Babbitt
toward youth, as youth. The girl who especially disturbed him--though he
had never spoken to her--was the last manicure girl on the right in the
Pompeian Barber Shop. She was small, swift, black-haired, smiling. She
was nineteen, perhaps, or twenty. She wore thin salmon-colored blouses
which exhibited her shoulders and her black-ribboned camisoles.
He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim. As always, he
felt disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber
Shop. Then, for the first time, he overthrew his sense of guilt.
“Doggone it, I don’t have to go here if I don’t want to! I don’t own the
Reeves Building! These barbers got nothing on me! I’ll doggone well get
my hair cut where I doggone well want to! Don’t want to hear anything
more about it! I’m through standing by people--unless I want to. It
doesn’t get you anywhere. I’m through!”
The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh,
largest and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith. Curving marble
steps with a rail of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the
barber shop. The interior was of black and white and crimson tiles,
with a sensational ceiling of burnished gold, and a fountain in which a
massive nymph forever emptied a scarlet cornucopia. Forty barbers and
nine manicure girls worked desperately, and at the door six colored
porters lurked to greet the customers, to care reverently for their hats
and collars, to lead them to a place of waiting where, on a carpet like
a tropic isle in the stretch of white stone floor, were a dozen leather
chairs and a table heaped with magazines.
Babbitt’s porter was an obsequious gray-haired negro who did him an
honor highly esteemed in the land of Zenith--greeted him by name. Yet
Babbitt was unhappy. His bright particular manicure girl was engaged.
She was doing the nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him.
Babbitt hated him. He thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful
system of the Pompeian was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted
into a chair.
About him was luxury, rich and delicate. One votary was having a
violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo. Boys wheeled about
miraculous electrical massage-machines. The barbers snatched steaming
towels from a machine like a howitzer of polished nickel and
disdainfully flung them away after a second’s use. On the vast marble
shelf facing the chairs were hundreds of tonics, amber and ruby and
emerald. It was flattering to Babbitt to have two personal slaves at
once--the barber and the bootblack. He would have been completely happy
if he could also have had the manicure girl. The barber snipped at his
hair and asked his opinion of the Havre de Grace races, the baseball
season, and Mayor Prout. The young negro bootblack hummed “The Camp
Meeting Blues” and polished in rhythm to his tune, drawing the shiny
shoe-rag so taut at each stroke that it snapped like a banjo string. The
barber was an excellent salesman. He made Babbitt feel rich and
important by his manner of inquiring, “What is your favorite tonic, sir?
Have you time to-day, sir, for a facial massage? Your scalp is a little
tight; shall I give you a scalp massage?”
Babbitt’s best thrill was in the shampoo. The barber made his hair
creamy with thick soap, then (as Babbitt bent over the bowl, muffled in
towels) drenched it with hot water which prickled along his scalp, and
at last ran the water ice-cold. At the shock, the sudden burning cold on
his skull, Babbitt’s heart thumped, his chest heaved, and his spine was
an electric wire. It was a sensation which broke the monotony of life.
He looked grandly about the shop as he sat up. The barber obsequiously
rubbed his wet hair and bound it in a towel as in a turban, so that
Babbitt resembled a plump pink calif on an ingenious and adjustable
throne. The barber begged (in the manner of one who was a good fellow
yet was overwhelmed by the splendors of the calif), “How about a little
Eldorado Oil Rub, sir? Very beneficial to the scalp, sir. Didn’t I give
you one the last time?”
He hadn’t, but Babbitt agreed, “Well, all right.”
With quaking eagerness he saw that his manicure girl was free.
“I don’t know, I guess I’ll have a manicure after all,” he droned, and
excitedly watched her coming, dark-haired, smiling, tender, little. The
manicuring would have to be finished at her table, and he would be able
to talk to her without the barber listening. He waited contentedly, not
trying to peep at her, while she filed his nails and the barber shaved
him and smeared on his burning cheeks all the interesting mixtures which
the pleasant minds of barbers have devised through the revolving ages.
When the barber was done and he sat opposite the girl at her table, he
admired the marble slab of it, admired the sunken set bowl with its tiny
silver taps, and admired himself for being able to frequent so costly a
place. When she withdrew his wet hand from the bowl, it was so sensitive
from the warm soapy water that he was abnormally aware of the clasp of
her firm little paw. He delighted in the pinkness and glossiness of her
nails. Her hands seemed to him more adorable than Mrs. Judique’s thin
fingers, and more elegant. He had a certain ecstasy in the pain when she
gnawed at the cuticle of his nails with a sharp knife. He struggled not
to look at the outline of her young bosom and her shoulders, the more
apparent under a film of pink chiffon. He was conscious of her as an
exquisite thing, and when he tried to impress his personality on her he
spoke as awkwardly as a country boy at his first party:
“Well, kinda hot to be working to-day.”
“Oh, yes, it is hot. You cut your own nails, last time, didn’t you!”
“Ye-es, guess I must’ve.”
“You always ought to go to a manicure.”
“Yes, maybe that’s so. I--”
“There’s nothing looks so nice as nails that are looked after good. I
always think that’s the best way to spot a real gent. There was an auto
salesman in here yesterday that claimed you could always tell a fellow’s
class by the car he drove, but I says to him, ‘Don’t be silly,’ I says;
‘the wisenheimers grab a look at a fellow’s nails when they want to tell
if he’s a tinhorn or a real gent!’”
