Babbitt
“Well, Joe, how d’you feel about hitting the trail, and getting away
from these darn soft summerites and these women and all?”
“All right, Mr. Babbitt.”
“What do you say we go over to Box Car Pond--they tell me the shack
there isn’t being used--and camp out?”
“Well, all right, Mr. Babbitt, but it’s nearer to Skowtuit Pond, and you
can get just about as good fishing there.”
“No, I want to get into the real wilds.”
“Well, all right.”
“We’ll put the old packs on our backs and get into the woods and really
hike.”
“I think maybe it would be easier to go by water, through Lake Chogue.
We can go all the way by motor boat--flat-bottom boat with an Evinrude.”
“No, sir! Bust up the quiet with a chugging motor? Not on your life! You
just throw a pair of socks in the old pack, and tell ’em what you want
for eats. I’ll be ready soon’s you are.”
“Most of the sports go by boat, Mr. Babbitt. It’s a long walk.”
“Look here, Joe: are you objecting to walking?”
“Oh, no, I guess I can do it. But I haven’t tramped that far for sixteen
years. Most of the sports go by boat. But I can do it if you say so-- I
guess.” Joe walked away in sadness.
Babbitt had recovered from his touchy wrath before Joe returned. He
pictured him as warming up and telling the most entertaining stories.
But Joe had not yet warmed up when they took the trail. He persistently
kept behind Babbitt, and however much his shoulders ached from the
pack, however sorely he panted, Babbitt could hear his guide panting
equally. But the trail was satisfying: a path brown with pine-needles
and rough with roots, among the balsams, the ferns, the sudden groves of
white birch. He became credulous again, and rejoiced in sweating. When
he stopped to rest he chuckled, “Guess we’re hitting it up pretty good
for a couple o’ old birds, eh?”
“Uh-huh,” admitted Joe.
“This is a mighty pretty place. Look, you can see the lake down through
the trees. I tell you, Joe, you don’t appreciate how lucky you are to
live in woods like this, instead of a city with trolleys grinding and
typewriters clacking and people bothering the life out of you all the
time! I wish I knew the woods like you do. Say, what’s the name of that
little red flower?”
Rubbing his back, Joe regarded the flower resentfully. “Well, some folks
call it one thing and some calls it another I always just call it Pink
Flower.”
Babbitt blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned into blind
plodding. He was submerged in weariness. His plump legs seemed to go on
by themselves, without guidance, and he mechanically wiped away the
sweat which stung his eyes. He was too tired to be consciously glad as,
after a sun-scourged mile of corduroy tote-road through a swamp where
flies hovered over a hot waste of brush, they reached the cool shore of
Box Car Pond. When he lifted the pack from his back he staggered from
the change in balance, and for a moment could not stand erect. He lay
beneath an ample-bosomed maple tree near the guest-shack, and joyously
felt sleep running through his veins.
He awoke toward dusk, to find Joe efficiently cooking bacon and eggs and
flapjacks for supper, and his admiration of the woodsman returned. He
sat on a stump and felt virile.
“Joe, what would you do if you had a lot of money? Would you stick to
guiding, or would you take a claim ’way back in the woods and be
independent of people?”
For the first time Joe brightened. He chewed his cud a second, and
bubbled, “I’ve often thought of that! If I had the money, I’d go down to
Tinker’s Falls and open a swell shoe store.”
After supper Joe proposed a game of stud-poker but Babbitt refused with
brevity, and Joe contentedly went to bed at eight. Babbitt sat on the
stump, facing the dark pond, slapping mosquitos. Save the snoring guide,
there was no other human being within ten miles. He was lonelier than he
had ever been in his life. Then he was in Zenith.
He was worrying as to whether Miss McGoun wasn’t paying too much for
carbon paper. He was at once resenting and missing the persistent
teasing at the Roughnecks’ Table. He was wondering what Zilla Riesling
was doing now. He was wondering whether, after the summer’s maturity of
being a garageman, Ted would “get busy” in the university. He was
thinking of his wife. “If she would only--if she wouldn’t be so darn
satisfied with just settling down-- No! I won’t! I won’t go back! I’ll be
fifty in three years. Sixty in thirteen years. I’m going to have some
fun before it’s too late. I don’t care! I will!”
He thought of Ida Putiak, of Louetta Swanson, of that nice widow--what
was her name?--Tanis Judique?--the one for whom he’d found the flat. He
was enmeshed in imaginary conversations. Then:
“Gee, I can’t seem to get away from thinking about folks!”
Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never
run away from himself.
That moment he started for Zenith. In his journey there was no
appearance of flight, but he was fleeing, and four days afterward he was
on the Zenith train. He knew that he was slinking back not because it
was what he longed to do but because it was all he could do. He scanned
again his discovery that he could never run away from Zenith and family
and office, because in his own brain he bore the office and the family
and every street and disquiet and illusion of Zenith.
“But I’m going to--oh, I’m going to start something!” he vowed, and he
tried to make it valiant.
CHAPTER XXVI
I
As he walked through the train, looking for familiar faces, he saw only
one person whom he knew, and that was Seneca Doane, the lawyer who,
after the blessings of being in Babbitt’s own class at college and of
becoming a corporation-counsel, had turned crank, had headed
farmer-labor tickets and fraternized with admitted socialists. Though he
was in rebellion, naturally Babbitt did not care to be seen talking with
such a fanatic, but in all the Pullmans he could find no other
acquaintance, and reluctantly he halted. Seneca Doane was a slight,
thin-haired man, rather like Chum Frink except that he hadn’t Frink’s
grin. He was reading a book called “The Way of All Flesh.” It looked
religious to Babbitt, and he wondered if Doane could possibly have been
converted and turned decent and patriotic.
