 CHAPTER XVII There are but three or four old houses in Floral Heights, and in Floral Heights an old house is one which was built before 1880. The largest of these is the residence of William Washington Ethorn, President of the First State Bank. The Ethorn mansion preserves the memory of the nice parts of Zenith. As they appeared from 1860 to 1900, it is a red brick immensity with gray sandstone lintels and a roof of slate in courses of red, green, and disseptic yellow. There are two anemic towers, one roofed with copper, the other crowned with cast iron ferns. The porch is like an open tomb. It is supported by squat granite pillars above which hang frozen cascades of brick. At one side of the house is a huge stained glass window in the shape of a keyhole. But the house has an effect not at all humorous. It embodies the heavy dignity of those Victorian financiers who ruled the generation between the pioneers and the brisk sales engineers, and created a somber oligarchy by gaining control of banks, mills, land, railroads, mines. Out of the dozen contradictory Zeniths, which together make up the true and complete Zenith, none is so powerful and enduring, yet none so unfamiliar to the citizens as the small, still dry polite, cruel Zenith of the William Estorns. And for that, tiny hierarchy, the other Zeniths unwittingly labor and insignificantly tie. Most of the castles of the testy Victorian terracks are gone now, or decayed into boarding houses. But the ethorn mansion remains, virtuous and aloof. Reminiscent of London, Black Bay, right in house square, its marble steps are scrubbed daily, the brass plate is reverently polished, and the lace curtains are as prim and superior as William Washington ethorn himself. With a certain awe, Babet and Chum Frank called on ethorn for a meeting of the Sunday School Advisory Committee. With uneasy stillness they followed a uniform made through the catacombs of reception rooms to the library. It was as unmistakably the library of a solid old banker as ethorn's side whiskers, were the side whiskers of a solid old banker. The books were most of them standard sets, with the correct and traditional touch of dim blue, dim gold, and glossy calfskin. The fire was exactly correct and traditional, a small, quiet, steady fire, reflected by polished fire irons. The oak desk was dark and old and altogether perfect. The chairs were gently supercilious. Ethorn's inquiries as to the health of Mrs. Babet, Miss Babet, and the other children were softly parental, but Babet had nothing with which to answer him. It was indecent to think of using the house-trick-sole socks, which gratified Virgil Gunch and Frank in Howard Littlefield, men who till now had seemed successful in her bane. Babet and Frank sat politely and, politely, did ethorn observe, opening his thin lips just wide enough to dismiss the words, Gentlemen, before we begin our conference you may have felt the cold incoming in here so good of you to save an old man the journey. Shall we perhaps have a whiskey-totty? So well-trained was Babet in all the conversation that it fits a good fellow, that he almost disgraced himself with, rather than make trouble and always providing there ain't any enforcement of officers hiding in the wastebasket. The words died choking in his throat. He bowed in flustered obedience, so did chum Frank. Ethorn rang for the maid. The modern and luxurious Babet had never seen any one ring for a servant in a private house except during meals. Himself in hotels had rung for bell-boys, but in the house you didn't hurt Matilda's feelings. You went out in the hall and shouted for her, nor had he since prohibition known any one to be casual about drinking. It was extraordinary, merely to sip his totty and not cry, Oh, mama, this hits me right where I live. And always with the ecstasy of youth meeting greatness. He marveled. A little fuzzy face there why he could make me or break me, if he told my banker to call my loan. Gosh, that quarter-sized squirt, and looking like he hadn't got a single bit of hustle in him, I wonder. Do we boosters throw too many bits about pep? From this thought he shuddered away and listened devoutly to Ethorn's idea on the advancement of the Sunday school, which were very clear and very bad. Definitely Babet outlined his own suggestions. I think if you analyze the needs of the school, in fact, going right at it is as if it were a merchandising problem. The course of the one basic and fundamental need is growth. I presume we're all agreed we won't be satisfied till we build up the biggest star in Sunday school in the whole state. So the Chatham Road Peshpaterian won't have to take anything off anybody. Now about jazzing up the campaign for prospects. They've already used contesting teams and given prizes to the kids that bring in the most members. And they made a mistake there. The prizes were a lot of folder-rolls and doodads like poetry books and illustrated testaments instead of something a real live kid would want to work for, like real cash or a speedometer for his motorcycle. Of course, I suppose it's all fine and dandy to illustrate the lessons with those decorated bookbarks and blackboard drawings and so on, but when it comes down to the real he hustling getting out and drumming up customers or members, I mean, why, you've got to make it worth a fellow's while. I want to propose two stunts. First, divide the Sunday school into four armies depending on age. Everybody gets a military rank in his own army according to how many members he brings in. And the duffers that lie down on us don't bring in any. They remain privates. The pastor and superintendent rank as generals and everybody has got to give salutes and all the rest of that junk just like a regular army to