Babbitt
fifteen thousand dollars in lobbying for sane tax measures in the State
Legislature. This resolution had a good deal to say about Menaces to
Sound Business and clearing the Wheels of Progress from ill-advised and
short-sighted obstacles.
The Committee on Committees reported, and with startled awe Babbitt
learned that he had been appointed a member of the Committee on Torrens
Titles.
He rejoiced, “I said it was going to be a great year! Georgie, old son,
you got big things ahead of you! You’re a natural-born orator and a good
mixer and-- Zowie!”
IX
There was no formal entertainment provided for the last evening. Babbitt
had planned to go home, but that afternoon the Jered Sassburgers of
Pioneer suggested that Babbitt and W. A. Rogers have tea with them at
the Catalpa Inn.
Teas were not unknown to Babbitt--his wife and he earnestly attended
them at least twice a year--but they were sufficiently exotic to make
him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of
the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and
waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce
sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as
smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met two
days before, so they were calling each other “Georgie” and “Sassy.”
Sassburger said prayerfully, “Say, boys, before you go, seeing this is
the last chance, I’ve _got it_, up in my room, and Miriam here is the
best little mixologist in the Stati Unidos, like us Italians say.”
With wide flowing gestures, Babbitt and Rogers followed the Sassburgers
to their room. Mrs. Sassburger shrieked, “Oh, how terrible!” when she
saw that she had left a chemise of sheer lavender crêpe on the bed. She
tucked it into a bag, while Babbitt giggled, “Don’t mind us; we’re a
couple o’ little divvils!”
Sassburger telephoned for ice, and the bell-boy who brought it said,
prosaically and unprompted, “Highball glasses or cocktail?” Miriam
Sassburger mixed the cocktails in one of those dismal, nakedly white
water-pitchers which exist only in hotels. When they had finished the
first round she proved by intoning “Think you boys could stand
another--you got a dividend coming” that, though she was but a woman,
she knew the complete and perfect rite of cocktail-drinking.
Outside, Babbitt hinted to Rogers, “Say, W. A., old rooster, it comes
over me that I could stand it if we didn’t go back to the lovin’ wives,
this handsome _Abend_, but just kind of stayed in Monarch and threw a
party, heh?”
“George, you speak with the tongue of wisdom and sagashiteriferousness.
El Wing’s wife has gone on to Pittsburg. Let’s see if we can’t gather
him in.”
At half-past seven they sat in their room, with Elbert Wing and two
up-state delegates. Their coats were off, their vests open, their faces
red, their voices emphatic. They were finishing a bottle of corrosive
bootlegged whisky and imploring the bell-boy, “Say, son, can you get us
some more of this embalming fluid?” They were smoking large cigars and
dropping ashes and stubs on the carpet. With windy guffaws they were
telling stories. They were, in fact, males in a happy state of nature.
Babbitt sighed, “I don’t know how it strikes you hellions, but
personally I like this busting loose for a change, and kicking over a
couple of mountains and climbing up on the North Pole and waving the
aurora borealis around.”
The man from Sparta, a grave, intense youngster, babbled, “Say! I guess
I’m as good a husband as the run of the mill, but God, I do get so tired
of going home every evening, and nothing to see but the movies. That’s
why I go out and drill with the National Guard. I guess I got the
nicest little wife in my burg, but-- Say! Know what I wanted to do as a
kid? Know what I wanted to do? Wanted to be a big chemist. Tha’s what I
wanted to do. But Dad chased me out on the road selling kitchenware, and
here I’m settled down--settled for _life_--not a chance! Oh, who the
devil started this funeral talk? How ’bout ’nother lil drink? ‘And
a-noth-er drink wouldn’ do ’s ’ny harmmmmmmm.’”
“Yea. Cut the sob-stuff,” said W. A. Rogers genially. “You boys know I’m
the village songster? Come on now--sing up:
Said the old Obadiah to the young Obadiah,
‘I am dry, Obadiah, I am dry.’
Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah,
‘So am I, Obadiah, so am I.’”
X
They had dinner in the Moorish Grillroom of the Hotel Sedgwick.
Somewhere, somehow, they seemed to have gathered in two other comrades:
a manufacturer of fly-paper and a dentist. They all drank whisky from
tea-cups, and they were humorous, and never listened to one another,
except when W. A. Rogers “kidded” the Italian waiter.
“Say, Gooseppy,” he said innocently, “I want a couple o’ fried
elephants’ ears.”
“Sorry, sir, we haven’t any.”
“Huh? No elephants’ ears? What do you know about that!” Rogers turned to
Babbitt. “Pedro says the elephants’ ears are all out!”
“Well, I’ll be switched!” said the man from Sparta, with difficulty
hiding his laughter.
“Well, in that case, Carlo, just bring me a hunk o’ steak and a couple
o’ bushels o’ French fried potatoes and some peas,” Rogers went on. “I
suppose back in dear old sunny It’ the Eyetalians get their fresh
garden peas out of the can.”
“No, sir, we have very nice peas in Italy.”
“Is that a fact! Georgie, do you hear that? They get their fresh garden
peas out of the garden, in Italy! By golly, you live and learn, don’t
you, Antonio, you certainly do live and learn, if you live long enough
and keep your strength. All right, Garibaldi, just shoot me in that
steak, with about two printers’-reams of French fried spuds on the
promenade deck, _comprehenez-vous_, Michelovitch Angeloni?”
