10. CHAPTER X
I
No apartment-house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented
in condensation than the Revelstoke Arms, in which
Paul and Zilla Riesling had a flat. By sliding the beds into
low closets the bedrooms were converted into living-rooms.
The kitchens were cupboards each containing an electric range,
a copper sink, a glass refrigerator, and, very intermittently, a
Balkan maid. Everything about the Arms was excessively
modern, and everything was compressed—except the garages.
The Babbitts were calling on the Rieslings at the Arms. It
was a speculative venture to call on the Rieslings; interesting
and sometimes disconcerting. Zilla was an active, strident,
full-blown, high-bosomed blonde. When she condescended to
be good-humored she was nervously amusing. Her comments
on people were saltily satiric and penetrative of accepted
hypocrisies. "That's so!'' you said, and looked sheepish. She
danced wildly, and called on the world to be merry, but in the
midst of it she would turn indignant. She was always becoming
indignant. Life was a plot against her and she exposed
it furiously.
She was affable to-night. She merely hinted that Orville
Jones wore a toupé, that Mrs. T. Cholmondeley Frink's singing
resembled a Ford going into high, and that the Hon. Otis
Deeble, mayor of Zenith and candidate for Congress, was a
flatulent fool (which was quite true). The Babbitts and
Rieslings sat doubtfully on stone-hard brocade chairs in the
small living-room of the flat, with its mantel unprovided with
a fireplace, and its strip of heavy gilt fabric upon a glaring
new player-piano, till Mrs. Riesling shrieked, "Come on! Let's
put some pep in it! Get out your fiddle, Paul, and I'll try
to make Georgie dance decently.''
The Babbitts were in earnest. They were plotting for the
escape to Maine. But when Mrs. Babbitt hinted with plump
smilingness, "Does Paul get as tired after the winter's work
as Georgie does?'' then Zilla remembered an injury; and when
Zilla Riesling remembered an injury the world stopped till
something had been done about it.
"Does he get tired? No, he doesn't get tired, he just goes
crazy, that's all! You think Paul is so reasonable, oh, yes, and
he loves to make out he's a little lamb, but he's stubborn as
a mule. Oh, if you had to live with him—! You'd find out
how sweet he is! He just pretends to be meek so he can have
his own way. And me, I get the credit for being a terrible old
crank, but if I didn't blow up once in a while and get something
started, we'd die of dry-rot. He never wants to go any
place and— Why, last evening, just because the car was out
of order—and that was his fault, too, because he ought to have
taken it to the service-station and had the battery looked at—
and he didn't want to go down to the movies on the trolley.
But we went, and then there was one of those impudent conductors,
and Paul wouldn't do a thing.
"I was standing on the platform waiting for the people to
let me into the car, and this beast, this conductor, hollered at
me, `Come on, you, move up!' Why, I've never had anybody
speak to me that way in all my life! I was so astonished I
just turned to him and said—I thought there must be some
mistake, and so I said to him, perfectly pleasant, `Were you
speaking to me?' and he went on and bellowed at me, `Yes,
I was! You're keeping the whole car from starting!' he said,
and then I saw he was one of these dirty ill-bred hogs that
kindness is wasted on, and so I stopped and looked right at
him, and I said, `I—beg—your—pardon, I am not doing anything
of the kind,' I said, `it's the people ahead of me, who
won't move up,' I said, `and furthermore, let me tell you, young
man, that you're a low-down, foul-mouthed, impertinent skunk,'
I said, `and you're no gentleman! I certainly intend to report
you, and we'll see,' I said, `whether a lady is to be insulted by
any drunken bum that chooses to put on a ragged uniform, and
I'd thank you,' I said, `to keep your filthy abuse to yourself.'
And then I waited for Paul to show he was half a man and
come to my defense, and he just stood there and pretended he
hadn't heard a word, and so I said to him, `Well,' I said—''
"Oh, cut it, cut it, Zill!'' Paul groaned. "We all know I'm
a mollycoddle, and you're a tender bud, and let's let it go at
that.''
"Let it go?'' Zilla's face was wrinkled like the Medusa, her
voice was a dagger of corroded brass. She was full of the joy
of righteousness and bad temper. She was a crusader and,
like every crusader, she exulted in the opportunity to be vicious
in the name of virtue. "Let it go? If people knew how many
things I've let go—''
"Oh, quit being such a bully.''
