2. CHAPTER II
I
RELIEVED of Babbitt's bumbling and the soft grunts with
which his wife expressed the sympathy she was too experienced
to feel and much too experienced not to show, their bedroom
settled instantly into impersonality.
It gave on the sleeping-porch. It served both of them as
dressing-room, and on the coldest nights Babbitt luxuriously
gave up the duty of being manly and retreated to the bed
inside, to curl his toes in the warmth and laugh at the January
gale.
The room displayed a modest and pleasant color-scheme,
after one of the best standard designs of the decorator who
"did the interiors'' for most of the speculative-builders' houses
in Zenith. The walls were gray, the woodwork white, the
rug a serene blue; and very much like mahogany was the furniture—
the bureau with its great clear mirror, Mrs. Babbitt's
dressing-table with toilet-articles of almost solid silver, the
plain twin beds, between them a small table holding a standard
electric bedside lamp, a glass for water, and a standard bedside
book with colored illustrations—what particular book it
was cannot be ascertained, since no one had ever opened it.
The mattresses were firm but not hard, triumphant modern
mattresses which had cost a great deal of money; the hot-water
radiator was of exactly the proper scientific surface
for the cubic contents of the room. The windows were large
and easily opened, with the best catches and cords, and Holland
roller-shades guaranteed not to crack. It was a masterpiece
among bedrooms, right out of Cheerful Modern Houses
for Medium Incomes. Only it had nothing to do with the
Babbitts, nor with any one else. If people had ever lived
and loved here, read thrillers at midnight and lain in beautiful
indolence on a Sunday morning, there were no signs of
it. It had the air of being a very good room in a very good
hotel. One expected the chambermaid to come in and make
it ready for people who would stay but one night, go without
looking back, and never think of it again.
Every second house in Floral Heights had a bedroom precisely
like this.
The Babbitts' house was five years old. It was all as competent
and glossy as this bedroom. It had the best of taste,
the best of inexpensive rugs, a simple and laudable architecture,
and the latest conveniences. Throughout, electricity took
the place of candles and slatternly hearth-fires. Along the
bedroom baseboard were three plugs for electric lamps, concealed
by little brass doors. In the halls were plugs for the
vacuum cleaner, and in the living-room plugs for the piano
lamp, for the electric fan. The trim dining-room (with its
admirable oak buffet, its leaded-glass cupboard, its creamy
plaster walls, its modest scene of a salmon expiring upon a
pile of oysters) had plugs which supplied the electric percolator
and the electric toaster.
In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt
house: It was not a home.
II
Often of a morning Babbitt came bouncing and jesting in
to breakfast. But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As
he pontifically tread the upper hall he looked into Verona's
bedroom and protested, "What's the use of giving the family
a high-class house when they don't appreciate it and tend
to business and get down to brass tacks?''
He marched upon them: Verona, a dumpy brown-haired
girl of twenty-two, just out of Bryn Mawr, given to solicitudes
about duty and sex and God and the unconquerable
bagginess of the gray sports-suit she was now wearing. Ted
—Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt—a decorative boy of seventeen.
Tinka—Katherine—still a baby at ten, with radiant red hair
and a thin skin which hinted of too much candy and too many
ice cream sodas. Babbitt did not show his vague irritation
as he tramped in. He really disliked being a family tyrant,
and his nagging was as meaningless as it was frequent. He
shouted at Tinka, "Well, kittiedoolie!'' It was the only pet
name in his vocabulary, except the "dear'' and "hon.'' with
which he recognized his wife, and he flung it at Tinka every
morning.
He gulped a cup of coffee in the hope of pacifying his
stomach and his soul. His stomach ceased to feel as though
it did not belong to him, but Verona began to be conscientious
and annoying, and abruptly there returned to Babbitt the
doubts regarding life and families and business which had
clawed at him when his dream-life and the slim fairy girl had
fled.
Verona had for six months been filing-clerk at the Gruensberg
Leather Company offices, with a prospect of becoming
secretary to Mr. Gruensberg and thus, as Babbitt defined it,
"getting some good out of your expensive college education till
you're ready to marry and settle down.''
