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 drip-less
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.,
376 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.