III
The Zenith Athletic Club is not athletic and it isn't exactly
a club, but it is Zenith in perfection. It has an active and
smoke-misted billiard room, it is represented by baseball and
football teams, and in the pool and the gymnasium a tenth
of the members sporadically try to reduce. But most of its
three thousand members use it as a café in which to lunch,
play cards, tell stories, meet customers, and entertain out-of
town uncles at dinner. It is the largest club in the city, and
its chief hatred is the conservative Union Club, which all
sound members of the Athletic call "a rotten, snobbish, dull,
expensive old hole—not one Good Mixer in the place—you
couldn't hire me to join.'' Statistics show that no member of
the Athletic has ever refused election to the Union, and of
those who are elected, sixty-seven per cent. resign from the
Athletic and are thereafter heard to say, in the drowsy sanctity
of the Union lounge, "The Athletic would be a pretty
good hotel, if it were more exclusive.''
The Athletic Club building is nine stories high, yellow brick
with glassy roof-garden above and portico of huge limestone
columns below. The lobby, with its thick pillars of porous
Caen stone, its pointed vaulting, and a brown glazed-tile floor
like well-baked bread-crust, is a combination of cathedral-crypt
and rathskellar. The members rush into the lobby as
though they were shopping and hadn't much time for it. Thus
did Babbitt enter, and to the group standing by the cigar-counter
he whooped, "How's the boys? How's the boys?
Well, well, fine day!''
Jovially they whooped back—Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer,
Sidney Finkelstein, the ladies'-ready-to-wear buyer for Parcher
& Stein's department-store, and Professor Joseph K. Pumphrey,
owner of the Riteway Business College and instructor in Public
Speaking, Business English, Scenario Writing, and Commercial
Law. Though Babbitt admired this savant, and appreciated
Sidney Finkelstein as "a mighty smart buyer and a
good liberal spender,'' it was to Vergil Gunch that he turned
with enthusiasm. Mr. Gunch was president of the Boosters'
Club, a weekly lunch-club, local chapter of a national organization
which promoted sound business and friendliness among
Regular Fellows. He was also no less an official than Esteemed
Leading Knight in the Benevolent and Protective Order
of Elks, and it was rumored that at the next election he would
be a candidate for Exalted Ruler. He was a jolly man, given
to oratory and to chumminess with the arts. He called on the
famous actors and vaudeville artists when they came to town,
gave them cigars, addressed them by their first names, and—
sometimes—succeeded in bringing them to the Boosters' lunches
to give The Boys a Free Entertainment. He was a large man
with hair
en brosse, and he knew the latest jokes, but he
played poker close to the chest. It was at his party that Babbitt
had sucked in the virus of to-day's restlessness.
Gunch shouted, "How's the old Bolsheviki? How do you
feel, the morning after the night before?''
"Oh, boy! Some head! That was a regular party you
threw, Verg! Hope you haven't forgotten I took that last
cute little jack-pot!'' Babbitt bellowed. (He was three feet
from Gunch.)
"That's all right now! What I'll hand you next time, Georgie!
Say, juh notice in the paper the way the New York
Assembly stood up to the Reds?''
"You bet I did. That was fine, eh? Nice day to-day.''
"Yes, it's one mighty fine spring day, but nights still cold.''
"Yeh, you're right they are! Had to have coupla blankets
last night, out on the sleeping-porch. Say, Sid,'' Babbitt
turned to Finkelstein, the buyer, "got something wanta ask
you about. I went out and bought me an electric cigar-lighter
for the car, this noon, and—''
"Good hunch!'' said Finkelstein, while even the learned
Professor Pumphrey, a bulbous man with a pepper-and-salt
cutaway and a pipe-organ voice, commented, "That makes a
dandy accessory. Cigar-lighter gives tone to the dashboard.''
"Yep, finally decided I'd buy me one. Got the best on the
market, the clerk said it was. Paid five bucks for it. Just
wondering if I got stuck. What do they charge for 'em at
the store, Sid?''
