17. CHAPTER XVII
I
THERE are but three or four old houses in Floral Heights,
and in Floral Heights an old house is one which was built
before 1880. The largest of these is the residence of William
Washington Eathorne, president of the First State Bank.
The Eathorne Mansion preserves the memory of the "nice
parts'' of Zenith as they appeared from 1860 to 1900. It is
a red brick immensity with gray sandstone lintels and a roof
of slate in courses of red, green, and dyspeptic yellow. There
are two anemic towers, one roofed with copper, the other
crowned with castiron ferns. The porch is like an open tomb;
it is supported by squat granite pillars above which hang
frozen cascades of brick. At one side of the house is a huge
stained-glass window in the shape of a keyhole.
But the house has an effect not at all humorous. It embodies
the heavy dignity of those Victorian financiers who
ruled the generation between the pioneers and the brisk "sales-engineers'' and created a somber oligarchy by gaining control
of banks, mills, land, railroads, mines. Out of the dozen
contradictory Zeniths which together make up the true and complete
Zenith, none is so powerful and enduring yet none so unfamiliar
to the citizens as the small, still, dry, polite, cruel
Zenith of the William Eathornes; and for that tiny hierarchy
the other Zeniths unwittingly labor and insignificantly die.
Most of the castles of the testy Victorian tetrarchs are gone
now or decayed into boarding-houses, but the Eathorne Mansion
remains virtuous and aloof, reminiscent of London, Back
Bay, Rittenhouse Square. Its marble steps are scrubbed daily,
the brass plate is reverently polished, and the lace curtains are
as prim and superior as William Washington Eathorne himself.
With a certain awe Babbitt and Chum Frink called on
Eathorne for a meeting of the Sunday School Advisory Committee;
with uneasy stillness they followed a uniformed maid
through catacombs of reception-rooms to the library. It was
as unmistakably the library of a solid old banker as Eathorne's
side-whiskers were the side-whiskers of a solid old banker. The
books were most of them Standard Sets, with the correct and
traditional touch of dim blue, dim gold, and glossy calf-skin.
The fire was exactly correct and traditional; a small, quiet,
steady fire, reflected by polished fire-irons. The oak desk
was dark and old and altogether perfect; the chairs were
gently supercilious.
Eathorne's inquiries as to the healths of Mrs. Babbitt, Miss
Babbitt, and the Other Children were softly paternal, but Babbitt
had nothing with which to answer him. It was indecent to
think of using the "How's tricks, ole socks?'' which gratified
Vergil Gunch and Frink and Howard Littlefield—men who
till now had seemed successful and urbane. Babbitt and Frink
sat politely, and politely did Eathorne observe, opening his
thin lips just wide enough to dismiss the words, "Gentlemen,
before we begin our conference—you may have felt the cold
in coming here—so good of you to save an old man the journey—
shall we perhaps have a whisky toddy?''
So well trained was Babbitt in all the conversation that
befits a Good Fellow that he almost disgraced himself with
"Rather than make trouble, and always providin' there ain't
any enforcement officers hiding in the waste-basket—'' The
words died choking in his throat. He bowed in flustered obedience.
So did Chum Frink.
Eathorne rang for the maid.
The modern and luxurious Babbitt had never seen any one
ring for a servant in a private house, except during meals.
Himself, in hotels, had rung for bell-boys, but in the house you
didn't hurt Matilda's feelings; you went out in the hall and
shouted for her. Nor had he, since prohibition, known any
one to be casual about drinking. It was extraordinary merely
to sip his toddy and not cry, "Oh, maaaaan, this hits me right
where I live!'' And always, with the ecstasy of youth meeting
greatness, he marveled, "That little fuzzy-face there, why, he
could make me or break me! If he told my banker to call
my loans—! Gosh! That quarter-sized squirt! And looking
like he hadn't got a single bit of hustle to him! I wonder—
Do we Boosters throw too many fits about pep?''
From this thought he shuddered away, and listened devoutly
to Eathorne's ideas on the advancement of the Sunday School,
which were very clear and very bad.
