Babbitt
were the Littlefields; and Howard Littlefield at times became so
statistical that Babbitt longed for the refreshment of Gunch’s, “Well,
old lemon-pie-face, what’s the good word?”
Immediately after lunch Mrs. Babbitt began to set the table for the
seven-thirty dinner to the McKelveys, and Babbitt was, by order, home at
four. But they didn’t find anything for him to do, and three times Mrs.
Babbitt scolded, “Do please try to keep out of the way!” He stood in the
door of the garage, his lips drooping, and wished that Littlefield or
Sam Doppelbrau or somebody would come along and talk to him. He saw Ted
sneaking about the corner of the house.
“What’s the matter, old man?” said Babbitt.
“Is that you, thin, owld one? Gee, Ma certainly is on the warpath! I
told her Rone and I would jus’ soon not be let in on the fiesta
to-night, and she bit me. She says I got to take a bath, too. But, say,
the Babbitt men will be some lookers to-night! Little Theodore in a
dress-suit!”
“The Babbitt men!” Babbitt liked the sound of it. He put his arm about
the boy’s shoulder. He wished that Paul Riesling had a daughter, so that
Ted might marry her. “Yes, your mother is kind of rouncing round, all
right,” he said, and they laughed together, and sighed together, and
dutifully went in to dress.
The McKelveys were less than fifteen minutes late.
Babbitt hoped that the Doppelbraus would see the McKelveys’ limousine,
and their uniformed chauffeur, waiting in front.
The dinner was well cooked and incredibly plentiful, and Mrs. Babbitt
had brought out her grandmother’s silver candlesticks. Babbitt worked
hard. He was good. He told none of the jokes he wanted to tell. He
listened to the others. He started Maxwell off with a resounding, “Let’s
hear about your trip to the Yellowstone.” He was laudatory, extremely
laudatory. He found opportunities to remark that Dr. Angus was a
benefactor to humanity, Maxwell and Howard Littlefield profound
scholars, Charles McKelvey an inspiration to ambitious youth, and Mrs.
McKelvey an adornment to the social circles of Zenith, Washington, New
York, Paris, and numbers of other places.
But he could not stir them. It was a dinner without a soul. For no
reason that was clear to Babbitt, heaviness was over them and they spoke
laboriously and unwillingly.
He concentrated on Lucile McKelvey, carefully not looking at her
blanched lovely shoulder and the tawny silken band which supported her
frock.
“I suppose you’ll be going to Europe pretty soon again, won’t you?” he
invited.
“I’d like awfully to run over to Rome for a few weeks.”
“I suppose you see a lot of pictures and music and curios and everything
there.”
“No, what I really go for is: there’s a little _trattoria_ on the Via
della Scrofa where you get the best _fettuccine_ in the world.”
“Oh, I-- Yes. That must be nice to try that. Yes.”
At a quarter to ten McKelvey discovered with profound regret that his
wife had a headache. He said blithely, as Babbitt helped him with his
coat, “We must lunch together some time and talk over the old days.”
When the others had labored out, at half-past ten, Babbitt turned to his
wife, pleading, “Charley said he had a corking time and we must
lunch--said they wanted to have us up to the house for dinner before
long.”
She achieved, “Oh, it’s just been one of those quiet evenings that are
often so much more enjoyable than noisy parties where everybody talks at
once and doesn’t really settle down to--nice quiet enjoyment.”
But from his cot on the sleeping-porch he heard her weeping, slowly,
without hope.
IV
For a month they watched the social columns, and waited for a return
dinner-invitation.
As the hosts of Sir Gerald Doak, the McKelveys were headlined all the
week after the Babbitts’ dinner. Zenith ardently received Sir Gerald
(who had come to America to buy coal). The newspapers interviewed him on
prohibition, Ireland, unemployment, naval aviation, the rate of
exchange, tea-drinking _versus_ whisky-drinking, the psychology of
American women, and daily life as lived by English county families. Sir
Gerald seemed to have heard of all those topics. The McKelveys gave him
a Singhalese dinner, and Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, society editor of the
_Advocate-Times_, rose to her highest larknote. Babbitt read aloud at
breakfast-table:
’Twixt the original and Oriental decorations, the strange and
delicious food, and the personalities both of the distinguished
guests, the charming hostess and the noted host, never has Zenith
seen a more recherche affair than the Ceylon dinner-dance given
last evening by Mr. and Mrs. Charles McKelvey to Sir Gerald Doak.
Methought as we--fortunate one!--were privileged to view that fairy
and foreign scene, nothing at Monte Carlo or the choicest
ambassadorial sets of foreign capitals could be more lovely. It is
not for nothing that Zenith is in matters social rapidly becoming
known as the choosiest inland city in the country.
Though he is too modest to admit it, Lord Doak gives a cachet to
our smart quartier such as it has not received since the
ever-memorable visit of the Earl of Sittingbourne. Not only is he
of the British peerage, but he is also, on dit, a leader of the
British metal industries. As he comes from Nottingham, a favorite
haunt of Robin Hood, though now, we are informed by Lord Doak, a
live modern city of 275,573 inhabitants, and important lace as well
as other industries, we like to think that perhaps through his
veins runs some of the blood, both virile red and bonny blue, of
that earlier lord o’ the good greenwood, the roguish Robin.
The lovely Mrs. McKelvey never was more fascinating than last
evening in her black net gown relieved by dainty bands of silver
and at her exquisite waist a glowing cluster of Aaron Ward roses.
