III
An abandoned race-track on the outskirts of Chicago, a plot
excellent for factory sites, was to be sold, and Jake Offut asked
Babbitt to bid on it for him. The strain of the Street Traction
deal and his disappointment in Stanley Graff had so
shaken Babbitt that he found it hard to sit at his desk and
concentrate. He proposed to his family, "Look here, folks!
Do you know who's going to trot up to Chicago for a couple
of days—just week-end; won't lose but one day of school—
know who's going with that celebrated business-ambassador,
George F. Babbitt? Why, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt!''
"Hurray!'' Ted shouted, and "Oh, maybe the Babbitt men
won't paint that lil ole town red!''
And, once away from the familiar implications of home, they
were two men together. Ted was young only in his assumption
of oldness, and the only realms, apparently, in which
Babbitt had a larger and more grown-up knowledge than Ted's
were the details of real estate and the phrases of politics.
When the other sages of the Pullman smoking-compartment
had left them to themselves, Babbitt's voice did not drop into
the playful and otherwise offensive tone in which one addresses
children but continued its overwhelming and monotonous
rumble, and Ted tried to imitate it in his strident tenor:
"Gee, dad, you certainly did show up that poor boot when
he got flip about the League of Nations!''
"Well, the trouble with a lot of these fellows is, they simply
don't know what they're talking about. They don't get down
to facts.... What do you think of Ken Escott?''
"I'll tell you, dad: it strikes me Ken is a nice lad; no
special faults except he smokes too much; but slow, Lord!
Why, if we don't give him a shove the poor dumb-bell never
will propose! And Rone just as bad. Slow.''
"Yes, I guess you're right. They're slow. They haven't
either one of 'em got our pep.''
"That's right. They're slow. I swear, dad, I don't know
how Rone got into our family! I'll bet, if the truth were
known, you were a bad old egg when you were a kid!''
"Well, I wasn't so slow!''
"I'll bet you weren't! I'll bet you didn't miss many tricks!''
"Well, when I was out with the girls I didn't spend all the
time telling 'em about the strike in the knitting industry!''
They roared together, and together lighted cigars.
"What are we going to do with 'em?'' Babbitt consulted.
"Gosh, I don't know. I swear, sometimes I feel like taking
Ken aside and putting him over the jumps and saying to him,
`Young fella me lad, are you going to marry young Rone, or
are you going to talk her to death? Here you are getting on
toward thirty, and you're only making twenty or twenty-five
a week. When you going to develop a sense of responsibility
and get a raise? If there's anything that George F. or I can
do to help you, call on us, but show a little speed, anyway!' ''
"Well, at that, it might not be so bad if you or I talked to
him, except he might not understand. He's one of these high
brows. He can't come down to cases and lay his cards on the
table and talk straight out from the shoulder, like you or I
can.''
"That's right, he's like all these highbrows.''
"That's so, like all of 'em.''
"That's a fact.''
They sighed, and were silent and thoughtful and happy.
The conductor came in. He had once called at Babbitt's
office, to ask about houses. "H' are you, Mr. Babbitt! We
going to have you with us to Chicago? This your boy?''
"Yes, this is my son Ted.''
"Well now, what do you know about that! Here I been
thinking you were a youngster yourself, not a day over forty,
hardly, and you with this great big fellow!''
"Forty? Why, brother, I'll never see forty-five again!''
"Is that a fact! Wouldn't hardly 'a' thought it!''
"Yes, sir, it's a bad give-away for the old man when he has
to travel with a young whale like Ted here!''
"You're right, it is.'' To Ted: "I suppose you're in college
now.
Proudly, "No, not till next fall. I'm just kind of giving
the diff'rent colleges the once-over now.''
As the conductor went on his affable way, huge watch-chain
jingling against his blue chest, Babbitt and Ted gravely considered
colleges. They arrived at Chicago late at night; they
lay abed in the morning, rejoicing, "Pretty nice not to have
to get up and get down to breakfast, heh?'' They were staying
at the modest Eden Hotel, because Zenith business men
always stayed at the Eden, but they had dinner in the brocade
and crystal Versailles Room of the Regency Hotel. Babbitt
ordered Blue Point oysters with cocktail sauce, a tremendous
steak with a tremendous platter of French fried potatoes, two
pots of coffee, apple pie with ice cream for both of them and,
for Ted, an extra piece of mince pie.
"Hot stuff! Some feed, young fella!'' Ted admired.
