V
It was a shame, at this worried time, to have to think about
the Overbrooks.
Ed Overbrook was a classmate of Babbitt who had been a
failure. He had a large family and a feeble insurance business
out in the suburb of Dorchester. He was gray and thin and
unimportant. He had always been gray and thin and unimportant.
He was the person whom, in any group, you forgot
to introduce, then introduced with extra enthusiasm. He had
admired Babbitt's good-fellowship in college, had admired
ever since his power in real estate, his beautiful house and
wonderful clothes. It pleased Babbitt, though it bothered him
with a sense of responsibility. At the class-dinner he had
seen poor Overbrook, in a shiny blue serge business-suit, being
diffident in a corner with three other failures. He had gone
over and been cordial: "Why, hello, young Ed! I hear you're
writing all the insurance in Dorchester now. Bully work!''
They recalled the good old days when Overbrook used to
write poetry. Overbrook embarrassed him by blurting, "Say,
Georgie, I hate to think of how we been drifting apart. I
wish you and Mrs. Babbitt would come to dinner some night.''
Babbitt boomed, "Fine! Sure! Just let me know. And
the wife and I want to have you at the house.'' He forgot
it, but unfortunately Ed Overbrook did not. Repeatedly he
telephoned to Babbitt, inviting him to dinner. "Might as
well go and get it over,'' Babbitt groaned to his wife. "But
don't it simply amaze you the way the poor fish doesn't know
the first thing about social etiquette? Think of him 'phoning
me, instead of his wife sitting down and writing us a regular
bid! Well, I guess we're stuck for it. That's the trouble
with all this class-brother hooptedoodle.''
He accepted Overbrook's next plaintive invitation, for an
evening two weeks off. A dinner two weeks off, even a family
dinner, never seems so appalling, till the two weeks have astoundingly
disappeared and one comes dismayed to the ambushed
hour. They had to change the date, because of their
own dinner to the McKelveys, but at last they gloomily drove
out to the Overbrooks' house in Dorchester.
It was miserable from the beginning. The Overbrooks had
dinner at six-thirty, while the Babbitts never dined before
seven. Babbitt permitted himself to be ten minutes late.
"Let's make it as short as possible. I think we'll duck out
quick. I'll say I have to be at the office extra early to-morrow,''
he planned.
The Overbrook house was depressing. It was the second
story of a wooden two-family dwelling; a place of baby-carriages,
old hats hung in the hall, cabbage-smell, and a Family
Bible on the parlor table. Ed Overbrook and his wife were
as awkward and threadbare as usual, and the other guests
were two dreadful families whose names Babbitt never caught
and never desired to catch. But he was touched, and disconcerted,
by the tactless way in which Overbrook praised
him: "We're mighty proud to have old George here to-night!
Of course you've all read about his speeches and oratory in
the papers—and the boy's good-looking, too, eh?—but what I
always think of is back in college, and what a great old mixer
he was, and one of the best swimmers in the class.''
Babbitt tried to be jovial; he worked at it; but he could
find nothing to interest him in Overbrook's timorousness, the
blankness of the other guests, or the drained stupidity of Mrs.
Overbrook, with her spectacles, drab skin, and tight-drawn
hair. He told his best Irish story, but it sank like soggy cake.
Most bleary moment of all was when Mrs. Overbrook, peering
out of her fog of nursing eight children and cooking and scrubbing,
tried to be conversational.
"I suppose you go to Chicago and New York right along,
Mr. Babbitt,'' she prodded.
"Well, I get to Chicago fairly often.''
"It must be awfully interesting. I suppose you take in all
the theaters.''
"Well, to tell the truth, Mrs. Overbrook, thing that hits
me best is a great big beefsteak at a Dutch restaurant in the
Loop!''
They had nothing more to say. Babbitt was sorry, but
there was no hope; the dinner was a failure. At ten, rousing
out of the stupor of meaningless talk, he said as cheerily as
he could, " 'Fraid we got to be starting, Ed. I've got a fellow
coming to see me early to-morrow.'' As Overbrook helped
him with his coat, Babbitt said, "Nice to rub up on the old
days! We must have lunch together, P.D.Q.''
Mrs. Babbitt sighed, on their drive home, "It was pretty
terrible. But how Mr. Overbrook does admire you!''
"Yep. Poor cuss! Seems to think I'm a little tin archangel,
and the best-looking man in Zenith.''
"Well, you're certainly not that but— Oh, Georgie, you
don't suppose we have to invite them to dinner at our house
now, do we?''
"Ouch! Gaw, I hope not!''
"See here, now, George! You didn't say anything about
it to Mr. Overbrook, did you?''
"No! Gee! No! Honest, I didn't! Just made a bluff
about having him to lunch some time.''
"Well.... Oh, dear.... I don't want to hurt their feelings.
But I don't see how I could stand another evening like
this one. And suppose somebody like Dr. and Mrs. Angus
came in when we had the Overbrooks there, and thought they
were friends of ours!''
For a week they worried, "We really ought to invite Ed and
his wife, poor devils!'' But as they never saw the Overbrooks,
they forgot them, and after a month or two they said, "That
really was the best way, just to let it slide. It wouldn't be kind
to them to have them here. They'd feel so out of
place and
hard-up in our home.''
They did not speak of the Overbrooks again.