make them feel it's worthwhile to get rank. Then second, of course the school has its advertising committee, but Lord, nobody ever really works good. Nobody works well just for the love of it. The thing to do is be practical and up to date and hire a real paid press agent for the Sunday school, some newspaper fellow who can give part of his time. Sure, you bet, said Charles Frank. Like the nice juicy bits he could get in, babbit crowed. Not only the big salient vital facts, but how fast the Sunday school and the collection is growing. But a lot of humorous gossip and kidding, how about some blow-hard fell down on his pledge to get new members or the good time the sacred Trinity girls had at their wine-hurst party. And on the side, if he had time, press agent might even boost the lessons themselves to a little advertising for all the Sunday schools in town. In fact, no use being hoggage towards the rest of them, providing we can keep the bulge on them in membership. For instance, he might get the papers to, of course I haven't got a literary training like Frank here. And I'm just guessing how the pieces ought to be written, but take, for instance, suppose the week's lesson is about Jacob. Well, the press agent might get in something that would have a fine moral, and yet with a trick headline that'd get folks to read it. Say, like, Jake fools the old man, makes get away with girl and bankroll. Saw me? That'd get to your interest. Now, of course, Mr. Ethorn, your conservative and maybe you feel these stunts would be undignified, but honestly, I believe they'd bring home the bacon. Ethorn folded his hands on his comfortable little belly and purred like an aged pussy. Say that I have been very much pleased by your analysis of the situation, Mr. Babbitt. As you surmise, it's necessary in my position to be conservative and perhaps endeavor to maintain a certain standard of dignity. Yet I think you'll find me somewhat progressive in our bank, for example. I hope I may say that we have as modern a method of publicity and advertising as any in the city. Yes, I fancy you'll find our soul-sters quite cognizant of the shifting spiritual values of the age. Yes, oh, yes. And so, in fact, it pleases me to be able to say that, though personally I might prefer the sternur presbyterian of an earlier era, Babbitt finally gathered that Ethorn was willing. Chum Frank suggested as part-time press agent one Kenneth Escott, reporter for the Advocate Times. They parted on a high plane of amnesty and Christian helpfulness. Babbitt did not drive home, but toward the center of the city he wished to be by himself and exalt over the beauty of intimacy with William Washington Ethorn. Two. A snow-blanched evening of ringing pavements and eager lights. Great golden lights of trolley-cars sliding along the packed snow of the roadway, demure lights of little houses, a bleaching glare of a distant foundry, wiping out the sharp-edged stars, lights of neighborhood drugstores where friends gossiped, well- pleased, after the day's work. The green light of a police station and green irradiance on the snow, the trauma of a patrol wagon, gong beating like a terrified heart, headlights scorching the crystal-sparkling street, driver, not a chauffeur, but a policeman, proud in uniform, another policeman, perestly dangling on the step at the back in a glimpse of the prisoner, a murderer, a burglar, a coiner, cleverly trapped. An enormous, gray-stone church with a rigid spire, dim light in the parlors and cheerful throng of choir practice. The quivering green mercury-vapor light of a photo-engraver's loft. Then the storming lights of downtown parked cars with ruby taillights, white-arched entrances to movie theaters like Frosty Miles of Winter Caves, electric signs, serpents, and little dancing men of fire, pink shaded globes, and scarlet jazz music in a cheap upstairs dance hall. Lights of Chinese restaurants, lanterns painted with cherry blossoms and with pagodas hung against lattices of lustrous gold and black, small dirty lamps and small stinking lunchrooms, the smart shopping district with rich and quiet light on crystal pendants and furs and suave surfaces of polished wood in velvet-hung, reticent windows. High above the street, an unexpected square hanging in the darkness, the window of an office where someone was working late for a reason unknown and stimulating. A man meshed in bankruptcy, an ambitious boy, an oil man suddenly become rich. The air was shrewd, the snow was deep in unclear valleys, and beyond the city babbit new were hillsides of snowdrift among wintry oaks and the curving ice encrusted river. He loved his city with passionate wonder. He lost the accumulated weariness of business, worry, and expansive oratory. He felt young and potential. He was ambitious. It was not enough to be a Virgil Gunch and Orwell-Jones, no. Their bully fellows simply lovely, but they haven't got any finesse. No, he was going to be an aethorn, delicately rigorous, coldly powerful. That's the stuff, the wallop in the velvet mitt. Not let anybody get fresh with you, been getting careless about my diction, slang, colloquial, cut it out. I was first rated rhetoric in college. Thames on, anyway, not bad. Had too much of this hoopa-doodle and good fellow stuff. Why couldn't I organize a bank of my own some day? And Ted succeed me. He drove happily home, and to Mrs. Babbitt was a William Washington aethorn. But she did not notice it. Three. Young Kenneth Escott, reporter on The Advocate Times, was appointed press agent of the Chatham Road Presbyterian Sunday School. He gave six hours a week to it. At least he was paid for giving six hours a week. He had friends on the press in Gazette, and he was not officially known as a press agent. He procured a