“Why, hello, Doane,” he said.
Doane looked up. His voice was curiously kind. “Oh! How do, Babbitt.”
“Been away, eh?”
“Yes, I’ve been in Washington.”
“Washington, eh? How’s the old Government making out?”
“It’s-- Won’t you sit down?”
“Thanks. Don’t care if I do. Well, well! Been quite a while since I’ve
had a good chance to talk to you, Doane. I was, uh-- Sorry you didn’t
turn up at the last class-dinner.”
“Oh--thanks.”
“How’s the unions coming? Going to run for mayor again?”
Doane seemed restless. He was fingering the pages of his book. He said
“I might” as though it didn’t mean anything in particular, and he
smiled.
Babbitt liked that smile, and hunted for conversation: “Saw a bang-up
cabaret in New York: the ‘Good-Morning Cutie’ bunch at the Hotel
Minton.”
“Yes, they’re pretty girls. I danced there one evening.”
“Oh. Like dancing?”
“Naturally. I like dancing and pretty women and good food better than
anything else in the world. Most men do.”
“But gosh, Doane, I thought you fellows wanted to take all the good eats
and everything away from us.”
“No. Not at all. What I’d like to see is the meetings of the Garment
Workers held at the Ritz, with a dance afterward. Isn’t that
reasonable?”
“Yuh, might be good idea, all right. Well-- Shame I haven’t seen more of
you, recent years. Oh, say, hope you haven’t held it against me, my
bucking you as mayor, going on the stump for Prout. You see, I’m an
organization Republican, and I kind of felt--”
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t fight me. I have no doubt you’re
good for the Organization. I remember--in college you were an unusually
liberal, sensitive chap. I can still recall your saying to me that you
were going to be a lawyer, and take the cases of the poor for nothing,
and fight the rich. And I remember I said I was going to be one of the
rich myself, and buy paintings and live at Newport. I’m sure you
inspired us all.”
“Well.... Well.... I’ve always aimed to be liberal.” Babbitt was
enormously shy and proud and self-conscious; he tried to look like the
boy he had been a quarter-century ago, and he shone upon his old friend
Seneca Doane as he rumbled, “Trouble with a lot of these fellows, even
the live wires and some of ’em that think they’re forward-looking, is
they aren’t broad-minded and liberal. Now, I always believe in giving
the other fellow a chance, and listening to his ideas.”
“That’s fine.”
“Tell you how I figure it: A little opposition is good for all of us, so
a fellow, especially if he’s a business man and engaged in doing the
work of the world, ought to be liberal.”
“Yes--”
“I always say a fellow ought to have Vision and Ideals. I guess some of
the fellows in my business think I’m pretty visionary, but I just let
’em think what they want to and go right on--same as you do.... By
golly, this is nice to have a chance to sit and visit and kind of, you
might say, brush up on our ideals.”
“But of course we visionaries do rather get beaten. Doesn’t it bother
you?”
“Not a bit! Nobody can dictate to me what I think!”
“You’re the man I want to help me. I want you to talk to some of the
business men and try to make them a little more liberal in their
attitude toward poor Beecher Ingram.”
“Ingram? But, why, he’s this nut preacher that got kicked out of the
Congregationalist Church, isn’t he, and preaches free love and
sedition?”
This, Doane explained, was indeed the general conception of Beecher
Ingram, but he himself saw Beecher Ingram as a priest of the brotherhood
of man, of which Babbitt was notoriously an upholder. So would Babbitt
keep his acquaintances from hounding Ingram and his forlorn little
church?
“You bet! I’ll call down any of the boys I hear getting funny about
Ingram,” Babbitt said affectionately to his dear friend Doane.
Doane warmed up and became reminiscent. He spoke of student days in
Germany, of lobbying for single tax in Washington, of international
labor conferences. He mentioned his friends, Lord Wycombe, Colonel
Wedgwood, Professor Piccoli. Babbitt had always supposed that Doane
associated only with the I. W. W., but now he nodded gravely, as one who
knew Lord Wycombes by the score, and he got in two references to Sir
Gerald Doak. He felt daring and idealistic and cosmopolitan.
Suddenly, in his new spiritual grandeur, he was sorry for Zilla
Riesling, and understood her as these ordinary fellows at the Boosters’
Club never could.
II
Five hours after he had arrived in Zenith and told his wife how hot it
was in New York, he went to call on Zilla. He was buzzing with ideas and
forgiveness. He’d get Paul released; he’d do things, vague but highly
benevolent things, for Zilla; he’d be as generous as his friend Seneca
Doane.
He had not seen Zilla since Paul had shot her, and he still pictured her
as buxom, high-colored, lively, and a little blowsy. As he drove up to
her boarding-house, in a depressing back street below the wholesale
district, he stopped in discomfort. At an upper window, leaning on her
elbow, was a woman with the features of Zilla, but she was bloodless and
aged, like a yellowed wad of old paper crumpled into wrinkles. Where
Zilla had bounced and jiggled, this woman was dreadfully still.
He waited half an hour before she came into the boarding-house parlor.
Fifty times he opened the book of photographs of the Chicago World’s
Fair of 1893, fifty times he looked at the picture of the Court of
Honor.