“Yes, maybe there’s something to that. Course, that is--with a pretty
kiddy like you, a man can’t help coming to get his mitts done.”
“Yeh, I may be a kid, but I’m a wise bird, and I know nice folks when I
see um-- I can read character at a glance--and I’d never talk so frank
with a fellow if I couldn’t see he was a nice fellow.”
She smiled. Her eyes seemed to him as gentle as April pools. With great
seriousness he informed himself that “there were some roughnecks who
would think that just because a girl was a manicure girl and maybe not
awful well educated, she was no good, but as for him, he was a democrat,
and understood people,” and he stood by the assertion that this was a
fine girl, a good girl--but not too uncomfortably good. He inquired in a
voice quick with sympathy:
“I suppose you have a lot of fellows who try to get fresh with you.”
“Say, gee, do I! Say, listen, there’s some of these cigar-store sports
that think because a girl’s working in a barber shop, they can get away
with anything. The things they saaaaaay! But, believe me, I know how to
hop those birds! I just give um the north and south and ask um, ‘Say,
who do you think you’re talking to?’ and they fade away like love’s
young nightmare and oh, don’t you want a box of nail-paste? It will keep
the nails as shiny as when first manicured, harmless to apply and lasts
for days.”
“Sure, I’ll try some. Say-- Say, it’s funny; I’ve been coming here ever
since the shop opened and--” With arch surprise. “-- I don’t believe I
know your name!”
“Don’t you? My, that’s funny! I don’t know yours!”
“Now you quit kidding me! What’s the nice little name?”
“Oh, it ain’t so darn nice. I guess it’s kind of kike. But my folks
ain’t kikes. My papa’s papa was a nobleman in Poland, and there was a
gentleman in here one day, he was kind of a count or something--”
“Kind of a no-account, I guess you mean!”
“Who’s telling this, smarty? And he said he knew my papa’s papa’s folks
in Poland and they had a dandy big house. Right on a lake!” Doubtfully,
“Maybe you don’t believe it?”
“Sure. No. Really. Sure I do. Why not? Don’t think I’m kidding you,
honey, but every time I’ve noticed you I’ve said to myself, ‘That kid
has Blue Blood in her veins!’”
“Did you, honest?”
“Honest I did. Well, well, come on--now we’re friends--what’s the
darling little name?”
“Ida Putiak. It ain’t so much-a-much of a name. I always say to Ma, I
say, ‘Ma, why didn’t you name me Dolores, or something with some class
to it?’”
“Well, now, I think it’s a scrumptious name. Ida!”
“I bet I know _your_ name!”
“Well, now, not necessarily. Of course-- Oh, it isn’t so specially well
known.”
“Aren’t you Mr. Sondheim that travels for the Krackajack Kitchen Kutlery
Ko.?”
“I am not! I’m Mr. Babbitt, the real-estate broker!”
“Oh, excuse me! Oh, of course. You mean here in Zenith.”
“Yep.” With the briskness of one whose feelings have been hurt.
“Oh, sure. I’ve read your ads. They’re swell.”
“Um, well-- You might have read about my speeches.”
“Course I have! I don’t get much time to read but-- I guess you think I’m
an awfully silly little nit!”
“I think you’re a little darling!”
“Well-- There’s one nice thing about this job. It gives a girl a chance
to meet some awfully nice gentlemen and improve her mind with
conversation, and you get so you can read a guy’s character at the first
glance.”
“Look here, Ida; please don’t think I’m getting fresh--” He was hotly
reflecting that it would be humiliating to be rejected by this child,
and dangerous to be accepted. If he took her to dinner, if he were seen
by censorious friends-- But he went on ardently: “Don’t think I’m getting
fresh if I suggest it would be nice for us to go out and have a little
dinner together some evening.”
“I don’t know as I ought to but-- My gentleman-friend’s always wanting to
take me out. But maybe I could to-night.”
IV
There was no reason, he assured himself, why he shouldn’t have a quiet
dinner with a poor girl who would benefit by association with an
educated and mature person like himself. But, lest some one see them
and not understand, he would take her to Biddlemeier’s Inn, on the
outskirts of the city. They would have a pleasant drive, this hot lonely
evening, and he might hold her hand--no, he wouldn’t even do that. Ida
was complaisant; her bare shoulders showed it only too clearly; but he’d
be hanged if he’d make love to her merely because she expected it.
Then his car broke down; something had happened to the ignition. And he
_had_ to have the car this evening! Furiously he tested the spark-plugs,
stared at the commutator. His angriest glower did not seem to stir the
sulky car, and in disgrace it was hauled off to a garage. With a renewed
thrill he thought of a taxicab. There was something at once wealthy and
interestingly wicked about a taxicab.
But when he met her, on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Thornleigh,
she said, “A taxi? Why, I thought you owned a car!”
“I do. Of course I do! But it’s out of commission to-night.”
“Oh,” she remarked, as one who had heard that tale before.
All the way out to Biddlemeier’s Inn he tried to talk as an old friend,
but he could not pierce the wall of her words. With interminable
indignation she narrated her retorts to “that fresh head-barber” and the
drastic things she would do to him if he persisted in saying that she
was “better at gassing than at hoof-paring.”
At Biddlemeier’s Inn they were unable to get anything to drink. The