II
Like all true American diversions and spiritual outpourings,
the dinner of the men of the Class of 1896 was thoroughly organized.
The dinner-committee hammered like a sales-corporation.
Once a week they sent out reminders:
TICKLER NO. 3
Old man, are you going to be with us at the livest
Friendship Feed the alumni of the good old U have
ever known? The alumnæ of '08 turned out 60%
strong. Are we boys going to be beaten by a bunch
of skirts? Come on, fellows, let's work up some
real genuine enthusiasm and all boost together for
the snappiest dinner yet! Elegant eats, short ginger-talks,
and memories shared together of the
brightest, gladdest days of life.
The dinner was held in a private room at the Union Club.
The club was a dingy building, three pretentious old dwellings
knocked together, and the entrance-hall resembled a potato
cellar, yet the Babbitt who was free of the magnificence of the
Athletic Club entered with embarrassment. He nodded to the
doorman, an ancient proud negro with brass buttons and a
blue tail-coat, and paraded through the hall, trying to look
like a member.
Sixty men had come to the dinner. They made islands and
eddies in the hall; they packed the elevator and the corners
of the private dining-room. They tried to be intimate and
enthusiastic. They appeared to one another exactly as they had
in college—as raw youngsters whose present mustaches, baldnesses,
paunches, and wrinkles were but jovial disguises put
on for the evening. "You haven't changed a particle!'' they
marveled. The men whom they could not recall they addressed,
"Well, well, great to see you again, old man. What
are you— Still doing the same thing?''
Some one was always starting a cheer or a college song,
and it was always thinning into silence. Despite their resolution
to be democratic they divided into two sets: the men with
dress-clothes and the men without. Babbitt (extremely in
dress-clothes) went from one group to the other. Though
he was, almost frankly, out for social conquest, he sought Paul
Riesling first. He found him alone, neat and silent.
Paul sighed, "I'm no good at this handshaking and `well,
look who's here' bunk.''
"Rats now, Paulibus, loosen up and be a mixer! Finest
bunch of boys on earth! Say, you seem kind of glum. What's
matter?''
"Oh, the usual. Run-in with Zilla.''
"Come on! Let's wade in and forget our troubles.''
He kept Paul beside him, but worked toward the spot where
Charles McKelvey stood warming his admirers like a furnace.
McKelvey had been the hero of the Class of '96; not only
football captain and hammer-thrower but debater, and passable
in what the State University considered scholarship. He
had gone on, had captured the construction-company once
owned by the Dodsworths, best-known pioneer family of Zenith.
He built state capitols, skyscrapers, railway terminals.
He was a heavy-shouldered, big-chested man, but not sluggish.
There was a quiet humor in his eyes, a syrup-smooth quickness
in his speech, which intimidated politicians and warned reporters;
and in his presence the most intelligent scientist or
the most sensitive artist felt thin-blooded, unworldly, and a
little shabby. He was, particularly when he was influencing
legislatures or hiring labor-spies, very easy and lovable and
gorgeous. He was baronial; he was a peer in the rapidly
crystallizing American aristocracy, inferior only to the haughty
Old Families. (In Zenith, an Old Family is one which came
to town before 1840.) His power was the greater because he
was not hindered by scruples, by either the vice or the virtue
of the older Puritan tradition.
McKelvey was being placidly merry now with the great,
the manufacturers and bankers, the land-owners and lawyers
and surgeons who had chauffeurs and went to Europe. Babbitt
squeezed among them. He liked McKelvey's smile as
much as the social advancement to be had from his favor. If
in Paul's company he felt ponderous and protective, with McKelvey
he felt slight and adoring.
He heard McKelvey say to Max Kruger, the banker, "Yes,
we'll put up Sir Gerald Doak.'' Babbitt's democratic love for
titles became a rich relish. "You know, he's one of the biggest
iron-men in England, Max. Horribly well-off.... Why,
hello, old Georgie! Say, Max, George Babbitt is getting fatter
than I am!''
The chairman shouted, "Take your seats, fellows!''
"Shall we make a move, Charley?'' Babbitt said casually
to McKelvey.
"Right. Hello, Paul! How's the old fiddler? Planning to
sit anywhere special, George? Come on, let's grab some seats.
Come on, Max. Georgie, I read about your speeches in the
campaign. Bully work!''
After that, Babbitt would have followed him through fire.
He was enormously busy during the dinner, now bumblingly
cheering Paul, now approaching McKelvey with "Hear, you're
going to build some piers in Brooklyn,'' now noting how enviously
the failures of the class, sitting by themselves in a
weedy group, looked up to him in his association with the
nobility, now warming himself in the Society Talk of McKelvey
and Max Kruger. They spoke of a "jungle dance'' for which
Mona Dodsworth had decorated her house with thousands of
orchids. They spoke, with an excellent imitation of casualness,
of a dinner in Washington at which McKelvey had met a Senator,
a Balkan princess, and an English major-general. McKelvey
called the princess "Jenny,'' and let it be known that he
had danced with her.
Babbitt was thrilled, but not so weighted with awe as to
be silent. If he was not invited by them to dinner, he was
yet accustomed to talking with bank-presidents, congressmen,
and clubwomen who entertained poets. He was bright and
referential with McKelvey:
"Say, Charley, juh remember in Junior year how we chartered
a sea-going hack and chased down to Riverdale, to the
big show Madame Brown used to put on? Remember how you
beat up that hick constabule that tried to run us in, and we
pinched the pants-pressing sign and took and hung it on Prof.
Morrison's door? Oh, gosh, those were the days!''
Those, McKelvey agreed, were the days.
Babbitt had reached "It isn't the books you study in college
but the friendships you make that counts'' when the men
at head of the table broke into song. He attacked McKelvey:
"It's a shame, uh, shame to drift apart because our, uh,
business activities lie in different fields. I've enjoyed talking
over the good old days. You and Mrs. McKelvey must come
to dinner some night.''
Vaguely, "Yes, indeed—''
"Like to talk to you about the growth of real estate out
beyond your Grantsville warehouse. I might be able to tip
you off to a thing or two, possibly.''
"Splendid! We must have dinner together, Georgie. Just
let me know. And it will be a great pleasure to have your
wife and you at the house,'' said McKelvey, much less vaguely.
Then the chairman's voice, that prodigious voice which once
had roused them to cheer defiance at rooters from Ohio or
Michigan or Indiana, whooped, "Come on, you wombats! All
together in the long yell!'' Babbitt felt that life would never
be sweeter than now, when he joined with Paul Riesling and
the newly recovered hero, McKelvey, in:
Baaaaaattle-ax
Get an ax,
Bal-ax,
Get-nax,
Who, who? The U.!
Hooroo!