Finkelstein asserted that five dollars was not too great a
sum, not for a really high-class lighter which was suitably
nickeled and provided with connections of the very best quality.
"I always say—and believe me, I base it on a pretty
fairly extensive mercantile experience—the best is the cheapest
in the long run. Of course if a fellow wants to be a Jew about
it, he can get cheap junk, but in the long
run,
the cheapest
thing is—the best you can get! Now you take here just th'
other day: I got a new top for my old boat and some upholstery,
and I paid out a hundred and twenty-six fifty, and
of course a lot of fellows would say that was too much—Lord,
if the Old Folks—they live in one of these hick towns up-state
and they simply can't get onto the way a city fellow's mind
works, and then, of course, they're Jews, and they'd lie right
down and die if they knew Sid had anted up a hundred and
twenty-six bones. But I don't figure I was stuck, George, not
a bit. Machine looks brand new now—not that it's so darned
old, of course; had it less 'n three years, but I give it hard
service; never drive less 'n a hundred miles on Sunday and,
uh— Oh, I don't really think you got stuck, George. In the
long run, the best is, you might say, it's
unquestionably the
cheapest.''
"That's right,'' said Vergil Gunch. "That's the way I look
at it. If a fellow is keyed up to what you might call intensive
living, the way you get it here in Zenith—all the hustle and
mental activity that's going on with a bunch of live-wires like
the Boosters and here in the Z.A.C., why, he's got to save his
nerves by having the best.''
Babbitt nodded his head at every fifth word in the roaring
rhythm; and by the conclusion, in Gunch's renowned humorous
vein, he was enchanted:
"Still, at that, George, don't know's you can afford it. I've
heard your business has been kind of under the eye of the
gov'ment since you stole the tail of Eathorne Park and sold it!''
"Oh, you're a great little josher, Verg. But when it comes
to kidding, how about this report that you stole the black
marble steps off the post-office and sold 'em for high-grade
coal!'' In delight Babbitt patted Gunch's back, stroked his
arm.
"That's all right, but what I want to know is: who's the
real-estate shark that bought that coal for his apartment-houses?''
"I guess that'll hold you for a while, George!'' said Finkelstein.
"I'll tell you, though, boys, what I did hear: George's
missus went into the gents' wear department at Parcher's to
buy him some collars, and before she could give his neck-size
the clerk slips her some thirteens. `How juh know the size?'
says Mrs. Babbitt, and the clerk says, `Men that let their wives
buy collars for 'em always wear thirteen, madam.' How's
that! That's pretty good, eh? How's that, eh? I guess
that'll about fix you, George!''
"I—I—'' Babbitt sought for amiable insults in answer. He
stopped, stared at the door. Paul Riesling was coming in.
Babbitt cried, "See you later, boys,'' and hastened across the
lobby. He was, just then, neither the sulky child of the sleeping-porch,
the domestic tyrant of the breakfast table, the
crafty money-changer of the Lyte-Purdy conference, nor the
blaring Good Fellow, the Josher and Regular Guy, of the
Athletic Club. He was an older brother to Paul Riesling,
swift to defend him, admiring him with a proud and credulous
love passing the love of women. Paul and he shook hands
solemnly; they smiled as shyly as though they had been parted
three years, not three days—and they said:
"How's the old horse-thief?''
"All right, I guess. How're you, you poor shrimp?''
"I'm first-rate, you second-hand hunk o' cheese.''