trickle of insinuating items about neighborliness and the Bible about class suppers, jolly but educational, and the value of their prayer life in attaining financial success. The Sunday School adopted Babbitt's system of military ranks, quickened by this spiritual refreshment. It had a boom. It did not become the largest school in Xena. The Central Methodist Church kept ahead of it by methods which Dr. Drew scored as unfair, undignified, un-American, un-gentlemanly, and un-Christian. But it climbed from fourth place to second, and there was rejoicing in heaven, or at least in that portion of heaven included in the parsonage of Dr. Drew, while Babbitt had much praise and good repute. He had received the rank of Colonel on the General Staff of the School. He was plumply pleased by solutes on the street from unknown small boys. His ears were tickled to ruddy ecstasy by hearing himself called Colonel, and if he did not attend Sunday School merely to be thus exalted, certainly thought about it all the way there. He was particularly pleasant to the press agent. Kenneth Escott. He took him to lunch at the athletic club and had him to the house for dinner, like many of the cocksure young men who forge about cities in apparent contentment, and who express their cynicism in supercilious slang. Escott was shy and lonely. His shrewd, starvelling face, broadened with joy at dinner, and he blurted, Gee, will it get Miss Babbitt? If you knew how good it is to have whole meats again. Escott and Verona liked each other. All evening they talked about ideas. They discovered that they were radicals. True, they were sensible about it. They agreed that all communists were criminals, that this verse of their beret was tommy rot, and that while there ought to be universal disarmament, of course Great Britain and the United States must on behalf of oppressed small nations keep a navy equal in the tonnage of all the rest of the world. But they were so revolutionary that they predicted to Babbitt's irritation that there would some day be a third party which would give trouble to the Republicans and Democrats. Escott shook hands with Babbitt three times at parting. Babbitt maintained his extreme fondest for Erthorn. Within a week three newspapers presented accounts of Babbitt's sterling labors for religion and all of them tactfully mentioned William Washington Erthorn as his collaborator. Nothing had brought Babbitt quite so much credit at the Elks, the Athletic Club, and the Boosters. His friends had always congratulated him on his oratory, but in their praise was doubt for even in speeches advertising the city there was something high-brow and degenerate, like writing poetry. But now Orville Jones shouted across the athletic dining room, Here's the new director of the first state bank, Grover Butterbaugh, the eminent wholesaler of plumber supplies chuckled. Wonder you mix with common folks after holding Erthorn's hand and Emil Wengrit, the jeweler, was at last willing to discuss buying a house in Dorchester. Four. When the Sunday school campaign was finished, Babbitt suggested to Kenneth Escott, Say, how about doing a little boosting for Doc Drew personally? Escott grinned. You trust the doc to do a little boosting for himself, Mr. Babbitt? There's hardly a week goes by without his ringing up the paper to say if we'll chase a reporter up to his study, he'll let us in on the story about the swell sermon he's going to preach on the wickedness of short skirts, or the authorship of the pen to rotch. Don't you worry about him. There's just one better publicity grabber in town. And that's this Dora Gibson Tucker that runs the child welfare and the Americanization League. And the only reason she's got Drew beaten is because she has got some brains. Well now, Kenneth, I don't think you ought to talk that way about the doctor. Preacher has to watch his interest, hadn't he? You remember that in the Bible about about being diligent in the Lord's business or something. All right, I'll get something in it for you if you want me to, Mr. Babbitt. But I'll have to wait till the managing editor is out of town and then blackjack the city editor. Thus it came to pass that in the Sunday Advocate Times under a picture of Dr. Drew at his earnestness with eyes alert, jaw as granite, and rustic lock flamboyant appeared in a description, a wood pulp tablet conferring 24 hours in mortality. The Reverend Dr. John Genison Drew, MA pastor of the beautiful Catham Road Presbyterian Church in lovely Floral Heights is a wizard's soul winner. He holds the local record for conversions during his shepherdhood and average of almost a hundred sin weary persons per year have declared the resolve to lead a new life and have found a harbor of refuge and peace. Everything zips at the Catham Road Church. The subsidiary organizations are keyed to the top notch of efficiency. Dr. Drew is especially keen on good congregational singing. Right, cheerful hymns are used at every meeting. And the special sing services attract lovers of music and professionals from all parts of the city. On the popular lecture platform as well as in the pulpit Dr. Drew is a renowned word painter and during the course of the year he received literally scores of invitations to speak at varied functions both here and elsewhere. Five, Babbot let Dr. Drew know that he was responsible for this tribute. Dr. Drew called him brother and shook his hand a great many times. During the meetings of the advisory committee Babbot had hinted that he would be charmed to invite Ethorn to dinner. But Ethorn had murmured, Oh, nice of you, old man, now. Almost never go out. Surely Ethorn would not refuse his own pastor, Babbot said boisely to Drew. Hey, Doctor. Now we've put this thing over strikes me. It's