Babbitt
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.”
V
Before he followed his wife, Babbitt stood at the westernmost window of
their room. This residential settlement, Floral Heights, was on a rise;
and though the center of the city was three miles away-- Zenith had
between three and four hundred thousand inhabitants now--he could see
the top of the Second National Tower, an Indiana limestone building of
thirty-five stories.
Its shining walls rose against April sky to a simple cornice like a
streak of white fire. Integrity was in the tower, and decision. It bore
its strength lightly as a tall soldier. As Babbitt stared, the
nervousness was soothed from his face, his slack chin lifted in
reverence. All he articulated was “That’s one lovely sight!” but he was
inspired by the rhythm of the city; his love of it renewed. He beheld
the tower as a temple-spire of the religion of business, a faith
passionate, exalted, surpassing common men; and as he clumped down to
breakfast he whistled the ballad “Oh, by gee, by gosh, by jingo” as
though it were a hymn melancholy and noble.
CHAPTER II
I
Relieved of Babbitt’s bumbling and the soft grunts with which his wife