Reassured thus of their high fondness, Babbitt grunted,
"You're a fine guy, you are! Ten minutes late!'' Riesling
snapped, "Well, you're lucky to have a chance to lunch with
a gentleman!'' They grinned and went into the Neronian
washroom, where a line of men bent over the bowls inset along
a prodigious slab of marble as in religious prostration before
their own images in the massy mirror. Voices thick, satisfied,
authoritative, hurtled along the marble walls, bounded from
the ceiling of lavender-bordered milky tiles, while the lords of
the city, the barons of insurance and law and fertilizers and
motor tires, laid down the law for Zenith; announced that the
day was warm-indeed, indisputably of spring; that wages
were too high and the interest on mortgages too low; that Babe
Ruth, the eminent player of baseball, was a noble man; and
that "those two nuts at the Climax Vaudeville Theater this
week certainly are a slick pair of actors.'' Babbitt, though
ordinarily his voice was the surest and most episcopal of all,
was silent. In the presence of the slight dark reticence of
Paul Riesling, he was awkward, he desired to be quiet and
firm and deft.
The entrance lobby of the Athletic Club was Gothic, the
washroom Roman Imperial, the lounge Spanish Mission, and
the reading-room in Chinese Chippendale, but the gem of the
club was the dining-room, the masterpiece of Ferdinand Reitman,
Zenith's busiest architect. It was lofty and half-timbered,
with Tudor leaded casements, an oriel, a somewhat musicianless
musicians'-gallery, and tapestries believed to illustrate
the granting of Magna Charta. The open beams had
been hand-adzed at Jake Offutt's car-body works, the hinge;
were of hand-wrought iron, the wainscot studded with handmade
wooden pegs, and at one end of the room was a heraldic
and hooded stone fireplace which the club's advertising-pamphlet
asserted to be not only larger than any of the fireplaces
in European castles but of a draught incomparably more scientific.
It was also much cleaner, as no fire had ever been
built in it.
Half of the tables were mammoth slabs which seated twenty
or thirty men. Babbitt usually sat at the one near the door,
with a group including Gunch, Finkelstein, Professor Pumphrey,
Howard Littlefield, his neighbor, T. Cholmondeley
Frink, the poet and advertising-agent, and Orville Jones, whose
laundry was in many ways the best in Zenith. They composed
a club within the club, and merrily called themselves "The
Roughnecks.'' To-day as he passed their table the Roughnecks
greeted him, "Come on, sit in! You 'n' Paul too proud
to feed with poor folks? Afraid somebody might stick you
for a bottle of Bevo, George? Strikes me you swells are getting
awful darn exclusive!''
He thundered, "You bet! We can't afford to have our reps
ruined by being seen with you tightwads!'' and guided Paul
to one of the small tables beneath the musicians'-gallery. He
felt guilty. At the Zenith Athletic Club, privacy was very
bad form. But he wanted Paul to himself.
That morning he had advocated lighter lunches and now he
ordered nothing but English mutton chop, radishes, peas, deep-dish
apple pie, a bit of cheese, and a pot of coffee with cream,
adding, as he did invariably, "And uh— Oh, and you might
give me an order of French fried potatoes.'' When the chop
came he vigorously peppered it and salted it. He always peppered
and salted his meat, and vigorously, before tasting it.
Paul and he took up the spring-like quality of the spring,
the virtues of the electric cigar-lighter, and the action of the
New York State Assembly. It was not till Babbitt was thick
and disconsolate with mutton grease that he flung out:
"I wound up a nice little deal with Conrad Lyte this morning
that put five hundred good round plunks in my pocket.
Pretty nice—pretty nice! And yet— I don't know what's
the matter with me to-day. Maybe it's an attack of spring
fever, or staying up too late at Verg Gunch's, or maybe it's
just the winter's work piling up, but I've felt kind of down in
the mouth all day long. Course I wouldn't beef about it to
the fellows at the Roughnecks' Table there, but you— Ever
feel that way, Paul? Kind of comes over me: here I've pretty
much done all the things I ought to; supported my family, and
got a good house and a six-cylinder car, and built up a nice
little business, and I haven't any vices 'specially, except smoking—
and I'm practically cutting that out, by the way. And
I belong to the church, and play enough golf to keep in trim,
and I only associate with good decent fellows. And yet, even
so, I don't know that I'm entirely satisfied!''