up to the Dominique to blow the three of us for dinner. Bully, you bet. Delighted, cried Dr. Drew. In his manifest way someone had once told him that he talked like the late President Roosevelt. And, uh, say, Doctor, be sure to get Mr. Ethorn to come. Insist on it. It's, uh, I think he sticks around home too much for his own health. Ethorn came. It was a friendly dinner. Babbot spoke gracefully of the stabilizing and educational value of bankers to the community. They were, he said, the pastors of the fold of commerce. For the first time Ethorn departed from the topic of Sunday schools and asked Babbot about the progress of his business. Babbot answered modestly, almost philitely. A few months later, when he had a chance to take part in the street-traction company's terminal deal, Babbot did not care to go to his own bank for a loan. It was rather a quiet sort of deal, and if it had come out, public might not have understood. He went to his friend Mr. Ethorn. He was welcome and received the loan as a private venture, and they both profited in their pleasant new association. After that, Babbot went to church regularly, except in spring, Sunday mornings, which were obviously meant for motoring. He announced to Ted, I tell you, boy, there's no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism. Then the evangelical church in no better place to make friends who'll help you gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church home. CHAPTER 18 1 Though he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbot was no more conscious of his children than of the buttons on his coat sleeves. The admiration of Kenneth Escott made him aware of Verona. She had become secretary to Mr. Gruensburg of the Gruensburg Leather Company. She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them. But she was one of the people who gave an agitating impression of being on the point of doing something desperate, of leaving a job or a husband, without ever doing it. Babbot was so hopeful about Escott's hesitant adores that he became the playful parent. When he returned from the alxie, peered coily into the living room and gurgled, Azure, can he been here tonight? He never credited Verona's protest. Like Ken and I are just good friends and we only talk about ideas. I don't have all this sentimental nonsense that would spoil everything. It was Ted, who most worried Babbot, with conditions in Latin and English, but with a triumphant record in manual training basketball and organization of dances. Ted was struggling through his senior year in the East Side High School. At home he was interested only when he was asked to trace some subtle ill in the ignition system of the car. He repeated to his tut-tutting father that he did not wish to go to college or law school in Babbot was equally disturbed by his shiftlessness and by Ted's relations with Eunice Littlefield next door. Though she was the daughter of Howard Littlefield, that wrought-iron-fact mill, that horse-faced priest of private ownership, Eunice was a midge in the sun. She danced into the house. She plung herself into Babbot's lap when he was reading. She crumpled his paper and laughed at him when he adequately explained that he hated a crumpled newspaper as he hated a broken sales contract. She was seventeen now. Her ambition was to be a cinema actress. She did not merely attend the showing of every feature film. She also read the motion-picture magazines. Those extraordinary symptoms of the age of pep-monthlies and weeklies, gorgeously illustrated with portraits of young women who had recently been manicure girls, not very skillful manicure girls, and who, unless their every grimace had been arranged by a director, could not have acted in the Easter cantana of the Central Methodist Church. Magazines reporting quite seriously in interviews plastered with pictures and writing breaches and California bungalows, the views on sculpture and international politics of blankly beautiful, suspiciously beautiful young men, outlined the plots of films about pure prostitutes and kind-hearted train robbers, and giving directions for making boot-blacks into celebrated scenario authors overnight. These authorities, Eunice studied. She could, she frequently did tell, whether it was in November or December 1905, that Mac Harker, the renowned screen-cow puncher and bad man, began his public career as a chorus man in OU, Notty Gurley. On the wall of her room her father reported she had pinned up twenty-one photographs of actors, but to sign portrait of the most graceful of the movie heroes she carried in her young bosom. Babbit was bewildered by this worship of the new gods, and he suspected that Eunice smoked cigarettes, he smelled the glowing reek from upstairs, and heard her giggling with Ted. He never inquired, the agreeable child dismayed him. Her thin, charming face was sharpened by bobbed hair, her skirts were short, her stockings were rolled, and as she flew after Ted, above the caressing silk were glipses of hopped knees which made Babbit uneasy, and wretched that she should consider him old. Sometimes, in the veiled life of his dreams when the fairy child came running to him, she took on the semblance of Eunice Littlefield. Ted was motor-mad as Eunice was movie-man. A thousand sarcastic befusals did not check his teasing for a car of his own. However lax he might be about early rising in the Presodity of Virgil, he was tireless and tinkering. With three other boys he bought a rheumatic Ford chassis. Built an amazing racer body out of tin and pine, went skidding around corners in the perilous craft and sold it at a profit. Babbit gave him a motorcycle, and every Saturday afternoon was seven sandwiches and a bottle of Coca-Cola in his pockets, and Eunice