"Yes, a fine figure you'd cut if I didn't bully you! You'd
lie abed till noon and play your idiotic fiddle till midnight!
You're born lazy, and you're born shiftless, and you're born
cowardly, Paul Riesling—''
"Oh, now, don't say that, Zilla; you don't mean a word of
it!'' protested Mrs. Babbitt.
"I will say that, and I mean every single last word of it!''
"Oh, now, Zilla, the idea!'' Mrs. Babbitt was maternal
and fussy. She was no older than Zilla, but she seemed so—
at first. She was placid and puffy and mature, where Zilla,
at forty-five, was so bleached and tight-corseted that you knew
only that she was older than she looked. "The idea of talking
to poor Paul like that!''
"Poor Paul is right! We'd both be poor, we'd be in the
poorhouse, if I didn't jazz him up!''
"Why, now, Zilla, Georgie and I were just saying how hard
Paul's been working all year, and we were thinking it would
be lovely if the Boys could run off by themselves. I've been
coaxing George to go up to Maine ahead of the rest of us,
and get the tired out of his system before we come, and I
think it would be lovely if Paul could manage to get away and
join him.''
At this exposure of his plot to escape, Paul was startled out
of impassivity. He rubbed his fingers. His hands twitched.
Zilla bayed, "Yes! You're lucky! You can let George go,
and not have to watch him. Fat old Georgie! Never peeps
at another woman! Hasn't got the spunk!''
"The hell I haven't!'' Babbitt was fervently defending his
priceless immorality when Paul interrupted him—and Paul
looked dangerous. He rose quickly; he said gently to Zilla:
"I suppose you imply I have a lot of sweethearts.''
"Yes, I do!''
"Well, then, my dear, since you ask for it— There hasn't
been a time in the last ten years when I haven't found some
nice little girl to comfort me, and as long as you continue your
amiability I shall probably continue to deceive you. It isn't
hard. You're so stupid.''
Zilla gibbered; she howled; words could not be distinguished
in her slaver of abuse.
Then the bland George F. Babbitt was transformed. If
Paul was dangerous, if Zilla was a snake-locked fury, if the
neat emotions suitable to the Revelstoke Arms had been slashed
into raw hatreds, it was Babbitt who was the most formidable.
He leaped up. He seemed very large. He seized Zilla's shoulder.
The cautions of the broker were wiped from his face, and
his voice was cruel:
"I've had enough of all this damn nonsense! I've known
you for twenty-five years, Zil, and I never knew you to miss a
chance to take your disappointments out on Paul. You're not
wicked. You're worse. You're a fool. And let me tell you
that Paul is the finest boy God ever made. Every decent
person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of being a
woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of.
Who the hell are you that a person like Paul should have to
ask your
permission to go with me? You act like
you were a
combination of Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool, can't
you see how people snicker at you, and sneer at you?''
Zilla was sobbing, "I've never—I've never—nobody ever
talked to me like this in all my life!''
"No, but that's the way they talk behind your back! Always!
They say you're a scolding old woman. Old, by God!''
That cowardly attack broke her. Her eyes were blank. She
wept. But Babbitt glared stolidly. He felt that he was the
all-powerful official in charge; that Paul and Mrs. Babbitt
looked on him with awe; that he alone could handle this case.
Zilla writhed. She begged, "Oh, they don't!''
"They certainly do!''
"I've been a bad woman! I'm terribly sorry! I'll kill myself!
I'll do anything. Oh, I'll— What do you want?''
She abased herself completely. Also, she enjoyed it. To
the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a
thorough, melodramatic, egoistic humility.
"I want you to let Paul beat it off to Maine with me,'' Babbitt
demanded.
"How can I help his going? You've just said I was an idiot
and nobody paid any attention to me.''
"Oh, you can help it, all right, all right! What you got to
do is to cut out hinting that the minute he gets out of your
sight, he'll go chasing after some petticoat. Matter fact, that's
the way you start the boy off wrong. You ought to have more
sense—''
"Oh, I will, honestly, I will, George. I know I was bad.
Oh, forgive me, all of you, forgive me—''
She enjoyed it.