It was drawled out, broken by shouts from the neighboring
tables, by mechanical love-making to the waitress, by stertorous
grunts as the coffee filled him with dizziness and indigestion.
He was apologetic and doubtful, and it was Paul,
with his thin voice, who pierced the fog:
"Good Lord, George, you don't suppose it's any novelty to
me to find that we hustlers, that think we're so all-fired successful,
aren't getting much out of it? You look as if you
expected me to report you as seditious! You know what my
own life's been.''
"I know, old man.''
"I ought to have been a fiddler, and I'm a pedler of tar-roofing!
And Zilla— Oh, I don't want to squeal, but you
know as well as I do about how inspiring a wife she is....
Typical instance last evening: We went to the movies. There
was a big crowd waiting in the lobby, us at the tail-end. She
began to push right through it with her `Sir, how dare you?'
manner— Honestly, sometimes when I look at her and see
how she's always so made up and stinking of perfume and
looking for trouble and kind of always yelping, `I tell yuh
I'm a lady, damn yuh!'—why, I want to kill her! Well, she
keeps elbowing through the crowd, me after her, feeling good
and ashamed, till she's almost up to the velvet rope and ready
to be the next let in. But there was a little squirt of a man
there—probably been waiting half an hour—I kind of admired
the little cuss—and he turns on Zilla and says, perfectly
polite, `Madam, why are you trying to push past me?'
And she simply—God, I was so ashamed!—she rips out at
him, `You're no gentleman,' and she drags me into it and
hollers, `Paul, this person insulted me!' and the poor skate
he got ready to fight.
"I made out I hadn't heard them—sure! same as you
wouldn't hear a boiler-factory!—and I tried to look away—I
can tell you exactly how every tile looks in the ceiling of that
lobby; there's one with brown spots on it like the face of the
devil—and all the time the people there—they were packed in
like sardines—they kept making remarks about us, and Zilla
went right on talking about the little chap, and screeching that
`folks like him oughtn't to be admitted in a place that's
supposed
to be for ladies and gentlemen,' and `Paul, will you kindly
call the manager, so I can report this dirty rat?' and— Oof!
Maybe I wasn't glad when I could sneak inside and hide in the
dark!
"After twenty-four years of that kind of thing, you don't
expect me to fall down and foam at the mouth when you hint
that this sweet, clean, respectable, moral life isn't all it's
cracked up to be, do you? I can't even talk about it, except
to you, because anybody else would think I was yellow. Maybe
I am. Don't care any longer.... Gosh, you've had to
stand a lot of whining from me, first and last, Georgie!''
"Rats, now, Paul, you've never really what you could call
whined. Sometimes— I'm always blowing to Myra and the
kids about what a whale of a realtor I am, and yet sometimes
I get a sneaking idea I'm not such a Pierpont Morgan as I
let on to be. But if I ever do help by jollying you along, old
Paulski, I guess maybe Saint Pete may let me in after all!''
"Yuh, you're an old blow-hard, Georgie, you cheerful cut-throat,
but you've certainly kept me going.''
"Why don't you divorce Zilla?''
"Why don't I! If I only could! If she'd just give me the
chance! You couldn't hire her to divorce me, no, nor desert
me. She's too fond of her three squares and a few pounds of
nut-center chocolates in between. If she'd only be what they
call unfaithful to me! George, I don't want to be too much of
a stinker; back in college I'd 've thought a man who could
say that ought to be shot at sunrise. But honestly, I'd be
tickled to death if she'd really go making love with somebody.
Fat chance! Of course she'll flirt with anything—you know
how she holds hands and laughs—that laugh—that horrible
brassy laugh—the way she yaps, `You naughty man, you better
be careful or my big husband will be after you!'—and the
guy looking me over and thinking, `Why, you cute little thing,
you run away now or I'll spank you!' And she'll let him go
just far enough so she gets some excitement out of it and then
she'll begin to do the injured innocent and have a beautiful
time wailing, `I didn't think you were that kind of a person.'
