Babbitt
you, call on us, but show a little speed, anyway!’”
“Well, at that, it might not be so bad if you or I talked to him, except
he might not understand. He’s one of these highbrows. He can’t come
down to cases and lay his cards on the table and talk straight out from
the shoulder, like you or I can.”
“That’s right, he’s like all these highbrows.”
“That’s so, like all of ’em.”
“That’s a fact.”
They sighed, and were silent and thoughtful and happy.
The conductor came in. He had once called at Babbitt’s office, to ask
about houses. “H’ are you, Mr. Babbitt! We going to have you with us to
Chicago? This your boy?”
“Yes, this is my son Ted.”
“Well now, what do you know about that! Here I been thinking you were a
youngster yourself, not a day over forty, hardly, and you with this
great big fellow!”
“Forty? Why, brother, I’ll never see forty-five again!”
“Is that a fact! Wouldn’t hardly ’a’ thought it!”
“Yes, sir, it’s a bad give-away for the old man when he has to travel
with a young whale like Ted here!”
“You’re right, it is.” To Ted: “I suppose you’re in college now.”
Proudly, “No, not till next fall. I’m just kind of giving the diff’rent
colleges the once-over now.”
As the conductor went on his affable way, huge watch-chain jingling
against his blue chest, Babbitt and Ted gravely considered colleges.
They arrived at Chicago late at night; they lay abed in the morning,
rejoicing, “Pretty nice not to have to get up and get down to breakfast,
heh?” They were staying at the modest Eden Hotel, because Zenith
business men always stayed at the Eden, but they had dinner in the
brocade and crystal Versailles Room of the Regency Hotel. Babbitt
ordered Blue Point oysters with cocktail sauce, a tremendous steak with
a tremendous platter of French fried potatoes, two pots of coffee, apple
pie with ice cream for both of them and, for Ted, an extra piece of
mince pie.
“Hot stuff! Some feed, young fella!” Ted admired.
“Huh! You stick around with me, old man, and I’ll show you a good time!”
They went to a musical comedy and nudged each other at the matrimonial
jokes and the prohibition jokes; they paraded the lobby, arm in arm,
between acts, and in the glee of his first release from the shame which
dissevers fathers and sons Ted chuckled, “Dad, did you ever hear the one
about the three milliners and the judge?”
When Ted had returned to Zenith, Babbitt was lonely. As he was trying to
make alliance between Offutt and certain Milwaukee interests which
wanted the race-track plot, most of his time was taken up in waiting for
telephone calls.... Sitting on the edge of his bed, holding the portable
telephone, asking wearily, “Mr. Sagen not in yet? Didn’ he leave any
message for me? All right, I’ll hold the wire.” Staring at a stain on
the wall, reflecting that it resembled a shoe, and being bored by this
twentieth discovery that it resembled a shoe. Lighting a cigarette;
then, bound to the telephone with no ash-tray in reach, wondering what
to do with this burning menace and anxiously trying to toss it into the
tiled bathroom. At last, on the telephone, “No message, eh? All right,
I’ll call up again.”
One afternoon he wandered through snow-rutted streets of which he had
never heard, streets of small tenements and two-family houses and
marooned cottages. It came to him that he had nothing to do, that there
was nothing he wanted to do. He was bleakly lonely in the evening, when
he dined by himself at the Regency Hotel. He sat in the lobby afterward,
in a plush chair bedecked with the Saxe-Coburg arms, lighting a cigar
and looking for some one who would come and play with him and save him
from thinking. In the chair next to him (showing the arms of Lithuania)
was a half-familiar man, a large red-faced man with pop eyes and a
deficient yellow mustache. He seemed kind and insignificant, and as
lonely as Babbitt himself. He wore a tweed suit and a reluctant orange
tie.
It came to Babbitt with a pyrotechnic crash. The melancholy stranger was
Sir Gerald Doak.
Instinctively Babbitt rose, bumbling, “How’re you, Sir Gerald? ’Member
we met in Zenith, at Charley McKelvey’s? Babbitt’s my name--real
estate.”
“Oh! How d’you do.” Sir Gerald shook hands flabbily.
Embarrassed, standing, wondering how he could retreat, Babbitt
maundered, “Well, I suppose you been having a great trip since we saw
you in Zenith.”
“Quite. British Columbia and California and all over the place,” he said
doubtfully, looking at Babbitt lifelessly.
“How did you find business conditions in British Columbia? Or I suppose
maybe you didn’t look into ’em. Scenery and sport and so on?”
“Scenery? Oh, capital. But business conditions-- You know, Mr. Babbitt,
they’re having almost as much unemployment as we are.” Sir Gerald was
speaking warmly now.
“So? Business conditions not so doggone good, eh?”
“No, business conditions weren’t at all what I’d hoped to find them.”
“Not good, eh?”
“No, not--not really good.”
“That’s a darn shame. Well-- I suppose you’re waiting for somebody to
take you out to some big shindig, Sir Gerald.”
“Shindig? Oh. Shindig. No, to tell you the truth, I was wondering what
the deuce I could do this evening. Don’t know a soul in Tchicahgo. I
wonder if you happen to know whether there’s a good theater in this
city?”
“Good? Why say, they’re running grand opera right now! I guess maybe
you’d like that.”
“Eh? Eh? Went to the opera once in London. Covent Garden sort of thing.
Shocking! No, I was wondering if there was a good cinema--movie.”
Babbitt was sitting down, hitching his chair over, shouting, “Movie?
Say, Sir Gerald, I supposed of course you had a raft of dames waiting to
lead you out to some soirée--”
“God forbid!”
“--but if you haven’t, what do you say you and me go to a movie? There’s
a peach of a film at the Grantham: Bill Hart in a bandit picture.”