So did Babbitt. He condemned magnificently and forgave
piously, and as he went parading out with his wife he was
grandly explanatory to her:
"Kind of a shame to bully Zilla, but course it was the only
way to handle her. Gosh, I certainly did have her crawling!''
She said calmly, "Yes. You were horrid. You were showing
off. You were having a lovely time thinking what a great
fine person you were!''
"Well, by golly! Can you beat it! Of course I might of
expected you to not stand by me! I might of expected you'd
stick up for your own sex!''
"Yes. Poor Zilla, she's so unhappy. She takes it out on
Paul. She hasn't a single thing to do, in that little flat. And
she broods too much. And she used to be so pretty and gay,
and she resents losing it. And you were just as nasty and mean
as you could be. I'm not a bit proud of you—or of Paul,
boasting about his horrid love-affairs!''
He was sulkily silent; he maintained his bad temper at a
high level of outraged nobility all the four blocks home. At
the door he left her, in self-approving haughtiness, and tramped
the lawn.
With a shock it was revealed to him: "Gosh, I wonder if
she was right—if she was partly right?'' Overwork must have
flayed him to abnormal sensitiveness; it was one of the few
times in his life when he had queried his eternal excellence;
and he perceived the summer night, smelled the wet grass.
Then: "I don't care! I've pulled it off. We're going to have
our spree. And for Paul, I'd do anything.''
II
They were buying their Maine tackle at Ijams Brothers',
the Sporting Goods Mart, with the help of Willis Ijams, fellow
member of the Boosters' Club. Babbitt was completely mad.
He trumpeted and danced. He muttered to Paul, "Say, this
is pretty good, eh? To be buying the stuff, eh? And good
old Willis Ijams himself coming down on the floor to wait on
us! Say, if those fellows that are getting their kit for the
North Lakes knew we were going clear up to Maine, they'd
have a fit, eh? . . . Well, come on, Brother Ijams—Willis,
I mean. Here's your chance! We're a couple of easy marks!
Whee! Let me at it! I'm going to buy out the store!''
He gloated on fly-rods and gorgeous rubber hip-boots, on
tents with celluloid windows and folding chairs and ice-boxes.
He simple-heartedly wanted to buy all of them. It was the
Paul whom he was always vaguely protecting who kept him
from his drunken desires.
But even Paul lightened when Willis Ijams, a salesman with
poetry and diplomacy, discussed flies. "Now, of course, you
boys know.'' he said, "the great scrap is between dry flies
and wet flies. Personally, I'm for dry flies. More sporting.''
"That's so. Lots more sporting,'' fulminated Babbitt, who
knew very little about flies either wet or dry.
"Now if you'll take my advice, Georgie, you'll stock up well
on these pale evening dims, and silver sedges, and red ants.
Oh, boy, there's a fly, that red ant!''
"You bet! That's what it is—a fly!'' rejoiced Babbitt.
"Yes, sir, that red ant,'' said Ijams, "is a real honest-to-God
fly!''
"Oh, I guess ole Mr. Trout won't come a-hustling when I
drop one of those red ants on the water!'' asserted Babbitt, and
his thick wrists made a rapturous motion of casting.
"Yes, and the landlocked salmon will take it, too,'' said
Ijams, who had never seen a landlocked salmon.
"Salmon! Trout! Say, Paul, can you see Uncle George
with his khaki pants on haulin' 'em in, some morning 'bout
seven? Whee!''
III
They were on the New York express, incredibly bound for
Maine, incredibly without their families. They were free, in
a man's world, in the smoking-compartment of the Pullman.
Outside the car window was a glaze of darkness stippled
with the gold of infrequent mysterious lights. Babbitt was
immensely conscious, in the sway and authoritative clatter of
the train, of going, of going on. Leaning toward Paul he
grunted, "Gosh, pretty nice to be hiking, eh?''
The small room, with its walls of ocher-colored steel, was
filled mostly with the sort of men he classified as the Best
Fellows You'll Ever Meet—Real Good Mixers. There were
four of them on the long seat; a fat man with a shrewd fat face,
a knife-edged man in a green velour hat, a very young young
man with an imitation amber cigarette-holder, and Babbitt.