"Huh! You stick around with me, old man, and I'll show
you a good time!''
They went to a musical comedy and nudged each other at
the matrimonial jokes and the prohibition jokes; they paraded
the lobby, arm in arm, between acts, and in the glee of his
first release from the shame which dissevers fathers and sons
Ted chuckled, "Dad, did you ever hear the one about the
three milliners and the judge?''
When Ted had returned to Zenith, Babbitt was lonely. As
he was trying to make alliance between Offutt and certain
Milwaukee interests which wanted the race-track plot, most
of his time was taken up in waiting for telephone calls....
Sitting on the edge of his bed, holding the portable telephone,
asking wearily, "Mr. Sagen not in yet? Didn' he leave any
message for me? All right, I'll hold the wire.'' Staring at a
stain on the wall, reflecting that it resembled a shoe, and being
bored by this twentieth discovery that it resembled a shoe.
Lighting a cigarette; then, bound to the telephone with no ash-tray
in reach, wondering what to do with this burning menace
and anxiously trying to toss it into the tiled bathroom. At
last, on the telephone, "No message, eh? All right, I'll call
up again.''
One afternoon he wandered through snow-rutted streets of
which he had never heard, streets of small tenements and two-family
houses and marooned cottages. It came to him that
he had nothing to do, that there was nothing he wanted to
do. He was bleakly lonely in the evening, when he dined by
himself at the Regency Hotel. He sat in the lobby afterward,
in a plush chair bedecked with the Saxe-Coburg arms, lighting
a cigar and looking for some one who would come and play
with him and save him from thinking. In the chair next to
him (showing the arms of Lithuania) was a half-familiar man,
a large red-faced man with pop eyes and a deficient yellow
mustache. He seemed kind and insignificant, and as lonely as
Babbitt himself. He wore a tweed suit and a reluctant
orange tie.
It came to Babbitt with a pyrotechnic crash. The melancholy
stranger was Sir Gerald Doak.
Instinctively Babbitt rose, bumbling, "How 're you, Sir
Gerald? 'Member we met in Zenith, at Charley McKelvey's?
Babbitt's my name—real estate.''
"Oh! How d' you do.'' Sir Gerald shook hands flabbily.
Embarrassed, standing, wondering how he could retreat,
Babbitt maundered, "Well, I suppose you been having a great
trip since we saw you in Zenith.''
"Quite. British Columbia and California and all over the
place,'' he said doubtfully, looking at Babbitt lifelessly.
"How did you find business conditions in British Columbia?
Or I suppose maybe you didn't look into 'em. Scenery and
sport and so on?''
"Scenery? Oh, capital. But business conditions— You
know, Mr. Babbitt, they're having almost as much unemployment
as we are.'' Sir Gerald was speaking warmly now.
"So? Business conditions not so doggone good, eh?''
"No, business conditions weren't at all what I'd hoped
to find them.''
"Not good, eh?''
"No, not—not really good.''
"That's a darn shame. Well— I suppose you're waiting
for somebody to take you out to some big shindig, Sir
Gerald.''
"Shindig? Oh. Shindig. No, to tell you the truth, I was
wondering what the deuce I could do this evening. Don't
know a soul in Tchicahgo. I wonder if you happen to know
whether there's a good theater in this city?''
"Good? Why say, they're running grand opera right now!
I guess maybe you'd like that.''
"Eh? Eh? Went to the opera once in London. Covent
Garden sort of thing. Shocking! No, I was wondering if
there was a good cinema-movie.''
Babbitt was sitting down, hitching his chair over, shouting,
"Movie? Say, Sir Gerald, I supposed of course you had a
raft of dames waiting to lead you out to some soirée—''
"God forbid!''
"—but if you haven't, what do you say you and me go to
a movie? There's a peach of a film at the Grantham: Bill
Hart in a bandit picture.''
"Right-o! Just a moment while I get my coat.''
Swollen with greatness, slightly afraid lest the noble blood
of Nottingham change its mind and leave him at any street
corner, Babbitt paraded with Sir Gerald Doak to the movie
palace and in silent bliss sat beside him, trying not to be too
enthusiastic, lest the knight despise his adoration of six-shooters
and broncos. At the end Sir Gerald murmured, "Jolly
good picture, this. So awfully decent of you to take me.
Haven't enjoyed myself so much for weeks. All these Hostesses—
they never let you go to the cinema!''