Diffidently Babbitt outlined his own suggestions:
"I think if you analyze the needs of the school, in fact, going
right at it as if it was a merchandizing problem, of course the
one basic and fundamental need is growth. I presume we're
all agreed we won't be satisfied till we build up the biggest
darn Sunday School in the whole state, so the Chatham Road
Presbyterian won't have to take anything off anybody. Now
about jazzing up the campaign for prospects: they've already
used contesting teams, and given prizes to the kids that bring
in the most members. And they made a mistake there: the
prizes were a lot of folderols and doodads like poetry books
and illustrated Testaments, instead of something a real live
kid would want to work for, like real cash or a speedometer
for his motor cycle. Course I suppose it's all fine and dandy
to illustrate the lessons with these decorated book-marks and
blackboard drawings and so on, but when it comes down to
real he-hustling, getting out and drumming up customers—or
members, I mean, why, you got to make it worth a fellow's
while.
"Now, I want to propose two stunts: First, divide the Sunday
School into four armies, depending on age. Everybody
gets a military rank in his own army according to how many
members he brings in, and the duffers that lie down on us and
don't bring in any, they remain privates. The pastor and
superintendent rank as generals. And everybody has got to
give salutes and all the rest of that junk, just like a regular
army, to make 'em feel it's worth while to get rank.
"Then, second: Course the school has its advertising committee,
but, Lord, nobody ever really works good—nobody
works well just for the love of it. The thing to do is to be
practical and up-to-date, and hire a real paid press-agent for
the Sunday School-some newspaper fellow who can give part
of his time.''
"Sure, you bet!'' said Chum Frink.
"Think of the nice juicy bits he could get in!'' Babbitt
crowed. "Not only the big, salient, vital facts, about how fast
the Sunday School—and the collection—is growing, but a lot
of humorous gossip and kidding: about how some blowhard
fell down on his pledge to get new members, or the good time
the Sacred Trinity class of girls had at their wieniewurst party.
And on the side, if he had time, the press-agent might even
boost the lessons themselves—do a little advertising for all
the Sunday Schools in town, in fact. No use being hoggish
toward the rest of 'em, providing we can keep the bulge on 'em
in membership. Frinstance, he might get the papers to—
Course I haven't got a literary training like Frink here, and
I'm just guessing how the pieces ought to be written, but
take frinstance, suppose the week's lesson is about Jacob; well,
the press-agent might get in something that would have a fine
moral, and yet with a trick headline that'd get folks to read it—
say like: Jake Fools the Old Man; Makes Getaway with Girl
and Bankroll. See how I mean? That'd get their interest!
Now, course, Mr. Eathorne, you're conservative, and maybe
you feel these stunts would be undignified, but honestly, I
believe they'd bring home the bacon.''
Eathorne folded his hands on his comfortable little belly
and purred like an aged pussy:
"May I say, first, that I have been very much pleased by
your analysis of the situation, Mr. Babbitt. As you surmise,
it's necessary in My Position to be conservative, and perhaps
endeavor to maintain a certain standard of dignity. Yet I
think you'll find me somewhat progressive. In our bank, for
example, I hope I may say that we have as modern a method
of publicity and advertising as any in the city. Yes, I fancy
you'll find us oldsters quite cognizant of the shifting spiritual
values of the age. Yes, oh yes. And so, in fact, it pleases
me to be able to say that though personally I might prefer the
sterner Presbyterianism of an earlier era—''
Babbitt finally gathered that Eathorne was willing.
Chum Frink suggested as part-time press-agent one Kenneth
Escott, reporter on the Advocate-Times.
They parted on a high plane of amity and Christian helpfulness.
Babbitt did not drive home, but toward the center of the
city. He wished to be by himself and exult over the beauty
of intimacy with William Washington Eathorne.
II
A snow-blanched evening of ringing pavements and eager
lights.
Great golden lights of trolley-cars sliding along the packed
snow of the roadway. Demure lights of little houses. The
belching glare of a distant foundry, wiping out the sharp-edged
stars. Lights of neighborhood drug stores where friends
gossiped, well pleased, after the day's work.
The green light of a police-station, and greener radiance
on the snow; the drama of a patrol-wagon—gong beating like
a terrified heart, headlights scorching the crystal-sparkling
street, driver not a chauffeur but a policeman proud in uniform,
another policeman perilously dangling on the step at the
back, and a glimpse of the prisoner. A murderer, a burglar,
a coiner cleverly trapped?