Facing them, on two movable leather chairs, were Paul and a
lanky, old-fashioned man, very cunning, with wrinkles bracketing
his mouth. They all read newspapers or trade journals,
boot-and-shoe journals, crockery journals, and waited for the
joys of conversation. It was the very young man, now making
his first journey by Pullman, who began it.
"Say, gee, I had a wild old time in Zenith!'' he gloried.
"Say, if a fellow knows the ropes there he can have as wild a
time as he can in New York!''
"Yuh, I bet you simply raised the old Ned. I figured you
were a bad man when I saw you get on the train!'' chuckled the
fat one.
The others delightedly laid down their papers.
"Well, that's all right now! I guess I seen some things in
the Arbor you never seen!'' complained the boy.
"Oh, I'll bet you did! I bet you lapped up the malted milk
like a reg'lar little devil!''
Then, the boy having served as introduction, they ignored
him and charged into real talk. Only Paul, sitting by himself,
reading at a serial story in a newspaper, failed to join them
and all but Babbitt regarded him as a snob, an eccentric, a person
of no spirit.
Which of them said which has never been determined, and
does not matter, since they all had the same ideas and expressed
them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance.
If it was not Babbitt who was delivering any given verdict, at
least he was beaming on the chancellor who did deliver it.
"At that, though,'' announced the first "they're selling quite
some booze in Zenith. Guess they are everywhere. I don't
know how you fellows feel about prohibition, but the way it
strikes me is that it's a mighty beneficial thing for the poor
zob that hasn't got any will-power but for fellows like us,
it's an infringement of personal liberty.''
"That's a fact. Congress has got no right to interfere with
a fellow's personal liberty,'' contended the second.
A man came in from the car, but as all the seats were full
he stood up while he smoked his cigarette. He was an Outsider;
he was not one of the Old Families of the smoking-compartment.
They looked upon him bleakly and, after trying
to appear at ease by examining his chin in the mirror, he
gave it up and went out in silence.
"Just been making a trip through the South. Business
conditions not very good down there,'' said one of the council.
"Is that a fact! Not very good, eh?''
"No, didn't strike me they were up to normal.''
"Not up to normal, eh?''
"No, I wouldn't hardly say they were.''
The whole council nodded sagely and decided, "Yump. not
hardly up to snuff.''
"Well, business conditions ain't what they ought to be out
West, neither, not by a long shot.''
"That's a fact. And I guess the hotel business feels it.
That's one good thing, though: these hotels that've been charging
five bucks a day—yes, and maybe six—seven!—for a rotten
room are going to be darn glad to get four, and maybe give you
a little service.''
"That's a fact. Say, uh, speaknubout hotels, I hit the St.
Francis at San Francisco for the first time, the other day, and,
say, it certainly is a first-class place.''
"You're right, brother! The St. Francis is a swell place—
absolutely A1.''
"That's a fact. I'm right with you. It's a first-class place.''
"Yuh, but say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Rippleton,
in Chicago? I don't want to knock—I believe in boosting
wherever you can—but say, of all the rotten dumps that pass
'emselves off as first-class hotels, that's the worst. I'm going
to get those guys, one of these days, and I told 'em so. You
know how I am—well, maybe you don't know, but I'm accustomed
to first-class accommodations, and I'm perfectly willing
to pay a reasonable price. I got into Chicago late the other
night, and the Rippleton's near the station—I'd never been
there before, but I says to the taxi-driver—I always believe
in taking a taxi when you get in late; may cost a little more
money, but, gosh, it's worth it when you got to be up early
next morning and out selling a lot of crabs—and I said to
him, `Oh, just drive me over to the Rippleton.'
"Well, we got there, and I breezed up to the desk and said
to the clerk, `Well, brother, got a nice room with bath for
Cousin Bill?' Saaaay! You'd 'a' thought I'd sold him a
second, or asked him to work on Yom Kippur! He hands me
the cold-boiled stare and yaps, `I dunno, friend, I'll see,' and
he ducks behind the rigamajig they keep track of the rooms
on. Well, I guess he called up the Credit Association and
the American Security League to see if I was all right—he
certainly took long enough—or maybe he just went to sleep;
but finally he comes out and looks at me like it hurts him, and
croaks, `I think I can let you have a room with bath.' `Well,
that's awful nice of you—sorry to trouble you—how much 'll
it set me back?' I says, real sweet. `It'll cost you seven bucks
a day, friend,' he says.