Afterward Elbert Wing admired, “Gee, you certainly did have that poor
Dago going, W. A. He couldn’t make you out at all!”
In the _Monarch Herald_, Babbitt found an advertisement which he read
aloud, to applause and laughter:
Old Colony Theatre
Shake the Old Dogs to the
WROLLICKING WRENS
The bonniest bevy of beauteous
bathing babes in burlesque.
Pete Menutti and his
Oh, Gee, Kids.
This is the straight steer, Benny, the painless chicklets of the
Wrollicking Wrens are the cuddlingest bunch that ever hit town.
Steer the feet, get the card board, and twist the pupils to the
PDQest show ever. You will get 111% on your kale in this fun-fest.
The Calroza Sisters are sure some lookers and will give you a run
for your gelt. Jock Silbersteen is one of the pepper lads and slips
you a dose of real laughter. Shoot the up and down to Jackson and
West for graceful tappers. They run 1-2 under the wire. Provin and
Adams will blow the blues in their laugh skit “Hootch Mon!”
Something doing, boys. Listen to what the Hep Bird twitters.
“Sounds like a juicy show to me. Let’s all take it in,” said Babbitt.
But they put off departure as long as they could. They were safe while
they sat here, legs firmly crossed under the table, but they felt
unsteady; they were afraid of navigating the long and slippery floor of
the grillroom under the eyes of the other guests and the too-attentive
waiters.
When they did venture, tables got in their way, and they sought to cover
embarrassment by heavy jocularity at the coatroom. As the girl handed
out their hats, they smiled at her, and hoped that she, a cool and
expert judge, would feel that they were gentlemen. They croaked at one
another, “Who owns the bum lid?” and “You take a good one, George; I’ll
take what’s left,” and to the check-girl they stammered, “Better come
along, sister! High, wide, and fancy evening ahead!” All of them tried
to tip her, urging one another, “No! Wait! Here! I got it right here!”
Among them, they gave her three dollars.
XI
Flamboyantly smoking cigars they sat in a box at the burlesque show,
their feet up on the rail, while a chorus of twenty daubed, worried, and
inextinguishably respectable grandams swung their legs in the more
elementary chorus-evolutions, and a Jewish comedian made vicious fun of
Jews. In the entr’actes they met other lone delegates. A dozen of them
went in taxicabs out to Bright Blossom Inn, where the blossoms were made
of dusty paper festooned along a room low and stinking, like a
cow-stable no longer wisely used.
Here, whisky was served openly, in glasses. Two or three clerks, who on
pay-day longed to be taken for millionaires, sheepishly danced with
telephone-girls and manicure-girls in the narrow space between the
tables. Fantastically whirled the professionals, a young man in sleek
evening-clothes and a slim mad girl in emerald silk, with amber hair
flung up as jaggedly as flames. Babbitt tried to dance with her. He
shuffled along the floor, too bulky to be guided, his steps unrelated to
the rhythm of the jungle music, and in his staggering he would have
fallen, had she not held him with supple kindly strength. He was blind
and deaf from prohibition-era alcohol; he could not see the tables, the
faces. But he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant warmth.
When she had firmly returned him to his group, he remembered, by a
connection quite untraceable, that his mother’s mother had been Scotch,
and with head thrown back, eyes closed, wide mouth indicating ecstasy,
he sang, very slowly and richly, “Loch Lomond.”
But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly companionship. The man
from Sparta said he was a “bum singer,” and for ten minutes Babbitt
quarreled with him, in a loud, unsteady, heroic indignation. They called
for drinks till the manager insisted that the place was closed. All the
while Babbitt felt a hot raw desire for more brutal amusements. When W.
A. Rogers drawled, “What say we go down the line and look over the
girls?” he agreed savagely. Before they went, three of them secretly
made appointments with the professional dancing girl, who agreed “Yes,
yes, sure, darling” to everything they said, and amiably forgot them.
As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch, down streets of
small brown wooden cottages of workmen, characterless as cells, as they
rattled across warehouse-districts which by drunken night seemed vast
and perilous, as they were borne toward the red lights and violent
automatic pianos and the stocky women who simpered, Babbitt was
frightened. He wanted to leap from the taxicab, but all his body was a
murky fire, and he groaned, “Too late to quit now,” and knew that he did
not want to quit.
There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on the way. A broker
from Minnemagantic said, “Monarch is a lot sportier than Zenith. You
Zenith tightwads haven’t got any joints like these here.” Babbitt raged,
“That’s a dirty lie! Snothin’ you can’t find in Zenith. Believe me, we
got more houses and hootch-parlors an’ all kinds o’ dives than any burg
in the state.”
He realized they were laughing at him; he desired to fight; and forgot
it in such musty unsatisfying experiments as he had not known since
college.
In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his desire for rebellion was
partly satisfied. He had retrograded to a shame-faced contentment. He
was irritable. He did not smile when W. A. Rogers complained, “Ow, what
a head! I certainly do feel like the wrath of God this morning. Say! I
know what was the trouble! Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze
last night.”
Babbitt’s excursion was never known to his family, nor to any one in
Zenith save Rogers and Wing. It was not officially recognized even by