IV
Myra Babbitt—Mrs. George F. Babbitt—was definitely mature.
She had creases from the corners of her mouth to the
bottom of her chin, and her plump neck bagged. But the
thing that marked her as having passed the line was that she
no longer had reticences before her husband, and no longer
worried about not having reticences. She was in a petticoat
now, and corsets which bulged, and unaware of being seen
in bulgy corsets. She had become so dully habituated to
married life that in her full matronliness she was as sexless as
an anemic nun. She was a good woman, a kind woman, a
diligent woman, but no one, save perhaps Tinka her ten-year-old,
was at all interested in her or entirely aware that
she was alive.
After a rather thorough discussion of all the domestic and
social aspects of towels she apologized to Babbitt for his
having an alcoholic headache; and he recovered enough to
endure the search for a B.V.D. undershirt which had, he pointed
out, malevolently been concealed among his clean pajamas.
He was fairly amiable in the conference on the brown suit.
"What do you think, Myra?'' He pawed at the clothes
hunched on a chair in their bedroom, while she moved about
mysteriously adjusting and patting her petticoat and, to his
jaundiced eye, never seeming to get on with her dressing.
"How about it? Shall I wear the brown suit another
day?''
"Well, it looks awfully nice on you.''
"I know, but gosh, it needs pressing.''
"That's so. Perhaps it does.''
"It certainly could stand being pressed, all right.''
"Yes, perhaps it wouldn't hurt it to be pressed.''
"But gee, the coat doesn't need pressing. No sense in having
the whole darn suit pressed, when the coat doesn't need it.''
"That's so.''
"But the pants certainly need it, all right. Look at them
—look at those wrinkles—the pants certainly do need pressing.''
"That's so. Oh, Georgie, why couldn't you wear the brown
coat with the blue trousers we were wondering what we'd do
with them?''
"Good Lord! Did you ever in all my life know me to wear
the coat of one suit and the pants of another? What do you
think I am? A busted bookkeeper?''
"Well, why don't you put on the dark gray suit to-day, and
stop in at the tailor and leave the brown trousers?''
"Well, they certainly need— Now where the devil is that
gray suit? Oh, yes, here we are.''
He was able to get through the other crises of dressing with
comparative resoluteness and calm.
His first adornment was the sleeveless dimity B.V.D.
undershirt, in which he resembled a small boy humorlessly
wearing a cheesecloth tabard at a civic pageant. He never
put on B.V.D.'s without thanking the God of Progress that he
didn't wear tight, long, old-fashioned undergarments, like his
father-in-law and partner, Henry Thompson. His second embellishment
was combing and slicking back his hair. It gave
him a tremendous forehead, arching up two inches beyond
the former hair-line. But most wonder-working of all was
the donning of his spectacles.
There is character in spectacles—the pretentious
tortoise-shell, the meek pince-nez of the school teacher, the twisted
silver-framed glasses of the old villager. Babbitt's spectacles
had huge, circular, frameless lenses of the very best glass;
the ear-pieces were thin bars of gold. In them he was the
modern business man; one who gave orders to clerks and drove
a car and played occasional golf and was scholarly in regard
to Salesmanship. His head suddenly appeared not babyish
but weighty, and you noted his heavy, blunt nose, his straight
mouth and thick, long upper lip, his chin overfleshy but strong;
with respect you beheld him put on the rest of his uniform as
a Solid Citizen.
The gray suit was well cut, well made, and completely undistinguished.
It was a standard suit. White piping on the
V of the vest added a flavor of law and learning. His shoes
were black laced boots, good boots, honest boots, standard
boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots. The only frivolity
was in his purple knitted scarf. With considerable comment
on the matter to Mrs. Babbitt (who, acrobatically fastening
the back of her blouse to her skirt with a safety-pin, did not
hear a word he said), he chose between the purple scarf and
a tapestry effect with stringless brown harps among blown
palms, and into it he thrust a snake-head pin with opal eyes.
A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to
the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about
these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball
or the Republican Party. They included a fountain pen and
a silver pencil (always lacking a supply of new leads) which
belonged in the righthand upper vest pocket. Without them
he would have felt naked. On his watch-chain were a gold
penknife, silver cigar-cutter, seven keys (the use of two of
which he had forgotten), and incidentally a good watch. Depending
from the chain was a large, yellowish elk's-tooth-proclamation
of his membership in the Brotherly and Protective
Order of Elks. Most significant of all was his loose-leaf
pocket note-book, that modern and efficient note-book which
contained the addresses of people whom he had forgotten, prudent
memoranda of postal money-orders which had reached
their destinations months ago, stamps which had lost their
mucilage, clippings of verses by T. Cholmondeley Frink and
of the newspaper editorials from which Babbitt got his opinions
and his polysyllables, notes to be sure and do things which
he did not intend to do, and one curious inscription—D.S.S.