perched eerily on the rumble-seat. He went roaring off to distant towns. Usually Eunice and he were merely neighborhood chums and quarreled with a wholesome and violent lack of delicacy. But now and then, after the color and scent of a dance, they were silent together and a little furtive. Babbit was worried. Babbit was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying, opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents, he enjoyed the game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong then virtuously pouncing. He justified himself by croaking, Well, Ted's mother spoils him. Got to be somebody who tells him what's what in me. I'm elected the goat, because I try to bring him up real decent human being and not with those sap heads. Lounge lizards. Of course they all call me a grouch. Throughout, with the eternal human genius for arriving by the worst possible routes at surprisingly tolerable goals, Babbit loved his son and warned to his companionship, and would have sacrificed everything for him. If he could have been sure of proper credit. Too, Ted was planning a party for his set in the senior class. Babbit meant to be helpful and jolly about it from his memory of high school pleasures back in Katowaba. He suggested the nicest games going to Boston and charades with stupans for helmets, and word games in which you were an adjective or a quality. When he was most enthusiastic, he discovered that they weren't paying attention. They were only tolerating him. As for the party, it was as fixed and standardized as the Union Club hop. There was to be dancing in the living room, a noble coalition in the dining room, and in the hall, two tables of bridge for what Ted called the poor old dumb bells, that you can't get to dance hardly more than half the time. Every breakfast was monopolized by conferences on the affair. No one listened to Babbit's bulletins about the February weather or to his throat-clearing comments on the headlines. He said furiously, If I may be permitted to interrupt your engrossing private conversation. Do you hear what I said? Don't be a spoiled baby. Ted and I have just as much right to talk as you have, flared Mrs. Babbit. On the night of the party, he was permitted to look on when he was not helping Matilda with the Vichy ice cream and the Pity Fours. He was deeply disquieted eight years ago when Verona had given a high school party. The children had been fearless gabbies. Now they were men and women of the world. Very supercilious men and women. The boys condoned and sent it to Babbit. They wore evening clothes and with hot air. They accepted cigarettes from silver cases. Babbit had heard stories of what the Atlantic Club called goings-on at young parties, of girls parking their corsets in the dressing room, of cuddling and petting, and with a presumable increase in what was known as immorality. Tonight he believed the stories. These children seemed bold to him and cold. The girls wore Misty Chiffon, Coral Velvet or Cloth of Gold, and around their dipping bobbed hair were shining wreaths. He had it upon urgent and secret inquiry that no corsets were known to be parked upstairs, but certainly these eager bodies were not stiff with steel. Their stockings were of lustrous silk, their slippers costly and unnatural, their lips carmine, and their eyebrows penciled. They danced cheek to cheek with the boys and Babbit, sickened with apprehensioned and unconscious envy. Worst of them all was Eunice Littlefield, and maddest of all of the boys was Ted. Eunice was a flying demon. She slid the length of the room. Her tender shoulders swayed, her feet were dept as a weaver shuttle. She laughed an enticed Babbit to dance with her. Then he discovered the annex to the party. The boys and girls disappeared occasionally, and he remembered rumors of their drinking together from hip pocket flasks. He tiptoed around the house, and in each of a dozen cars waiting in this street he saw the points of light from cigarettes, from each of them hearing high giggles. He wanted to denounce them but standing in the snow, peering around the dark corner. He did not dare. He tried to be tactful. When he returned to the front hall he coaxed the boys, say, if any of you fellows are thirsty there's some dandy dinge rail. Well, thanks, they condescended. He saw his wife in the pantry and exploded. I'd like to go out there and throw some of those young pups out of the house. They talked down to me like I was the butler I'd like to. I know, she sighed, only everybody says all the mothers tell me unless you stand for them. If you get angry because they go out on their cars and have a drink they won't come to your house any more. And we wouldn't want Ted left out of things, would we? He announced that he would be enchanted to have Ted left out of things and hurried back in to be polite, lest Ted be left out of things. But he resolved if he found that the boys were drinking he would. Well, he'd hand him something that would surprise him. While he was trying to be agreeable to large-shoulder young bullies he was earnestly sniffing at them. Twice he caught the wreak of prohibition time whiskey, but then it was only twice. Dr. Howard Littlefield lumbered in. He had come in a mood of solemn parental patronage to look on. Ted and Eunice were dancing, moving together like one body. Littlefield gasped. He called Eunice. There was a whispered dialogue and Littlefield explained to Babbit that Eunice's mother had a headache and needed her. She went off in tears. Babbit looked after them furiously. Hello, devil. Getting Ted into trouble in Littlefield, a conceited old gas bag acting like it was Ted that was the bad influence. Later he smelled whiskey on Ted's breath. After the civil farewell to the