said, `there's a lot of the
folks around here that have decided to support Colonel Scanell
for congress, and we want you to join us. Meeting people
the way you do in the store, you could help us a lot.'
"Well, Your Father just looked at him and said, `I certainly
shall do nothing of the sort. I don't like his politics,'
he said. Well, the man—Captain Smith they used to call
him, and heaven only knows why, because he hadn't the
shadow or vestige of a right to be called `Captain' or any
other title—this Captain Smith said, `We'll make it hot for
you if you don't stick by your friends, Major.' Well, you
know how Your Father was, and this Smith knew it too; he
knew what a Real Man he was, and he knew Your Father
knew the political situation from A to Z, and he ought to
have seen that here was one man he couldn't impose on, but
he went on trying to and hinting and trying till Your Father
spoke up and said to him, `Captain Smith,' he said, `I have
a reputation around these parts for being one who is amply
qualified to mind his own business and let other folks mind
theirs!' and with that he drove on and left the fellow standing
there in the road like a bump on a log!''
Babbitt was most exasperated when she revealed his boyhood
to the children. He had, it seemed, been fond of barley-sugar;
had worn the "loveliest little pink bow in his curls''
and corrupted his own name to "Goo-goo.'' He heard (though
he did not officially hear) Ted admonishing Tinka, "Come
on now, kid; stick the lovely pink bow in your curls and
beat it down to breakfast, or Goo-goo will jaw your head off.''
Babbitt's half-brother, Martin, with his wife and youngest
baby, came down from Catawba for two days. Martin bred
cattle and ran the dusty general-store. He was proud of being
a freeborn independent American of the good old Yankee
stock; he was proud of being honest, blunt, ugly, and disagreeable.
His favorite remark was "How much did you pay
for that?'' He regarded Verona's books, Babbitt's silver pencil,
and flowers on the table as citified extravagances, and said
so. Babbitt would have quarreled with him but for his gawky
wife and the baby, whom Babbitt teased and poked fingers
at and addressed:
"I think this baby's a bum, yes, sir, I think this little baby's
a bum, he's a bum, yes, sir, he's a bum, that's what he is, he's
a bum, this baby's a bum, he's nothing but an old bum, that's
what he is—a bum!''
All the while Verona and Kenneth Escott held long inquiries
into epistemology; Ted was a disgraced rebel; and Tinka,
aged eleven, was demanding that she be allowed to go to the
movies thrice a week, "like all the girls.''
Babbitt raged, "I'm sick of it! Having to carry three
generations. Whole damn bunch lean on me. Pay half of
mother's income, listen to Henry T., listen to Myra's worrying,
be polite to Mart, and get called an old grouch for trying
to help the children. All of 'em depending on me and picking
on me and not a damn one of 'em grateful! No relief, and
no credit, and no help from anybody. And to keep it up for
—good Lord, how long?''
He enjoyed being sick in February; he was delighted by
their consternation that he, the rock, should give way.
He had eaten a questionable clam. For two days he was
languorous and petted and esteemed. He was allowed to
snarl "Oh, let me alone!'' without reprisals. He lay on the
sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slide along the
taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale blood red.
The shadow of the draw-rope was dense black, in an enticing
ripple on the canvas. He found pleasure in the curve of it,
sighed as the fading light blurred it. He was conscious of
life, and a little sad. With no Vergil Gunches before whom
to set his face in resolute optimism, he beheld, and half admitted
that he beheld, his way of life as incredibly mechanical.
Mechanical business—a brisk selling of badly built houses.
Mechanical religion—a dry, hard church, shut off from the real
life of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat.
Mechanical golf and dinner-parties and bridge and conversation.
Save with Paul Riesling, mechanical friendships—back-slapping
and jocular, never daring to essay the test of quietness.
He turned uneasily in bed.
He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long
sweet afternoons which were meant for summery meadows,
lost in such brittle pretentiousness. He thought of telephoning
about leases, of cajoling men he hated, of making business
calls and waiting in dirty anterooms—hat on knee, yawning
at fly-specked calendars, being polite to office-boys.
"I don't hardly want to go back to work,'' he prayed. "I'd
like to— I don't know.''
But he was back next day, busy and of doubtful temper.