They talk about these
demi-vierges in stories—''
"These whats?''
"—but the wise, hard, corseted, old married women like
Zilla are worse than any bobbed-haired girl that ever went
boldly out into this-here storm of life—and kept her umbrella
slid up her sleeve! But rats, you know what Zilla is. How
she nags—nags—nags. How she wants everything I can buy
her, and a lot that I can't, and how absolutely unreasonable she
is, and when I get sore and try to have it out with her she
plays the Perfect Lady so well that even I get fooled and get
all tangled up in a lot of `Why did you say's' and `I didn't
mean's.' I'll tell you, Georgie: You know my tastes are
pretty fairly simple—in the matter of food, at least. Course,
as you're always complaining, I do like decent cigars—not
those Flor de Cabagos you're smoking—''
"That's all right now! That's a good two-for. By the way,
Paul, did I tell you I decided to practically cut out smok—''
"Yes you— At the same time, if I can't get what I like,
why, I can do without it. I don't mind sitting down to burnt
steak, with canned peaches and store cake for a thrilling little
dessert afterwards, but I do draw the line at having to sympathize
with Zilla because she's so rotten bad-tempered that the
cook has quit, and she's been so busy sitting in a dirty lace
negligée all afternoon, reading about some brave manly Western
hero, that she hasn't had time to do any cooking. You're
always talking about `morals'—meaning monogamy, I suppose.
You've been the rock of ages to me, all right, but you're essentially
a simp. You—''
"Where d' you get that `simp,' little man? Let me tell
you—''
"—love to look earnest and inform the world that it's the
`duty of responsible business men to be strictly moral, as an
example to the community.' In fact you're so earnest about
morality, old Georgie, that I hate to think how essentially
immoral you must be underneath. All right, you can—''
"Wait, wait now! What's—''
"—talk about morals all you want to, old thing, but believe
me, if it hadn't been for you and an occasional evening playing
the violin to Terrill O'Farrell's 'cello, and three or four darling
girls that let me forget this beastly joke they call `respectable
life,' I'd 've killed myself years ago.
"And business! The roofing business! Roofs for cowsheds!
Oh, I don't mean I haven't had a lot of fun out of the
Game; out of putting it over on the labor unions, and seeing
a big check coming in, and the business increasing. But what's
the use of it? You know, my business isn't distributing roofing—
it's principally keeping my competitors from distributing
roofing. Same with you. All we do is cut each other's throats
and make the public pay for it!''
"Look here now, Paul! You're pretty darn near talking
socialism!''
"Oh yes, of course I don't really exactly mean that—I
s'pose. Course—competition—brings out the best—survival
of the fittest—but— But I mean: Take all these fellows
we know, the kind right here in the club now, that seem to be
perfectly content with their home-life and their businesses,
and that boost Zenith and the Chamber of Commerce and
holler for a million population. I bet if you could cut into
their heads you'd find that one-third of 'em are sure-enough
satisfied with their wives and kids and friends and their offices;
and one-third feel kind of restless but won't admit it; and
one-third are miserable and know it. They hate the whole
peppy, boosting, go-ahead game, and they're bored by their
wives and think their families are fools—at least when they
come to forty or forty-five they're bored—and they hate business,
and they'd go— Why do you suppose there's so many
`mysterious' suicides? Why do you suppose so many Substantial
Citizens jumped right into the war? Think it was all
patriotism?''
Babbitt snorted, "What do you expect? Think we were
sent into the world to have a soft time and—what is it?—
`float on flowery beds of ease'? Think Man was just made to
be happy?''
"Why not? Though I've never discovered anybody that
knew what the deuce Man really was made for!''