An enormous graystone church with a rigid spire; dim light
in the Parlors, and cheerful droning of choir-practise. The
quivering green mercury-vapor light of a photo-engraver's
loft. Then the storming lights of down-town; parked cars with
ruby tail-lights; white arched entrances to movie theaters, like
frosty mouths of winter caves; electric signs—serpents and
little dancing men of fire; pink-shaded globes and scarlet jazz
music in a cheap up-stairs dance-hall; lights of Chinese restaurants,
lanterns painted with cherry-blossoms and with pagodas,
hung against lattices of lustrous gold and black. Small
dirty lamps in small stinking lunchrooms. The smart shopping-district,
with rich and quiet light on crystal pendants and furs
and suave surfaces of polished wood in velvet-hung reticent
windows. High above the street, an unexpected square hanging
in the darkness, the window of an office where some one was
working late, for a reason unknown and stimulating. A man
meshed in bankruptcy, an ambitious boy, an oil-man suddenly
become rich?
The air was shrewd, the snow was deep in uncleared alleys,
and beyond the city, Babbitt knew, were hillsides of snow-drift
among wintry oaks, and the curving ice-enchanted river.
He loved his city with passionate wonder. He lost the
accumulated weariness of business—worry and expansive oratory;
he felt young and potential. He was ambitious. It was
not enough to be a Vergil Gunch, an Orville Jones. No.
"They're bully fellows, simply lovely, but they haven't got
any finesse.'' No. He was going to be an Eathorne; delicately
rigorous, coldly powerful.
"That's the stuff. The wallop in the velvet mitt. Not let
anybody get fresh with you. Been getting careless about my
diction. Slang. Colloquial. Cut it out. I was first-rate at
rhetoric in college. Themes on— Anyway, not bad. Had
too much of this hooptedoodle and good-fellow stuff. I—
Why couldn't I organize a bank of my own some day? And
Ted succeed me!''
He drove happily home, and to Mrs. Babbitt he was a William
Washington Eathorne, but she did not notice it.
III
Young Kenneth Escott, reporter on the Advocate-Times
was appointed press-agent of the Chatham Road Presbyterian
Sunday School. He gave six hours a week to it. At least
he was paid for giving six hours a week. He had friends on
the Press and the Gazette and he was not (officially) known
as a press-agent. He procured a trickle of insinuating items
about neighborliness and the Bible, about class-suppers, jolly
but educational, and the value of the Prayer-life in attaining
financial success.
The Sunday School adopted Babbitt's system of military
ranks. Quickened by this spiritual refreshment, it had a
boom. It did not become the largest school in Zenith—the
Central Methodist Church kept ahead of it by methods which
Dr. Drew scored as "unfair, undignified, un-American, ungentlemanly,
and unchristian''—but it climbed from fourth place
to second, and there was rejoicing in heaven, or at least in that
portion of heaven included in the parsonage of Dr. Drew,
while Babbitt had much praise and good repute.
He had received the rank of colonel on the general staff of
the school. He was plumply pleased by salutes on the street
from unknown small boys; his ears were tickled to ruddy
ecstasy by hearing himself called "Colonel;'' and if he did not
attend Sunday School merely to be thus exalted, certainly he
thought about it all the way there.
He was particularly pleasant to the press-agent, Kenneth
Escott; he took him to lunch at the Athletic Club and had him
at the house for dinner.
Like many of the cocksure young men who forage about
cities in apparent contentment and who express their cynicism
in supercilious slang, Escott was shy and lonely. His shrewd
starveling face broadened with joy at dinner, and he blurted,
"Gee whillikins, Mrs. Babbitt, if you knew how good it is to
have home eats again!''
Escott and Verona liked each other. All evening they
"talked about ideas.'' They discovered that they were Radicals.
True, they were sensible about it. They agreed that
all communists were criminals; that this vers libre was tommy-rot;
and that while there ought to be universal disarmament,
of course Great Britain and the United States must, on behalf
of oppressed small nations, keep a navy equal to the tonnage
of all the rest of the world. But they were so revolutionary
that they predicted (to Babbitt's irritation) that there
would some day be a Third Party which would give trouble to
the Republicans and Democrats.
Escott shook hands with Babbitt three times, at parting.
Babbitt mentioned his extreme fondness for Eathorne.
Within a week three newspapers presented accounts of Babbitt's
sterling labors for religion, and all of them tactfully mentioned
William Washington Eathorne as his collaborator.