"Well, it was late, and anyway, it went down on my
expense-account—gosh, if I'd been paying it instead of the firm, I'd
'a' tramped the streets all night before I'd 'a' let any hick
tavern stick me seven great big round dollars, believe me! So
I lets it go at that. Well, the clerk wakes a nice young bell
hop—fine lad—not a day over seventy-nine years old—fought
at the Battle of Gettysburg and doesn't know it's over yet—
thought I was one of the Confederates, I guess, from the way
he looked at me—and Rip van Winkle took me up to something—
I found out afterwards they called it a room, but first
I thought there'd been some mistake—I thought they were
putting me in the Salvation Army collection-box! At seven
per each and every
diem! Gosh!''
"Yuh, I've heard the Rippleton was pretty cheesy. Now,
when I go to Chicago I always stay at the Blackstone or the
La Salle—first-class places.''
"Say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Birchdale at Terre
Haute? How is it?''
"Oh, the Birchdale is a first-class hotel.''
(Twelve minutes of conference on the state of hotels in
South Bend, Flint, Dayton, Tulsa, Wichita, Fort Worth, Winona,
Erie, Fargo, and Moose Jaw.)
"Speaknubout prices,'' the man in the velour hat observed,
fingering the elk-tooth on his heavy watch-chain, "I'd like to
know where they get this stuff about clothes coming down.
Now, you take this suit I got on.'' He pinched his trousers-leg.
"Four years ago I paid forty-two fifty for it, and it was
real sure-'nough value. Well, here the other day I went into
a store back home and asked to see a suit, and the fellow yanks
out some hand-me-downs that, honest, I wouldn't put on a
hired man. Just out of curiosity I asks him, `What you
charging for that junk?' `Junk,' he says, `what d' you mean
junk? That's a swell piece of goods, all wool—' Like hell!
It was nice vegetable wool, right off the Ole Plantation!
`It's all wool,' he says, `and we get sixty-seven ninety for it.'
`Oh, you do, do you!' I says. `Not from me you don't,' I
says, and I walks right out on him. You bet! I says to the
wife, `Well,' I said, `as long as your strength holds out and
you can go on putting a few more patches on papa's pants,
we'll just pass up buying clothes.'''
"That's right, brother. And just look at collars,
frinstance—''
"Hey! Wait!'' the fat man protested. "What's the matter
with collars? I'm selling collars! D' you realize the cost
of labor on collars is still two hundred and seven per cent.
above—''
They voted that if their old friend the fat man sold collars,
then the price of collars was exactly what it should be;
but all other clothing was tragically too expensive. They admired
and loved one another now. They went profoundly
into the science of business, and indicated that the purpose of
manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be sold.
To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, the wandering
poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young
district attorney, but the great sales-manager, who had an
Analysis of Merchandizing Problems on his glass-topped desk,
whose title of nobility was "Go-getter,'' and who devoted himself
and all his young samurai to the cosmic purpose of Selling—
not of selling anything in particular, for or to anybody
in particular, but pure Selling.
The shop-talk roused Paul Riesling. Though he was a
player of violins and an interestingly unhappy husband, he
was also a very able salesman of tar-roofing. He listened to
the fat man's remarks on "the value of house-organs and bulletins
as a method of jazzing-up the Boys out on the road;''
and he himself offered one or two excellent thoughts on the
use of two-cent stamps on circulars. Then he committed an
offense against the holy law of the Clan of Good Fellows. He
became highbrow.
They were entering a city. On the outskirts they passed
a steel-mill which flared in scarlet and orange flame that licked
at the cadaverous stacks, at the iron-sheathed walls and sullen
converters.
"My Lord, look at that—beautiful!'' said Paul.
"You bet it's beautiful, friend. That's the Shelling-Horton
Steel Plant, and they tell me old John Shelling made a good
three million bones out of munitions during the war!'' the
man with the velour hat said reverently.
"I didn't mean—I mean it's lovely the way the light pulls
that picturesque yard, all littered with junk, right out of the
darkness,'' said Paul.
