Babbitt
black and woolly gray, a dog rich in leisure and in meditation,
scratched and grunted and slept. The thick sunlight was lavish on the
bright water, on the rim of gold-green balsam boughs, the silver birches
and tropic ferns, and across the lake it burned on the sturdy shoulders
of the mountains. Over everything was a holy peace.
Silent, they loafed on the edge of the wharf, swinging their legs above
the water. The immense tenderness of the place sank into Babbitt, and
he murmured, “I’d just like to sit here--the rest of my life--and
whittle--and sit. And never hear a typewriter. Or Stan Graff fussing in
the ’phone. Or Rone and Ted scrapping. Just sit. Gosh!”
He patted Paul’s shoulder. “How does it strike you, old snoozer?”
“Oh, it’s darn good, Georgie. There’s something sort of eternal about
it.”
For once, Babbitt understood him.
III
Their launch rounded the bend; at the head of the lake, under a mountain
slope, they saw the little central dining-shack of their hotel and the
crescent of squat log cottages which served as bedrooms. They landed,
and endured the critical examination of the habitués who had been at the
hotel for a whole week. In their cottage, with its high stone fireplace,
they hastened, as Babbitt expressed it, to “get into some regular
he-togs.” They came out; Paul in an old gray suit and soft white shirt;
Babbitt in khaki shirt and vast and flapping khaki trousers. It was
excessively new khaki; his rimless spectacles belonged to a city office;
and his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a discordant noise
in the place. But with infinite satisfaction he slapped his legs and
crowed, “Say, this is getting back home, eh?”
They stood on the wharf before the hotel. He winked at Paul and drew
from his back pocket a plug of chewing-tobacco, a vulgarism forbidden in
the Babbitt home. He took a chew, beaming and wagging his head as he
tugged at it. “Um! Um! Maybe I haven’t been hungry for a wad of
eating-tobacco! Have some?”
They looked at each other in a grin of understanding. Paul took the
plug, gnawed at it. They stood quiet, their jaws working. They solemnly
spat, one after the other, into the placid water. They stretched
voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs. From beyond the
mountains came the shuffling sound of a far-off train. A trout leaped,
and fell back in a silver circle. They sighed together.
IV
They had a week before their families came. Each evening they planned to
get up early and fish before breakfast. Each morning they lay abed till
the breakfast-bell, pleasantly conscious that there were no efficient
wives to rouse them. The mornings were cold; the fire was kindly as they
dressed.
Paul was distressingly clean, but Babbitt reveled in a good sound
dirtiness, in not having to shave till his spirit was moved to it. He
treasured every grease spot and fish-scale on his new khaki trousers.
All morning they fished unenergetically, or tramped the dim and
aqueous-lighted trails among rank ferns and moss sprinkled with crimson
bells. They slept all afternoon, and till midnight played stud-poker
with the guides. Poker was a serious business to the guides. They did
not gossip; they shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity
menacing to the “sports;” and Joe Paradise, king of guides, was
sarcastic to loiterers who halted the game even to scratch.
At midnight, as Paul and he blundered to their cottage over the pungent
wet grass, and pine-roots confusing in the darkness, Babbitt rejoiced
that he did not have to explain to his wife where he had been all
evening.
They did not talk much. The nervous loquacity and opinionation of the
Zenith Athletic Club dropped from them. But when they did talk they
slipped into the naïve intimacy of college days. Once they drew their
canoe up to the bank of Sunasquam Water, a stream walled in by the dense
green of the hardhack. The sun roared on the green jungle but in the
shade was sleepy peace, and the water was golden and rippling. Babbitt
drew his hand through the cool flood, and mused:
“We never thought we’d come to Maine together!”
“No. We’ve never done anything the way we thought we would. I expected
to live in Germany with my granddad’s people, and study the fiddle.”
“That’s so. And remember how I wanted to be a lawyer and go into
politics? I still think I might have made a go of it. I’ve kind of got
the gift of the gab--anyway, I can think on my feet, and make some kind
of a spiel on most anything, and of course that’s the thing you need in
politics. By golly, Ted’s going to law-school, even if I didn’t! Well-- I
guess it’s worked out all right. Myra’s been a fine wife. And Zilla
means well, Paulibus.”
“Yes. Up here, I figure out all sorts of plans to keep her amused. I
kind of feel life is going to be different, now that we’re getting a
good rest and can go back and start over again.”
“I hope so, old boy.” Shyly: “Say, gosh, it’s been awful nice to sit
around and loaf and gamble and act regular, with you along, you old
horse-thief!”
“Well, you know what it means to me, Georgie. Saved my life.”
The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove
they were good rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Babbitt whistling
while Paul hummed, they paddled back to the hotel.
V
Though it was Paul who had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the
protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry, while Babbitt
sank into irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness.