But now said Verona: "Father! I was talking to a classmate
of mine that's working for the Associated Charities—oh,
Dad, there's the sweetest little babies that come to the
milk-station there!—and I feel as though I ought to be doing something
worth while like that.''
"What do you mean `worth while'? If you get to be Gruensberg's
secretary—and maybe you would, if you kept up your
shorthand and didn't go sneaking off to concerts and talkfests
every evening—I guess you'll find thirty-five or forty
bones a week worth while!''
"I know, but—oh, I want to—contribute— I wish I were
working in a settlement-house. I wonder if I could get one
of the department-stores to let me put in a welfare-department
with a nice rest-room and chintzes and wicker chairs and so
on and so forth. Or I could—''
"Now you look here! The first thing you got to understand
is that all this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and
recreation is nothing in God's world but the entering wedge
for socialism. The sooner a man learns he isn't going to be
coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all
these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his kids unless
he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and produce—
produce—produce! That's what the country needs, and
not all this fancy stuff that just enfeebles the will-power of the
working man and gives his kids a lot of notions above their
class. And you—if you'd tend to business instead of fooling
and fussing— All the time! When I was a young man I made
up my mind what I wanted to do, and stuck to it through
thick and thin, and that's why I'm where I am to-day, and—
Myra! What do you let the girl chop the toast up into these
dinky little chunks for? Can't get your fist onto 'em. Half
cold, anyway!''
Ted Babbitt, junior in the great East Side High School,
had been making hiccup-like sounds of interruption. He
blurted now, "Say, Rone, you going to—''
Verona whirled. "Ted! Will you kindly not interrupt us
when we're talking about serious matters!''
"Aw punk,'' said Ted judicially. "Ever since somebody
slipped up and let you out of college, Ammonia, you been
pulling these nut conversations about what-nots and so-on-and-so-forths.
Are you going to— I want to use the car to-night.''
Babbitt snorted, "Oh, you do! May want it myself!''
Verona protested, "Oh, you do, Mr. Smarty! I'm going to
take it myself!'' Tinka wailed, "Oh, papa, you said maybe
you'd drive us down to Rosedale!'' and Mrs. Babbitt, "Careful,
Tinka, your sleeve is in the butter.'' They glared, and
Verona hurled, "Ted, you're a perfect pig about the car!''
"Course you're not! Not a-tall!'' Ted could be maddeningly
bland. "You just want to grab it off, right after
dinner, and leave it in front of some skirt's house all evening
while you sit and gas about lite'ature and the highbrows
you're going to marry—if they only propose!''
"Well, Dad oughtn't to ever let you have
it! You and
those beastly Jones boys drive like maniacs. The idea of
your taking the turn on Chautauqua Place at forty miles an
hour!''
"Aw, where do you get that stuff! You're so darn scared
of the car that you drive up-hill with the emergency brake
on!''
"I do not! And you— Always talking about how much
you know about motors, and Eunice Littlefield told me you said
the battery fed the generator!''
"You—why, my good woman, you don't know a generator
from a differential.'' Not unreasonably was Ted lofty with
her. He was a natural mechanic, a maker and tinkerer of
machines; he lisped in blueprints for the blueprints came.
"That'll do now!'' Babbitt flung in mechanically, as he
lighted the gloriously satisfying first cigar of the day and tasted
the exhilarating drug of the Advocate-Times headlines.
Ted negotiated: "Gee, honest, Rone, I don't want to take
the old boat, but I promised couple o' girls in my class I'd
drive 'em down to the rehearsal of the school chorus, and, gee,
I don't want to, but a gentleman's got to keep his social
engagements.''
"Well, upon my word! You and your social engagements!
In high school!''
"Oh, ain't we select since we went to that hen college! Let
me tell you there isn't a private school in the state that's got
as swell a bunch as we got in Gamma Digamma this year.
There's two fellows that their dads are millionaires. Say,
gee, I ought to have a car of my own, like lots of the fellows.''