guests the row was terrific. A thorough family scene like an avalanche devastating and without reticences. Babbit thundered, Mrs. Babbit wept. Ted was unconvincely defiant and Verona in confusion as to whose side she was taking. For several months there was coolness between the Babbits and Littlefields, each family sheltering their lamb from the wolf cub next door. Babbit and Littlefields still spoke in pontifical periods about motors and the senate but they kept bleakly away from mention of their families. Whenever Eunice came to the house she discussed with pleasant intimacy the fact that she had been forbidden to come to the house and Babbit tried with no success whatever to be fatherly an advisory to her. 3. Guy shalt fish-hooks. Ted wailed to Eunice as they wolf-taught chocolate, lumps of nudgeant and an assortment of glazed nuts in the mosaic splendor of the royal drugstore. It gets me why dad doesn't just pass out from being so pokey. Every evening he sits there about half asleep and a roner I say, oh come on let's do something. He doesn't even take the trouble to think about it. He just yawns and says, nah this suits me right here. He doesn't know if there's any fun going anywhere. I suppose he must be thinking same as you and I do but gosh there's no way of telling it. I don't believe that outside the office and playing a little bum golf on Saturday. He knows there's anything in the world to do except just keep sitting there and sitting there every night. Not wanting to go anywhere? Not wanting to do anything? Thinking those kids are crazy, sitting there, lowering it. Or. If he was frightened by Ted's slackness, Babbit was not sufficiently frightened by Verona. She was too safe. She lived too much in the neat little airless room of her mind. Kenneth Escott and she were always underfoot. When they were not at home conducting their cautiously radical courtship over sheets of statistics, they were trudging off to lectures by authors and Hindu philosophers and Swedish lieutenants. Gosh, Babbit wailed to his wife as they walked home from the Fogarty's bridge party. It gets me how row and that fellow can be so pokey. They sit there night after night whenever he isn't working and they don't know if there's any fun in the world all talk and discussion. Lord sitting there, sitting there night after night, not wanting to do anything, thinking I'm crazy because I like to go out and play a fist of cards, sitting there, gosh. Then around the swimmer board by struggling through the perpetual surf of family life, newcomer swelled. Five. Babbit's father and mother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Henry T. Thompson, rented their old house in the Bellevue District and moved into the Hotel Hatton, that glorified boarding house filled with widows, red-plush furniture, and the sound of ice-water pitchers. They were lonely there and every Sunday evening the Babbits had to dine with them on frequency chicken, discouraged celery, and cornstarch ice cream and afterwards sip, polite and restrained in the Hotel Lounge while a young woman vile and displayed songs from the German via Broadway. Then Babbit's own mother came down from Cato Abba to spend three weeks. She was a kind woman and magnificently uncomprehending. She congratulated the convention defying Barona as being a nice, loyal homebody without all these ideas that so many girls seem to have nowadays. And when Ted built a differential with Greece out of pure love of mechanics and filthiness, she rejoiced that he was so handy around the house and helping his father in all and not going out with the girls all the time and trying to pretend to be a society fellow. Babbit loved his mother and sometimes he rather liked her. But he was annoyed by her Christian patience and he was reduced to pulpiness when she discoursed about a quite mythical hero called your father. You won't remember a Georgie. You were such a little fellow at the time. I remember just how you looked that day. With your goldy brown curls and your lace collar, you always were such a teeny child and kind of a puny and sickly. And you loved pretty things so much and the red tassels of your little booties and all. And your father was taking us to church and a man stopped us and said, Major, so many of the neighbors used to call your father Major. Of course, he was only a private in the war, but everybody knew that he was because of the jealousy of his captain and he ought to have been a high-ranking officer. He had the natural ability to command that so very few men have. And this man came out into the road and held up his hand and stopped the bugging and said, Major, he said, there's a lot of folks around here that have decided to support Colonel Scantle for Congress. And we want you to join us, meeting people the way you do in the store. You could help us a lot. While your father just looked at him and said, I certainly shall do nothing of the sort. I don't like his politics, he said. Well, the man Captain Smith they used to call him and heaven only knows why because he had the shadow of vestige of a right to be called Captain or any other title. This Captain Smith said, we'll make it hot for you if you don't stick by your friends, Major. Well, you know how your father was and this Smith knew it too. He knew what a real man he was and he knew your father, knew the political situation from A to Z. Any ought to have seen that here was one man he couldn't impose on. But he went on trying and hitting and trying till your father spoke up and said to him, Captain Smith, he said, I have a reputation around these parts for being one who is amply qualified to mind his own business and let other folks mind theirs. And with that he drove on and left the fellow standing there in the