At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and for him sought
amusements; by the end of the week Paul was nurse, and Babbitt accepted
favors with the condescension one always shows a patient nurse.
The day before their families arrived, the women guests at the hotel
bubbled, “Oh, isn’t it nice! You must be so excited;” and the
proprieties compelled Babbitt and Paul to look excited. But they went to
bed early and grumpy.
When Myra appeared she said at once, “Now, we want you boys to go on
playing around just as if we weren’t here.”
The first evening, he stayed out for poker with the guides, and she said
in placid merriment, “My! You’re a regular bad one!” The second evening,
she groaned sleepily, “Good heavens, are you going to be out every
single night?” The third evening, he didn’t play poker.
He was tired now in every cell. “Funny! Vacation doesn’t seem to have
done me a bit of good,” he lamented. “Paul’s frisky as a colt, but I
swear, I’m crankier and nervouser than when I came up here.”
He had three weeks of Maine. At the end of the second week he began to
feel calm, and interested in life. He planned an expedition to climb
Sachem Mountain, and wanted to camp overnight at Box Car Pond. He was
curiously weak, yet cheerful, as though he had cleansed his veins of
poisonous energy and was filling them with wholesome blood.
He ceased to be irritated by Ted’s infatuation with a waitress (his
seventh tragic affair this year); he played catch with Ted, and with
pride taught him to cast a fly in the pine-shadowed silence of Skowtuit
Pond.
At the end he sighed, “Hang it, I’m just beginning to enjoy my vacation.
But, well, I feel a lot better. And it’s going to be one great year!
Maybe the Real Estate Board will elect me president, instead of some
fuzzy old-fashioned faker like Chan Mott.”
On the way home, whenever he went into the smoking-compartment he felt
guilty at deserting his wife and angry at being expected to feel guilty,
but each time he triumphed, “Oh, this is going to be a great year, a
great old year!”
CHAPTER XII
I
All the way home from Maine, Babbitt was certain that he was a changed
man. He was converted to serenity. He was going to cease worrying about
business. He was going to have more “interests”--theaters, public
affairs, reading. And suddenly, as he finished an especially heavy
cigar, he was going to stop smoking.
He invented a new and perfect method. He would buy no tobacco; he would
depend on borrowing it; and, of course, he would be ashamed to borrow
often. In a spasm of righteousness he flung his cigar-case out of the
smoking-compartment window. He went back and was kind to his wife about
nothing in particular; he admired his own purity, and decided,
“Absolutely simple. Just a matter of will-power.” He started a magazine
serial about a scientific detective. Ten miles on, he was conscious that
he desired to smoke. He ducked his head, like a turtle going into its
shell; he appeared uneasy; he skipped two pages in his story and didn’t
know it. Five miles later, he leaped up and sought the porter. “Say, uh,
George, have you got a--” The porter looked patient. “Have you got a
time-table?” Babbitt finished. At the next stop he went out and bought a
cigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he finished
it down to an inch stub.
Four days later he again remembered that he had stopped smoking, but he
was too busy catching up with his office-work to keep it remembered.
II
Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby. “No sense a man’s
working his fool head off. I’m going out to the Game three times a
week. Besides, fellow ought to support the home team.”
He did go and support the team, and enhance the glory of Zenith, by
yelling “Attaboy!” and “Rotten!” He performed the rite scrupulously. He
wore a cotton handkerchief about his collar; he became sweaty; he opened
his mouth in a wide loose grin; and drank lemon soda out of a bottle. He
went to the Game three times a week, for one week. Then he compromised
on watching the _Advocate-Times_ bulletin-board. He stood in the
thickest and steamiest of the crowd, and as the boy up on the lofty
platform recorded the achievements of Big Bill Bostwick, the pitcher,
Babbitt remarked to complete strangers, “Pretty nice! Good work!” and
hastened back to the office.
He honestly believed that he loved baseball. It is true that he hadn’t,
in twenty-five years, himself played any baseball except back-lot catch
with Ted--very gentle, and strictly limited to ten minutes. But the game
was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and
sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called “patriotism” and “love of
sport.”
As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering,
“Guess better hustle.” All about him the city was hustling, for
hustling’s sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the
hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another
trolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across
the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express
elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food
which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, “Jus’
shave me once over. Gotta hustle.” Men were feverishly getting rid of
visitors in offices adorned with the signs, “This Is My Busy Day” and
“The Lord Created the World in Six Days--You Can Spiel All You Got to
Say in Six Minutes.” Men who had made five thousand, year before last,
and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and
parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and
the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty
thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the
vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered.
Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down with nothing
much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were
hustling.
III
Every Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country club and hustled
through nine holes of golf as a rest after the week’s hustle.
In Zenith it was as necessary for a Successful Man to belong to a