Babbitt almost rose. "A car of your own! Don't you want
a yacht, and a house and lot? That pretty nearly takes the
cake! A boy that can't pass his Latin examinations, like any
other boy ought to, and he expects me to give him a motor-car,
and I suppose a chauffeur, and an areoplane maybe, as a
reward for the hard work he puts in going to the movies with
Eunice Littlefield! Well, when you see me giving you—''
Somewhat later, after diplomacies, Ted persuaded Verona to
admit that she was merely going to the Armory, that evening,
to see the dog and cat show. She was then, Ted planned, to
park the car in front of the candy-store across from the Armory
and he would pick it up. There were masterly arrangements
regarding leaving the key, and having the gasoline tank filled;
and passionately, devotees of the Great God Motor, they
hymned the patch on the spare inner-tube, and the lost jack-handle.
Their truce dissolving, Ted observed that her friends were
"a scream of a bunch-stuck-up gabby four-flushers.'' His
friends, she indicated, were "disgusting imitation sports, and
horrid little shrieking ignorant girls.'' Further: "It's disgusting
of you to smoke cigarettes, and so on and so forth, and
those clothes you've got on this morning, they're too utterly
ridiculous—honestly, simply disgusting.''
Ted balanced over to the low beveled mirror in the buffet,
regarded his charms, and smirked. His suit, the latest thing
in Old Eli Togs, was skin-tight, with skimpy trousers to the
tops of his glaring tan boots, a chorus-man waistline, pattern
of an agitated check, and across the back a belt which belted
nothing. His scarf was an enormous black silk wad. His
flaxen hair was ice-smooth, pasted back without parting.
When he went to school he would add a cap with a long
vizor like a shovel-blade. Proudest of all was his waistcoat,
saved for, begged for, plotted for; a real Fancy Vest of fawn
with polka dots of a decayed red, the points astoundingly long.
On the lower edge of it he wore a high-school button, a class
button, and a fraternity pin.
And none of it mattered. He was supple and swift and
flushed; his eyes (which he believed to be cynical) were
candidly eager. But he was not over-gentle. He waved his
hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: "Yes, I guess
we're pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess
our new necktie is some smear!''
Babbitt barked: "It is! And while you're admiring yourself,
let me tell you it might add to your manly beauty if you
wiped some of that egg off your mouth!''
Verona giggled, momentary victor in the greatest of Great
Wars, which is the family war. Ted looked at her hopelessly,
then shrieked at Tinka: "For the love o' Pete, quit pouring
the whole sugar bowl on your corn flakes!''
When Verona and Ted were gone and Tinka upstairs, Babbitt
groaned to his wife: "Nice family, I must say! I don't
pretend to be any baa-lamb, and maybe I'm a little
cross-grained at breakfast sometimes, but the way they go on
jab-jab-jabbering,
I simply can't stand it. I swear, I feel like
going off some place where I can get a little peace. I do
think after a man's spent his lifetime trying to give his kids
a chance and a decent education, it's pretty discouraging to
hear them all the time scrapping like a bunch of hyenas and
never—and never— Curious; here in the paper it says—
Never silent for one mom— Seen the morning paper yet?''
"No, dear.'' In twenty-three years of married life, Mrs.
Babbitt had seen the paper before her husband just sixty-seven times.
"Lots of news. Terrible big tornado in the South. Hard
luck, all right. But this, say, this is corking! Beginning of
the end for those fellows! New York Assembly has passed
some bills that ought to completely outlaw the socialists! And
there's an elevator-runners' strike in New York and a lot of
college boys are taking their places. That's the stuff! And
a mass-meeting in Birmingham's demanded that this Mick
agitator, this fellow De Valera, be deported. Dead right, by
golly! All these agitators paid with German gold anyway.
And we got no business interfering with the Irish or any
other foreign government. Keep our hands strictly off. And
there's another well-authenticated rumor from Russia that
Lenin is dead. That's fine. It's beyond me why we don't just
step in there and kick those Bolshevik cusses out.''
"That's so,'' said Mrs. Babbitt.
"And it says here a fellow was inaugurated mayor in overalls—
a preacher, too! What do you think of that!''
"Humph! Well!''