“Right-o! Just a moment while I get my coat.”
Swollen with greatness, slightly afraid lest the noble blood of
Nottingham change its mind and leave him at any street corner, Babbitt
paraded with Sir Gerald Doak to the movie palace and in silent bliss sat
beside him, trying not to be too enthusiastic, lest the knight despise
his adoration of six-shooters and broncos. At the end Sir Gerald
murmured, “Jolly good picture, this. So awfully decent of you to take
me. Haven’t enjoyed myself so much for weeks. All these Hostesses--they
never let you go to the cinema!”
“The devil you say!” Babbitt’s speech had lost the delicate refinement
and all the broad A’s with which he had adorned it, and become hearty
and natural. “Well, I’m tickled to death you liked it, Sir Gerald.”
They crawled past the knees of fat women into the aisle; they stood in
the lobby waving their arms in the rite of putting on overcoats. Babbitt
hinted, “Say, how about a little something to eat? I know a place where
we could get a swell rarebit, and we might dig up a little drink--that
is, if you ever touch the stuff.”
“Rather! But why don’t you come to my room? I’ve some Scotch--not half
bad.”
“Oh, I don’t want to use up all your hootch. It’s darn nice of you,
but-- You probably want to hit the hay.”
Sir Gerald was transformed. He was beefily yearning. “Oh really, now; I
haven’t had a decent evening for so long! Having to go to all these
dances. No chance to discuss business and that sort of thing. Do be a
good chap and come along. Won’t you?”
“Will I? You bet! I just thought maybe-- Say, by golly, it does do a
fellow good, don’t it, to sit and visit about business conditions, after
he’s been to these balls and masquerades and banquets and all that
society stuff. I often feel that way in Zenith. Sure, you bet I’ll
come.”
“That’s awfully nice of you.” They beamed along the street. “Look here,
old chap, can you tell me, do American cities always keep up this
dreadful social pace? All these magnificent parties?”
“Go on now, quit your kidding! Gosh, you with court balls and functions
and everything--”
“No, really, old chap! Mother and I--Lady Doak, I should say, we usually
play a hand of bezique and go to bed at ten. Bless my soul, I couldn’t
keep up your beastly pace! And talking! All your American women, they
know so much--culture and that sort of thing. This Mrs. McKelvey--your
friend--”
“Yuh, old Lucile. Good kid.”
“--she asked me which of the galleries I liked best in Florence. Or was
it in Firenze? Never been in Italy in my life! And primitives. Did I
like primitives. Do you know what the deuce a primitive is?”
“Me? I should say not! But I know what a discount for cash is.”
“Rather! So do I, by George! But primitives!”
“Yuh! Primitives!”
They laughed with the sound of a Boosters’ luncheon.
Sir Gerald’s room was, except for his ponderous and durable English
bags, very much like the room of George F. Babbitt; and quite in the
manner of Babbitt he disclosed a huge whisky flask, looked proud and
hospitable, and chuckled, “Say, when, old chap.”
It was after the third drink that Sir Gerald proclaimed, “How do you
Yankees get the notion that writing chaps like Bertrand Shaw and this
Wells represent us? The real business England, we think those chaps are
traitors. Both our countries have their comic Old Aristocracy--you know,
old county families, hunting people and all that sort of thing--and we
both have our wretched labor leaders, but we both have a backbone of
sound business men who run the whole show.”
“You bet. Here’s to the real guys!”
“I’m with you! Here’s to ourselves!”
It was after the fourth drink that Sir Gerald asked humbly, “What do you
think of North Dakota mortgages?” but it was not till after the fifth
that Babbitt began to call him “Jerry,” and Sir Gerald confided, “I say,
do you mind if I pull off my boots?” and ecstatically stretched his
knightly feet, his poor, tired, hot, swollen feet out on the bed.
After the sixth, Babbitt irregularly arose. “Well, I better be hiking
along. Jerry, you’re a regular human being! I wish to thunder we’d been
better acquainted in Zenith. Lookit. Can’t you come back and stay with
me a while?”
“So sorry--must go to New York to-morrow. Most awfully sorry, old boy. I
haven’t enjoyed an evening so much since I’ve been in the States. Real
talk. Not all this social rot. I’d never have let them give me the
beastly title--and I didn’t get it for nothing, eh?--if I’d thought I’d
have to talk to women about primitives and polo! Goodish thing to have
in Nottingham, though; annoyed the mayor most frightfully when I got it;
and of course the missus likes it. But nobody calls me ‘Jerry’ now--” He
was almost weeping. “--and nobody in the States has treated me like a
friend till to-night! Good-by, old chap, good-by! Thanks awfully!”
“Don’t mention it, Jerry. And remember whenever you get to Zenith, the
latch-string is always out.”
“And don’t forget, old boy, if you ever come to Nottingham, Mother and
I will be frightfully glad to see you. I shall tell the fellows in
Nottingham your ideas about Visions and Real Guys--at our next Rotary
Club luncheon.”
IV
Babbitt lay abed at his hotel, imagining the Zenith Athletic Club asking
him, “What kind of a time d’you have in Chicago?” and his answering,
“Oh, fair; ran around with Sir Gerald Doak a lot;” picturing himself
meeting Lucile McKelvey and admonishing her, “You’re all right, Mrs.
Mac, when you aren’t trying to pull this highbrow pose. It’s just as
Gerald Doak says to me in Chicago--oh, yes, Jerry’s an old friend of
mine--the wife and I are thinking of running over to England to stay
with Jerry in his castle, next year--and he said to me, ‘Georgie, old
bean, I like Lucile first-rate, but you and me, George, we got to make
her get over this highty-tighty hooptediddle way she’s got.”