They stared at him, while Babbitt crowed, "Paul there has
certainly got one great little eye for picturesque places and
quaint sights and all that stuff. 'D of been an author or something
if he hadn't gone into the roofing line.''
Paul looked annoyed. (Babbitt sometimes wondered if
Paul appreciated his loyal boosting.) The man in the velour
hat grunted, "Well, personally, I think Shelling-Horton keep
their works awful dirty. Bum routing. But I don't suppose
there's any law against calling 'em `picturesque' if it gets you
that way!''
Paul sulkily returned to his newspaper and the conversation
logically moved on to trains.
"What time do we get into Pittsburg?'' asked Babbitt.
"Pittsburg? I think we get in at—no, that was last year's
schedule—wait a minute—let's see—got a time-table right
here.''
"I wonder if we're on time?''
"Yuh, sure, we must be just about on time.''
"No, we aren't—we were seven minutes late, last station.''
"Were we? Straight? Why, gosh, I thought we were right
on time.''
"No, we're about seven minutes late.''
"Yuh, that's right; seven minutes late.''
The porter entered—a negro in white jacket with brass
buttons.
"How late are we, George?'' growled the fat man.
" 'Deed, I don't know, sir. I think we're about on time,''
said the porter, folding towels and deftly tossing them up on
the rack above the washbowls. The council stared at him
gloomily and when he was gone they wailed:
"I don't know what's come over these niggers, nowadays.
They never give you a civil answer.''
"That's a fact. They're getting so they don't have a single
bit of respect for you. The old-fashioned coon was a fine old
cuss—he knew his place—but these young dinges don't want
to be porters or cotton-pickers. Oh, no! They got to be lawyers
and professors and Lord knows what all! I tell you, it's
becoming a pretty serious problem. We ought to get together
and show the black man, yes, and the yellow man, his place.
Now, I haven't got one particle of race-prejudice. I'm the first
to be glad when a nigger succeeds—so long as he stays where
he belongs and doesn't try to usurp the rightful authority and
business ability of the white man.''
"That's the i.! And another thing we got to do,'' said the
man with the velour hat (whose name was Koplinsky), "is to
keep these damn foreigners out of the country. Thank the
Lord, we're putting a limit on immigration. These Dagoes
and Hunkies have got to learn that this is a white man's
country, and they ain't wanted here. When we've assimilated
the foreigners we got here now and learned 'em the principles
of Americanism and turned 'em into regular folks, why then
maybe we'll let in a few more.''
"You bet. That's a fact,'' they observed, and passed on to
lighter topics. They rapidly reviewed motor-car prices, tire-mileage, oil-stocks, fishing, and the prospects for the wheat-crop
in Dakota.
But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time. He
was a veteran traveler and free of illusions. Already he had
asserted that he was "an old he-one.'' He leaned forward,
gathered in their attention by his expression of sly humor, and
grumbled, "Oh, hell, boys, let's cut out the formality and get
down to the stories!''
They became very lively and intimate.
Paul and the boy vanished. The others slid forward on the
long seat, unbuttoned their vests, thrust their feet up on the
chairs, pulled the stately brass cuspidors nearer, and ran the
green window-shade down on its little trolley, to shut them
in from the uncomfortable strangeness of night. After each
bark of laughter they cried, "Say, jever hear the one about—''
Babbitt was expansive and virile. When the train stopped at
an important station, the four men walked up and down the
cement platform, under the vast smoky train-shed roof, like a
stormy sky, under the elevated footways, beside crates of
ducks and sides of beef, in the mystery of an unknown city.
They strolled abreast, old friends and well content. At the
long-drawn "Alllll aboarrrrrd''—like a mountain call at dusk—
they hastened back into the smoking-compartment, and till
two of the morning continued the droll tales, their eyes damp
with cigar-smoke and laughter. When they parted they shook
hands, and chuckled, "Well, sir, it's been a great session.
Sorry to bust it up. Mighty glad to met you.''
Babbitt lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman
berth, shaking with remembrance of the fat man's limerick
about the lady who wished to be wild. He raised the shade;
he lay with a puffy arm tucked between his head and the
skimpy pillow, looking out on the sliding silhouettes of trees,
and village lamps like exclamation-points. He was very
happy.