Nothing had brought Babbitt quite so much credit at the
Elks, the Athletic Club, and the Boosters'. His friends had
always congratulated him on his oratory, but in their praise
was doubt, for even in speeches advertising the city there was
something highbrow and degenerate, like writing poetry. But
now Orville Jones shouted across the Athletic dining-room,
"Here's the new director of the First State Bank!'' Grover
Butterbaugh, the eminent wholesaler of plumbers' supplies,
chuckled, "Wonder you mix with common folks, after holding
Eathorne's hand!'' And Emil Wengert, the jeweler, was at last
willing to discuss buying a house in Dorchester.
IV
When the Sunday School campaign was finished, Babbitt
suggested to Kenneth Escott, "Say, how about doing a little
boosting for Doc Drew personally?''
Escott grinned. "You trust the doc to do a little boosting
for himself, Mr. Babbitt! There's hardly a week goes by
without his ringing up the paper to say if we'll chase a reporter
up to his Study, he'll let us in on the story about the swell
sermon he's going to preach on the wickedness of short skirts,
or the authorship of the Pentateuch. Don't you worry about
him. There's just one better publicity-grabber in town, and
that's this Dora Gibson Tucker that runs the Child Welfare
and the Americanization League, and the only reason she's got
Drew beaten is because she has got some brains!''
"Well, now Kenneth, I don't think you ought to talk that
way about the doctor. A preacher has to watch his interests,
hasn't he? You remember that in the Bible about—about
being diligent in the Lord's business, or something?''
"All right, I'll get something in if you want me to, Mr. Babbitt,
but I'll have to wait till the managing editor is out of
town, and then blackjack the city editor.''
Thus it came to pass that in the Sunday Advocate-Times,
under a picture of Dr. Drew at his earnestest, with eyes alert,
jaw as granite, and rustic lock flamboyant, appeared an inscription—
a wood-pulp tablet conferring twenty-four hours'
immortality:
The Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew, M.A., pastor of the
beautiful Chatham Road Presbyterian Church in lovely
Floral Heights, is a wizard soul-winner. He holds the local
record for conversions. During his shepherdhood an average
of almost a hundred sin-weary persons per year have
declared their resolve to lead a new life and have found a
harbor of refuge and peace.
Everything zips at the Chatham Road Church. The subsidiary
organizations are keyed to the top-notch of efficiency.
Dr. Drew is especially keen on good congregational singing.
Bright cheerful hymns are used at every meeting, and
the special Sing Services attract lovers of music and professionals
from all parts of the city.
On the popular lecture platform as well as in the pulpit
Dr. Drew is a renowned word-painter, and during the
course of the year he receives literally scores of invitations
to speak at varied functions both here and elsewhere.
V
Babbitt let Dr. Drew know that he was responsible for
this tribute. Dr. Drew called him "brother,'' and shook his
hand a great many times.
During the meetings of the Advisory Committee, Babbitt
had hinted that he would be charmed to invite Eathorne to
dinner, but Eathorne had murmured, "So nice of you—old
man, now—almost never go out.'' Surely Eathorne would not
refuse his own pastor. Babbitt said boyishly to Drew:
"Say, doctor, now we've put this thing over, strikes me it's
up to the dominie to blow the three of us to a dinner!''
"Bully! You bet! Delighted!'' cried Dr. Drew, in his
manliest way. (Some one had once told him that he talked
like the late President Roosevelt.)
"And, uh, say, doctor, be sure and get Mr. Eathorne to come.
Insist on it. It's, uh— I think he sticks around home too
much for his own health.''
Eathorne came.
It was a friendly dinner. Babbitt spoke gracefully of the
stabilizing and educational value of bankers to the community.
They were, he said, the pastors of the fold of commerce. For
the first time Eathorne departed from the topic of Sunday
Schools, and asked Babbitt about the progress of his business.
Babbitt answered modestly, almost filially.
A few months later, when he had a chance to take part in the
Street Traction Company's terminal deal, Babbitt did not care
to go to his own bank for a loan. It was rather a quiet sort
of deal and, if it had come out, the Public might not have
understood. He went to his friend Mr. Eathorne; he was
welcomed, and received the loan as a private venture; and they
both profited in their pleasant new association.
After that, Babbitt went to church regularly, except on
spring Sunday mornings which were obviously meant for motoring.
He announced to Ted, "I tell you, boy, there's no stronger
bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church,
and no better place to make friends who'll help you to gain your
rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!''