Babbitt said bravely, “I hope they don’t invite us to meet this Lord
Doak guy. Darn sight rather just have a nice quiet little dinner with
Charley and the Missus.”
At the Zenith Athletic Club they discussed it amply. “I s’pose we’ll
have to call McKelvey ‘Lord Chaz’ from now on,” said Sidney Finkelstein.
“It beats all get-out,” meditated that man of data, Howard Littlefield,
“how hard it is for some people to get things straight. Here they call
this fellow ‘Lord Doak’ when it ought to be ‘Sir Gerald.’”
Babbitt marvelled, “Is that a fact! Well, well! ‘Sir Gerald,’ eh? That’s
what you call um, eh? Well, sir, I’m glad to know that.”
Later he informed his salesmen, “It’s funnier ’n a goat the way some
folks that, just because they happen to lay up a big wad, go
entertaining famous foreigners, don’t have any more idea ’n a rabbit how
to address ’em so’s to make ’em feel at home!”
That evening, as he was driving home, he passed McKelvey’s limousine and
saw Sir Gerald, a large, ruddy, pop-eyed, Teutonic Englishman whose
dribble of yellow mustache gave him an aspect sad and doubtful. Babbitt
drove on slowly, oppressed by futility. He had a sudden, unexplained,
and horrible conviction that the McKelveys were laughing at him.
He betrayed his depression by the violence with which he informed his
wife, “Folks that really tend to business haven’t got the time to waste
on a bunch like the McKelveys. This society stuff is like any other
hobby; if you devote yourself to it, you get on. But I like to have a
chance to visit with you and the children instead of all this idiotic
chasing round.”
They did not speak of the McKelveys again.
V
It was a shame, at this worried time, to have to think about the
Overbrooks.
Ed Overbrook was a classmate of Babbitt who had been a failure. He had a
large family and a feeble insurance business out in the suburb of
Dorchester. He was gray and thin and unimportant. He had always been
gray and thin and unimportant. He was the person whom, in any group, you
forgot to introduce, then introduced with extra enthusiasm. He had
admired Babbitt’s good-fellowship in college, had admired ever since his
power in real estate, his beautiful house and wonderful clothes. It
pleased Babbitt, though it bothered him with a sense of responsibility.
At the class-dinner he had seen poor Overbrook, in a shiny blue serge
business-suit, being diffident in a corner with three other failures. He
had gone over and been cordial: “Why, hello, young Ed! I hear you’re
writing all the insurance in Dorchester now. Bully work!”
They recalled the good old days when Overbrook used to write poetry.
Overbrook embarrassed him by blurting, “Say, Georgie, I hate to think of
how we been drifting apart. I wish you and Mrs. Babbitt would come to
dinner some night.”
Babbitt boomed, “Fine! Sure! Just let me know. And the wife and I want
to have you at the house.” He forgot it, but unfortunately Ed Overbrook
did not. Repeatedly he telephoned to Babbitt, inviting him to dinner.
“Might as well go and get it over,” Babbitt groaned to his wife. “But
don’t it simply amaze you the way the poor fish doesn’t know the first
thing about social etiquette? Think of him ’phoning me, instead of his
wife sitting down and writing us a regular bid! Well, I guess we’re
stuck for it. That’s the trouble with all this class-brother
hooptedoodle.”
He accepted Overbrook’s next plaintive invitation, for an evening two
weeks off. A dinner two weeks off, even a family dinner, never seems so
appalling, till the two weeks have astoundingly disappeared and one
comes dismayed to the ambushed hour. They had to change the date,
because of their own dinner to the McKelveys, but at last they gloomily
drove out to the Overbrooks’ house in Dorchester.
It was miserable from the beginning. The Overbrooks had dinner at
six-thirty, while the Babbitts never dined before seven. Babbitt
permitted himself to be ten minutes late. “Let’s make it as short as
possible. I think we’ll duck out quick. I’ll say I have to be at the
office extra early to-morrow,” he planned.
The Overbrook house was depressing. It was the second story of a wooden
two-family dwelling; a place of baby-carriages, old hats hung in the
hall, cabbage-smell, and a Family Bible on the parlor table. Ed
Overbrook and his wife were as awkward and threadbare as usual, and the
other guests were two dreadful families whose names Babbitt never caught
and never desired to catch. But he was touched, and disconcerted, by the
tactless way in which Overbrook praised him: “We’re mighty proud to have
old George here to-night! Of course you’ve all read about his speeches
and oratory in the papers--and the boy’s good-looking, too, eh?--but
what I always think of is back in college, and what a great old mixer
he was, and one of the best swimmers in the class.”
Babbitt tried to be jovial; he worked at it; but he could find nothing
to interest him in Overbrook’s timorousness, the blankness of the other
guests, or the drained stupidity of Mrs. Overbrook, with her spectacles,
drab skin, and tight-drawn hair. He told his best Irish story, but it
sank like soggy cake. Most bleary moment of all was when Mrs. Overbrook,
peering out of her fog of nursing eight children and cooking and
scrubbing, tried to be conversational.
“I suppose you go to Chicago and New York right along, Mr. Babbitt,” she
prodded.
“Well, I get to Chicago fairly often.”
“It must be awfully interesting. I suppose you take in all the
theaters.”
“Well, to tell the truth, Mrs. Overbrook, thing that hits me best is a
great big beefsteak at a Dutch restaurant in the Loop!”
They had nothing more to say. Babbitt was sorry, but there was no hope;
the dinner was a failure. At ten, rousing out of the stupor of
meaningless talk, he said as cheerily as he could, “’Fraid we got to be