D.M.Y.P.D.F.
But he had no cigarette-case. No one had ever happened
to give him one, so he hadn't the habit, and people who carried
cigarette-cases he regarded as effeminate.
Last, he stuck in his lapel the Boosters' Club button. With
the conciseness of great art the button displayed two words:
"Boosters-Pep!'' It made Babbitt feel loyal and important.
It associated him with Good Fellows, with men who were nice
and human, and important in business circles. It was his
V.C., his Legion of Honor ribbon, his Phi Beta Kappa key.
With the subtleties of dressing ran other complex worries.
"I feel kind of punk this morning,'' he said. "I think I had
too much dinner last evening. You oughtn't to serve those
heavy banana fritters.''
"But you asked me to have some.''
"I know, but— I tell you, when a fellow gets past forty
he has to look after his digestion. There's a lot of fellows
that don't take proper care of themselves. I tell you at forty
a man's a fool or his doctor—I mean, his own doctor. Folks
don't give enough attention to this matter of dieting. Now
I think— Course a man ought to have a good meal after
the day's work, but it would be a good thing for both of us
if we took lighter lunches.''
"But Georgie, here at home I always do have a light
lunch.''
"Mean to imply I make a hog of myself, eating down-town?
Yes, sure! You'd have a swell time if you had to eat the
truck that new steward hands out to us at the Athletic Club!
But I certainly do feel out of sorts, this morning. Funny, got
a pain down here on the left side—but no, that wouldn't be
appendicitis, would it? Last night, when I was driving over
to Verg Gunch's, I felt a pain in my stomach, too. Right here
it was—kind of a sharp shooting pain. I— Where'd that
dime go to? Why don't you serve more prunes at breakfast?
Of course I eat an apple every evening—an apple a
day keeps the doctor away—but still, you ought to have more
prunes, and not all these fancy doodads.''
"The last time I had prunes you didn't eat them.''
"Well, I didn't feel like eating 'em, I suppose. Matter of
fact, I think I did eat some of 'em. Anyway— I tell you
it's mighty important to— I was saying to Verg Gunch, just
last evening, most people don't take sufficient care of their
diges—''
"Shall we have the Gunches for our dinner, next week?''
"Why sure; you bet.''
"Now see here, George: I want you to put on your nice
dinner-jacket that evening.''
"Rats! The rest of 'em won't want to dress.''
"Of course they will. You remember when you didn't dress
for the Littlefields' supper-party, and all the rest did, and how
embarrassed you were.''
"Embarrassed, hell! I wasn't embarrassed. Everybody
knows I can put on as expensive a Tux. as anybody else, and
I should worry if I don't happen to have it on sometimes. All
a darn nuisance, anyway. All right for a woman, that stays
around the house all the time, but when a fellow's worked
like the dickens all day, he doesn't want to go and hustle his
head off getting into the soup-and-fish for a lot of folks that
he's seen in just reg'lar ordinary clothes that same day.''
"You know you enjoy being seen in one. The other evening
you admitted you were glad I'd insisted on your dressing.
You said you felt a lot better for it. And oh, Georgie, I do
wish you wouldn't say `Tux.' It's `dinner-jacket.' ''
"Rats, what's the odds?''
"Well, it's what all the nice folks say. Suppose Lucile McKelvey
heard you calling it a `Tux.' ''
"Well, that's all right now! Lucile McKelvey can't pull
anything on me! Her folks are common as mud, even if her
husband and her dad are millionaires! I suppose you're trying
to rub in your exalted social position! Well, let me tell you
that your revered paternal ancestor, Henry T., doesn't even
call it a `Tux.'! He calls it a `bobtail jacket for a ringtail
monkey,' and you couldn't get him into one unless you
chloroformed him!''
"Now don't be horrid, George.''
"Well, I don't want to be horrid, but Lord! you're getting
as fussy as Verona. Ever since she got out of college she's
been too rambunctious to live with—doesn't know what she
wants—well, I know what she wants!—all she wants is to
marry a millionaire, and live in Europe, and hold some preacher's
hand, and simultaneously at the same time stay right here
in Zenith and be some blooming kind of a socialist agitator
or boss charity-worker or some damn thing! Lord, and Ted
is just as bad! He wants to go to college, and he doesn't want
to go to college. Only one of the three that knows her own
mind is Tinka. Simply can't understand how I ever came to
have a pair of shillyshallying children like Rone and Ted.
I may not be any Rockefeller or James J. Shakespeare, but
I certainly do know my own mind, and I do keep right on
plugging along in the office and— Do you know the latest?
Far as I can figure out, Ted's new bee is he'd like to be a
movie actor and— And here I've told him a hundred times,
if he'll go to college and law-school and make good, I'll set
him up in business and— Verona just exactly as bad.
Doesn't know what she wants. Well, well, come on! Aren't
you ready yet? The girl rang the bell three minutes ago.''