"Well we know—not just in the Bible alone, but it stands
to reason—a man who doesn't buckle down and do his duty,
even if it does bore him sometimes, is nothing but a—well, he's
simply a weakling. Mollycoddle, in fact! And what do you
advocate? Come down to cases! If a man is bored by his
wife, do you seriously mean he has a right to chuck her and
take a sneak, or even kill himself?''
"Good Lord, I don't know what `rights' a man has! And
I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the
one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know
that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and
unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if
we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being
nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and
patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly,
we might make life more fun.''
They drifted into a maze of speculation. Babbitt was
elephantishly uneasy. Paul was bold, but not quite sure about
what he was being bold. Now and then Babbitt suddenly
agreed with Paul in an admission which contradicted all his
defense of duty and Christian patience, and at each admission
he had a curious reckless joy. He said at last:
"Look here, old Paul, you do a lot of talking about kicking
things in the face, but you never kick. Why don't you?''
"Nobody does. Habit too strong. But— Georgie, I've
been thinking of one mild bat—oh, don't worry, old pillar of
monogamy; it's highly proper. It seems to be settled now, isn't
it—though of course Zilla keeps rooting for a nice expensive
vacation in New York and Atlantic City, with the bright lights
and the bootlegged cocktails and a bunch of lounge-lizards to
dance with—but the Babbitts and the Rieslings are sure-enough
going to Lake Sunasquam, aren't we? Why couldn't
you and I make some excuse—say business in New York—
and get up to Maine four or five days before they do, and
just loaf by ourselves and smoke and cuss and be natural?''
"Great! Great idea!'' Babbitt admired.
Not for fourteen years had he taken a holiday without his
wife, and neither of them quite believed they could commit
this audacity. Many members of the Athletic Club did go
camping without their wives, but they were officially dedicated
to fishing and hunting, whereas the sacred and unchangeable
sports of Babbitt and Paul Riesling were golfing, motoring,
and bridge. For either the fishermen or the golfers to have
changed their habits would have been an infraction of their
self-imposed discipline which would have shocked all right-thinking
and regularized citizens.
Babbitt blustered, "Why don't we just put our foot down
and say, `We're going on ahead of you, and that's all there is
to it!' Nothing criminal in it. Simply say to Zilla—''
"You don't say anything to Zilla simply. Why, Georgie,
she's almost as much of a moralist as you are, and if I told her
the truth she'd believe we were going to meet some dames in
New York. And even Myra—she never nags you, the way
Zilla does, but she'd worry. She'd say, `Don't you
want me
to go to Maine with you? I shouldn't dream of going unless
you wanted me;' and you'd give in to save her feelings. Oh,
the devil! Let's have a shot at duck-pins.''
During the game of duck-pins, a juvenile form of bowling,
Paul was silent. As they came down the steps of the club, not
more than half an hour after the time at which Babbitt had
sternly told Miss McGoun he would be back, Paul sighed,
"Look here, old man, oughtn't to talked about Zilla way I
did.''
"Rats, old man, it lets off steam.''
"Oh, I know! After spending all noon sneering at the conventional
stuff, I'm conventional enough to be ashamed of saving
my life by busting out with my fool troubles!''
"Old Paul, your nerves are kind of on the bum. I'm going
to take you away. I'm going to rig this thing. I'm going
to have an important deal in New York and—and sure, of
course!—I'll need you to advise me on the roof of the building!
And the ole deal will fall through, and there'll be nothing
for us but to go on ahead to Maine. I—Paul, when it
comes right down to it, I don't care whether you bust loose
or not. I do like having a rep for being one of the Bunch,
but if you ever needed me I'd chuck it and come out for you
every time! Not of course but what you're—course I don't
mean you'd ever do anything that would put—that would put
a decent position on the fritz but— See how I mean? I'm
kind of a clumsy old codger, and I need your fine Eyetalian
hand. We— Oh, hell, I can't stand here gassing all day!
On the job! S' long! Don't take any wooden money, Paulibus!
See you soon! S' long!''