road like a pump on a log. Babbit was most exasperated when she revealed his boyhood to the children. He had it seemed been fond of barley sugar and worn the loveless little pink bow in his curls and corrupted his own name to Goo-Goo. He heard, though he did not officially hear, Ted admonishing Tinga. Come on now, kid, stick the lovely pink bow in your curls and beat it down to breakfast or Goo-Goo will jaw your head off. Babbit's half-brother Martin and his wife and youngest baby came down from Katowaba for two days. Martin bred cattle and they ran the dusty general store. He was proud of being a free-born, independent American of the good old Yankee stock. He was proud of being honest, blunt, ugly, and disagreeable. His favorite remark was, How much pay for that? He regarded Verona's books, Babbit's silver pencil, and flowers on the table as certifying extravagances and said so. Babbit would have quarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the baby whom Babbit teased and poked fingers at and addressed. I think this baby's the bum, yes sir. I think this little baby's the bum. He's the bum, yes sir. He's the bum. That's what he is. He's the bum. This baby's the bum. He's nothing but a bum. That's what he is, a bum. All the while Verona and Kenneth Escott held long inquiries into espionymology. Ted was a disgraced rebel in Tinka, aged 11, was demanded that she be allowed to go to the movies thrice a week, like all the girls. Babbit raged, I'm sick of it. I have to carry three generations. Hold damn bunch of lean on me. Pay half of mother's income. Listen to Henry T. Listen to Myra's worrying. People ain't demand and get called and old grouch for trying to help the children, all of them depending on me and picking on me and not a damn one of them grateful. No relief, no credit, and no help from anybody and to keep it up for good Lord knows how long. He enjoyed being sick in February. He was delighted by their consternation that he, the Rock, should give way. He had eaten a questionable clam. For two days he was languorous and petted and esteemed. He was allowed to snarl. Hold on me long. Without repraisals. He lay on the sleeping porch and watched the winter sun slide along the taut curtains, turning the rusty khaki to pale blood red. The shadow of the draw rope was dense, black, and an enticing ripple on the canvas. He found pleasure in the curve of it, sighed as the fading light blurted. He was conscious of life and a little sad, with no virgin glenches before whom to set his face in resolute optimism were beheld and half admitted that he beheld his way of life as incredibly mechanical, mechanical business, a brisk selling of badly built houses, mechanical religion, a dry, hard church shut off from the real life of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top hat, mechanical golf and dinner parties and bridge and conversation. Saved with Paul Reisling, mechanical friendships. Back slapping and jocular, never daring to essay the test of quietness. He turned uneasily in bed. He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweet afternoons, which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittle pretentiousness. He thought of telephoning about leases of cajoling men he hated, of making business calls and waiting in dirty anti-rooms, had on knee yawning at fly spec calendars, being polite to office boys. Oh, Harley want to go back to work. He prayed. I'd like to. I don't know. But he was back the next day, busy and of doubtful temper. They began to build car repair shops in the suburb of Dorchester. But when they came to buy the land, they found it held on options by the Babbot Thompson Realty Company. The purchasing agent, the first vice president and even the president of the traction company protested against the Babbot price. They mentioned their duty towards stockholders. They threatened an appeal to the courts. Though somehow the appeal to the courts was never carried out and the officials found it wiser to compromise with Babbot. Carbon copies of the correspondence are in the company's files where they may be viewed by any public commission. Just after this, Babbot deposited $3,000 in the bank. The purchasing agent of the traction company bought a $5,000 car. He, first vice president, built a home in Devon Woods and president was appointed minister to a foreign country. To obtain the options to tie up one man's land without letting his neighbor know, had been an unusual strain on Babbot. It was necessary to introduce rumors about planning garages and stores to pretend that he wasn't taking any more options. To wait and look as bored as a poker player at a time when the failure to secure a key lot threatened the whole plan. To all this was added a nerve jabbing quarrel with his secret associates in the deal. They did not wish Babbot and Thompson to have any share in the deal except his brokers. Babbot rather agreed. Ethics of the business broker ought to strictly represent his principles and not get in on the buying, he said to Thompson. Ethics rats! Think I'm going to see that bunch of holy grafters get away with a swag and us not climb in, snorted old Henry? Well, I don't like to do it. Kind of double crossing. It ain't. It's triple crossing. It's a public that gets double crossed. Well, now we've been ethical and got it out of our systems. The question is, where can we raise a loan to handle some of the property for ourselves on the QT? We can't go to our bank for it, might come out. I can see old Ethorn, he's close as the tomb. That's the stuff. Ethorn was glad, he said, to invest in character to make Babbot the loan and see to it that the loan did not appear on the books of the bank. Thus certain of the options which Babbot and Thompson obtained