He searched for an attitude, but neither as a Republican, a
Presbyterian, an Elk, nor a real-estate broker did he have any
doctrine about preacher-mayors laid down for him, so he
grunted and went on. She looked sympathetic and did not
hear a word. Later she would read the headlines, the society
columns, and the department-store advertisements.
"What do you know about this! Charley McKelvey still
doing the sassiety stunt as heavy as ever. Here's what that
gushy woman reporter says about last night:
Never is Society with the big, big S more flattered than when
they are bidden to partake of good cheer at the distinguished and
hospitable residence of Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. McKelvey as they
were last night. Set in its spacious lawns and landscaping, one of
the notable sights crowning Royal Ridge, but merry and homelike
despite its mighty stone walls and its vast rooms famed for their
decoration, their home was thrown open last night for a dance in
honor of Mrs. McKelvey's notable guest, Miss J. Sneeth of Washington.
The wide hall is so generous in its proportions that it
made a perfect ballroom, its hardwood floor reflecting the charming
pageant above its polished surface. Even the delights of dancing
paled before the alluring opportunities for tête-à-têtes
that invited
the soul to loaf in the long library before the baronial fireplace, or
in the drawing-room with its deep comfy armchairs, its shaded lamps
just made for a sly whisper of pretty nothings all a deux; or even
in the billiard room where one could take a cue and show a prowess
at still another game than that sponsored by Cupid and Terpsichore.
There was more, a great deal more, in the best urban journalistic
style of Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, the popular society
editor of the Advocate-Times. But Babbitt could not abide
it. He grunted. He wrinkled the newspaper. He protested:
"Can you beat it! I'm willing to hand a lot of credit to
Charley McKelvey. When we were in college together, he was
just as hard up as any of us, and he's made a million good
bucks out of contracting and hasn't been any dishonester or
bought any more city councils than was necessary. And that's
a good house of his—though it ain't any `mighty stone walls'
and it ain't worth the ninety thousand it cost him. But when
it comes to talking as though Charley McKelvey and all that
booze-hoisting set of his are any blooming bunch of of, of
Vanderbilts, why, it makes me tired!''
Timidly from Mrs. Babbitt: "I would like to see the inside
of their house though. It must be lovely. I've never been
inside.''
"Well, I have! Lots of—couple of times. To see Chaz
about business deals, in the evening. It's not so much. I
wouldn't want to go there to dinner with that gang
of, of high-binders. And I'll bet I make a whole lot more money than
some of those tin-horns that spend all they got on dress-suits
and haven't got a decent suit of underwear to their name!
Hey! What do you think of this!''
Mrs. Babbitt was strangely unmoved by the tidings from
the Real Estate and Building column of the Advocate-Times:
Ashtabula Street, 496—J. K. Dawson to
Thomas Mullally, April 17, 15.7 X 112.2,
mtg. $4000 . . . . . . . . . . . . .Nom.
And this morning Babbitt was too disquieted to entertain her
with items from Mechanics' Liens, Mortgages Recorded, and
Contracts Awarded. He rose. As he looked at her his eyebrows
seemed shaggier than usual. Suddenly:
"Yes, maybe— Kind of shame to not keep in touch with
folks like the McKelveys. We might try inviting them to
dinner, some evening. Oh, thunder, let's not waste our good
time thinking about 'em! Our little bunch has a lot liver
times than all those plutes. Just compare a real human like
you with these neurotic birds like Lucile McKelvey—all highbrow
talk and dressed up like a plush horse! You're a great
old girl, hon.!''
He covered his betrayal of softness with a complaining:
"Say, don't let Tinka go and eat any more of that poison nutfudge.
For Heaven's sake, try to keep her from ruining her
digestion. I tell you, most folks don't appreciate how important
it is to have a good digestion and regular habits. Be
back 'bout usual time, I guess.''
He kissed her—he didn't quite kiss her—he laid unmoving
lips against her unflushing cheek. He hurried out to the garage,
muttering: "Lord, what a family! And now Myra is going
to get pathetic on me because we don't train with this millionaire
outfit. Oh, Lord, sometimes I'd like to quit the whole
game. And the office worry and detail just as bad. And I act
cranky and— I don't mean to, but I get— So darn tired!''