II
There was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man
who was beginning to awaken on the sleeping-porch of a
Dutch Colonial house in that residential district of Zenith
known as Floral Heights.
His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years
old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular,
neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the
calling of selling houses for more than people could afford
to pay.
His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His
face was babyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the
red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his nose. He was not fat
but he was exceedingly well fed; his cheeks were pads, and
the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon the
khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous,
extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic
appeared this sleeping-porch, which looked on one sizable
elm, two respectable grass-plots, a cement driveway, and a
corrugated iron garage. Yet Babbitt was again dreaming of
the fairy child, a dream more romantic than scarlet pagodas by
a silver sea.
For years the fairy child had come to him. Where others
saw but Georgie Babbitt, she discerned gallant youth. She
waited for him, in the darkness beyond mysterious groves.
When at last he could slip away from the crowded house he
darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends, sought to follow,
but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and they crouched
together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, so
eager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would
wait for him, that they would sail—
Rumble and bang of the milk-truck.
Babbitt moaned; turned over; struggled back toward his
dream. He could see only her face now, beyond misty
waters. The furnace-man slammed the basement door. A
dog barked in the next yard. As Babbitt sank blissfully into
a dim warm tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling, and the
rolled-up Advocate thumped the front door. Babbitt roused,
his stomach constricted with alarm. As he relaxed, he was
pierced by the familiar and irritating rattle of some one cranking
a Ford: snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a
pious motorist, Babbitt cranked with the unseen driver, with
him waited through taut hours for the roar of the starting
engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and again began
the infernal patient snap-ah-ah—a round, flat sound, a shivering
cold-morning sound, a sound infuriating and inescapable.
Not till the rising voice of the motor told him that the Ford
was moving was he released from the panting tension. He
glanced once at his favorite tree, elm twigs against the gold
patina of sky, and fumbled for sleep as for a drug. He who
had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatly
interested in the possible and improbable adventures of each
new day.
He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at
seven-twenty.