"The devil you say!'' Babbitt's speech had lost the delicate
refinement and all the broad A's with which he had
adorned it, and become hearty and natural. "Well, I'm tickled
to death you liked it, Sir Gerald.''
They crawled past the knees of fat women into the aisle;
they stood in the lobby waving their arms in the rite of putting
on overcoats. Babbitt hinted, "Say, how about a little
something to eat? I know a place where we could get a swell
rarebit, and we might dig up a little drink—that is, if you
ever touch the stuff.''
"Rather! But why don't you come to my room? I've
some Scotch—not half bad.''
"Oh, I don't want to use up all your hootch. It's darn
nice of you, but— You probably want to hit the hay.''
Sir Gerald was transformed. He was beefily yearning. "Oh
really, now; I haven't had a decent evening for so long!
Having to go to all these dances. No chance to discuss business
and that sort of thing. Do be a good chap and come along.
Won't you?''
"Will I? You bet! I just thought maybe— Say, by golly,
it does do a fellow good, don't it, to sit and visit about business
conditions, after he's been to these balls and masquerades and
banquets and all that society stuff. I often feel that way in
Zenith. Sure, you bet I'll come.''
"That's awfully nice of you.'' They beamed along the street.
"Look here, old chap, can you tell me, do American cities always
keep up this dreadful social pace? All these magnificent
parties?''
"Go on now, quit your kidding! Gosh, you with court balls
and functions and everything—''
"No, really, old chap! Mother and I—Lady Doak, I should
say, we usually play a hand of bezique and go to bed at ten.
Bless my soul, I couldn't keep up your beastly pace! And
talking! All your American women, they know so much—
culture and that sort of thing. This Mrs. McKelvey—your
friend—''
"Yuh, old Lucile. Good kid.''
"—she asked me which of the galleries I liked best in Florence.
Or was it in Firenze? Never been in Italy in my life!
And primitives. Did I like primitives. Do you know what
the deuce a primitive is?''
"Me? I should say not! But I know what a discount for
cash is.''
"Rather! So do I, by George! But primitives!''
"Yuh! Primitives!''
They laughed with the sound of a Boosters' luncheon.
Sir Gerald's room was, except for his ponderous and durable
English bags, very much like the room of George F. Babbitt;
and quite in the manner of Babbitt he disclosed a huge whisky
flask, looked proud and hospitable, and chuckled, "Say, when,
old chap.''
It was after the third drink that Sir Gerald proclaimed,
"How do you Yankees get the notion that writing chaps like
Bertrand Shaw and this Wells represent us? The real business
England, we think those chaps are traitors. Both our
countries have their comic Old Aristocracy—you know, old
county families, hunting people and all that sort of thing—
and we both have our wretched labor leaders, but we both
have a backbone of sound business men who run the whole
show.''
"You bet. Here's to the real guys!''
"I'm with you! Here's to ourselves!''
It was after the fourth drink that Sir Gerald asked humbly,
"What do you think of North Dakota mortgages?'' but it was
not till after the fifth that Babbitt began to call him "Jerry,''
and Sir Gerald confided, "I say, do you mind if I pull off my
boots?'' and ecstatically stretched his knightly feet, his poor,
tired, hot, swollen feet out on the bed.
After the sixth, Babbitt irregularly arose. "Well, I better
be hiking along. Jerry, you're a regular human being! I
wish to thunder we'd been better acquainted in Zenith. Lookit.
Can't you come back and stay with me a while?''
"So sorry—must go to New York to-morrow. Most awfully
sorry, old boy. I haven't enjoyed an evening so much
since I've been in the States. Real talk. Not all this social
rot. I'd never have let them give me the beastly title—and I
didn't get it for nothing, eh?—if I'd thought I'd have to talk
to women about primitives and polo! Goodish thing to have
in Nottingham, though; annoyed the mayor most frightfully
when I got it; and of course the missus likes it. But nobody
calls me `Jerry' now—'' He was almost weeping. "—and
nobody in the States has treated me like a friend till to-night!
Good-by, old chap, good-by! Thanks awfully!''
"Don't mention it, Jerry. And remember whenever you get
to Zenith, the latch-string is always out.''
"And don't forget, old boy. if you ever come to Nottingham,
Mother and I will be frightfully glad to see you. I shall tell
the fellows in Nottingham your ideas about Visions and Real
Guys—at our next Rotary Club luncheon.''
