II
They had labored, these solid citizens. Twenty years before,
the hill on which Floral Heights was spread, with its
bright roofs and immaculate turf and amazing comfort, had
been a wilderness of rank second-growth elms and oaks and
maples. Along the precise streets were still a few wooded
vacant lots, and the fragment of an old orchard. It was brilliant
to-day; the apple boughs were lit with fresh leaves like
torches of green fire. The first white of cherry blossoms
flickered down a gully, and robins clamored.
Babbitt sniffed the earth, chuckled at the hysteric robins
as he would have chuckled at kittens or at a comic movie.
He was, to the eye, the perfect office-going executive—a well-fed man in a correct brown soft hat and frameless spectacles,
smoking a large cigar, driving a good motor along a semi-suburban
parkway. But in him was some genius of authentic
love for his neighborhood, his city, his clan. The winter was
over; the time was come for the building, the visible growth,
which to him was glory. He lost his dawn depression; he was
ruddily cheerful when he stopped on Smith Street to leave
the brown trousers, and to have the gasoline-tank filled.
The familiarity of the rite fortified him: the sight of the
tall red iron gasoline-pump, the hollow-tile and terra-cotta
garage, the window full of the most agreeable accessories—
shiny casings, spark-plugs with immaculate porcelain jackets
tire-chains of gold and silver. He was flattered by the friendliness
with which Sylvester Moon, dirtiest and most skilled
of motor mechanics, came out to serve him. "Mornin', Mr.
Babbitt!'' said Moon, and Babbitt felt himself a person of
importance, one whose name even busy garagemen remembered—
not one of these cheap-sports flying around in flivvers.
He admired the ingenuity of the automatic dial, clicking off
gallon by gallon; admired the smartness of the sign: "A fill
in time saves getting stuck—gas to-day 31 cents''; admired
the rhythmic gurgle of the gasoline as it flowed into the tank,
and the mechanical regularity with which Moon turned the
handle.
"How much we takin' to-day?'' asked Moon, in a manner
which combined the independence of the great specialist, the
friendliness of a familiar gossip, and respect for a man of
weight in the community, like George F. Babbitt.
"Fill 'er up.''
"Who you rootin' for for Republican candidate, Mr. Babbitt?''
"It's too early to make any predictions yet. After all,
there's still a good month and two weeks—no, three weeks—
must be almost three weeks—well, there's more than six
weeks in all before the Republican convention, and I feel a
fellow ought to keep an open mind and give all the candidates
a show—look 'em all over and size 'em up, and then
decide carefully.''
"That's a fact, Mr. Babbitt.''
"But I'll tell you—and my stand on this is just the same as
it was four years ago, and eight years ago, and it'll be my
stand four years from now—yes, and eight years from now!
What I tell everybody, and it can't be too generally understood,
is that what we need first, last, and all the time is a
good, sound business administration!''
"By golly, that's right!''
"How do those front tires look to you?''
"Fine! Fine! Wouldn't be much work for garages if
everybody looked after their car the way you do.''
"Well, I do try and have some sense about it.'' Babbitt
paid his bill, said adequately, "Oh, keep the change,'' and
drove off in an ecstasy of honest self-appreciation. It was
with the manner of a Good Samaritan that he shouted at a
respectable-looking man who was waiting for a trolley car,
"Have a lift?'' As the man climbed in Babbitt condescended,
"Going clear down-town? Whenever I see a fellow waiting
for a trolley, I always make it a practice to give him a lift
—unless, of course, he looks like a bum.''
"Wish there were more folks that were so generous with
their machines,'' dutifully said the victim of benevolence.
"Oh, no, 'tain't a question of generosity, hardly. Fact, I
always feel—I was saying to my son just the other night—
it's a fellow's duty to share the good things of this world with
his neighbors, and it gets my goat when a fellow gets stuck
on himself and goes around tooting his horn merely because
he's charitable.''
The victim seemed unable to find the right answer. Babbitt
boomed on:
"Pretty punk service the Company giving us on these car-lines.
Nonsense to only run the Portland Road cars once
every seven minutes. Fellow gets mighty cold on a winter
morning, waiting on a street corner with the wind nipping
at his ankles.''
"That's right. The Street Car Company don't care a damn
what kind of a deal they give us. Something ought to happen
to 'em.''
Babbitt was alarmed. "But still, of course it won't do
to just keep knocking the Traction Company and not realize
the difficulties they're operating under, like these cranks that
want municipal ownership. The way these workmen hold up
the Company for high wages is simply a crime, and of course
the burden falls on you and me that have to pay a seven-cent
fare! Fact, there's remarkable service on all their lines
—considering.''
"Well—'' uneasily.
"Darn fine morning,'' Babbitt explained. "Spring coming
along fast.''
"Yes, it's real spring now.''
The victim had no originality, no wit, and Babbitt fell
into a great silence and devoted himself to the game of beating
trolley cars to the corner: a spurt, a tail-chase, nervous
speeding between the huge yellow side of the trolley and the
jagged row of parked motors, shooting past just as the trolley
stopped—a rare game and valiant.
And all the while he was conscious of the loveliness of
Zenith. For weeks together he noticed nothing but clients
and the vexing To Rent signs of rival brokers. To-day, in
mysterious malaise, he raged or rejoiced with equal nervous
swiftness, and to-day the light of spring was so winsome that
he lifted his head and saw.
He admired each district along his familiar route to the
office: The bungalows and shrubs and winding irregular drive
ways of Floral Heights. The one-story shops on Smith Street,
a glare of plate-glass and new yellow brick; groceries and
laundries and drug-stores to supply the more immediate needs
of East Side housewives. The market gardens in Dutch Hollow,
their shanties patched with corrugated iron and stolen
doors. Billboards with crimson goddesses nine feet tall advertising
cinema films, pipe tobacco, and talcum powder. The
old "mansions'' along Ninth Street, S. E., like aged dandies
in filthy linen; wooden castles turned into boarding-houses,
with muddy walks and rusty hedges, jostled by fast-intruding
garages, cheap apartment-houses, and fruit-stands conducted
by bland, sleek Athenians. Across the belt of railroad-tracks,
factories with high-perched water-tanks and tall stacks-factories
producing condensed milk, paper boxes, lighting-fixtures,
motor cars. Then the business center, the thickening darting
traffic, the crammed trolleys unloading, and high doorways of
marble and polished granite.
It was big—and Babbitt respected bigness in anything; in
mountains, jewels, muscles, wealth, or words. He was, for a
spring-enchanted moment, the lyric and almost unselfish lover
of Zenith. He thought of the outlying factory suburbs; of
the Chaloosa River with its strangely eroded banks; of the
orchard-dappled Tonawanda Hills to the North, and all the
fat dairy land and big barns and comfortable herds. As he
dropped his passenger he cried, "Gosh, I feel pretty good this
morning!''