were on parcels of real estate which they themselves owned, though the property did not appear in their names. In the midst of closing this splendid deal which stimulated business and public confidence by giving an example of increased real estate activity, Babbot was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him. The dishonest one was Stanley Graff, the outside salesman. For some time Babbot had been worried about Graff. He did not keep his word to tenants. In order to rent a house he would promise repairs which the owner had not authorized. It was suspected that he juggled inventories of furnished houses so that when the tenant left he had to pay for articles which had never been in the house and the price of which Graff put in his pocket. Babbot had not been able to prove these suspicions and though he had rather planned to discharge Graff, he had never quite found time for it. Now into Babbot's private room charged a red-faced man panning, Look here, I've come to raise particularly merry hell and unless you have the fellow pinched, I will. What was, calm down, old man, what's trouble? Trouble, huh? Here's trouble. Sit down and take it easy. They can hear you all over the building. This fellow Graff, you all working for you? He leases me a house. I was in it yesterday and signed the lease. Oh, okay. And he was to get the owner's signature and mail the lease last night. Well, and he did. This morning I comes down to breakfast and a girl says a fellow had come to the house right after the early delivery and told her he wanted an envelope that had been mailed by mistake. Big long envelope with Babbot Thompson in the corner. But sure enough, there it was. So she lets him have it. And she describes the fellow to me. And it was this Graff. So I phoned to him and he, the poor fool, he admits it. He says after my lease was all signed, he got a better offer from another fellow and he wanted my lease back. Now what are you going to do about it? Your name is William Varney, W.K. Varney. Oh, yes, that was the garrison house. Babbot sounded the buzzer. When Miss McGowan came in, he demanded. Graff gone out. Yes, sir. We look through his desk and see if there is a lease made out to Mr. Varney on the garrison house. Varney, can't tell you how sorry I'm this happy. Needless to say, I'll fire Graff the minute he comes in. And of course, there are lease stands. But there's one other thing I'd like to do. I'll tell the owner not to pay the commission, but apply it to your rent. No, straight. I want to. To be frank, this thing shakes me up bad. I suppose I've always been a practical businessman. Probably I've told one or two fairy stories in my time, when the occasion called for it. But, you know, sometimes you have to lay things on thick to impress boneheads. But this is the first time that I've ever had to accuse one of my own employees of anything more dishonest than pinching a few stamps. Honest. It would hurt me if we profited by it, so you'll let me hand you the commission. Good. Two. He walked through the February City, where trucks flung up a spattering of slush and the sky was dark above dark brick cornices. He came back miserable. He, who respected the law, had broken it by concealing the federal crime of interception of the male. But he could not see Graff go to jail, his wife suffer. Worse, he had to discharge Graff, and this was a part of Offa's routine, which he feared. He liked people so much. He so much wanted them to like him that he could not bear insulting them. Miss McGowan dashed into whisper with the excitement of an approaching scene. He's here. Mr. Graff asked him to come in. He tried to make himself heavy and calm in his chair, and to keep his eyes expressionless. Graff stalked in, a man of thirty-five dapper glass-eyed with a fobby smush moustache. Want me, said Graff? Yes, it down. Graff continued to stand grunting. I suppose that old mutt Varney has been in to see you. Let me explain about him. He's a regular tightwad, and he sticks out for every cent, and he practically lied about his ability to pay rent. I found that out just after he signed up, and then another fell comes along with a better offer off for the house, and I felt it was my duty to the firm to get rid of Varney, and I was so worried about it, I scun up there and got back the lease. Honest, Mr. Babbitt. I didn't intend to pull anything crooked. I just wanted the firm to have all the commission. Wait now, Stan. This may all be true, but I've been having a lot of complaints about you. Now, I don't suppose you ever mean to do wrong, and I think if you just get a good lesson, that'll jog you up a little. You'll turn out a first class realtor yet, but I don't see how I can keep you on. Graff leaned against the filing cabinet, his hands in his pocket, and laughed. So I'm fired. Well, oh, vision and ethics. I'm tickled to death, but I don't want you to think you can get away with any holier-than-mouth stuff. Sure, I've pulled some raw stuff. A little of it. But how could I help it in this office? Not by God, young man. Keep the nautic damper down, and don't haunt her, because everybody in the outside office will hear you. They're probably listening right now, Babbitt old dear. You're crooked in the first place and a damned skin-flint in the second. If you paid me a decent salary, I wouldn't have to steal pennies off a blind man to keep my wife from starving. Us marry just five months and her the nicest girl living, and you keeping us flat broke all the time, you damned old thief, so you can put money away for your sap head of a son and your wishy-washy fool of a daughter. Wait now. You'll buy God take it, or I'll bellow so the whole office will hear it. And crooked. Say, if I told the prosecuting attorney what I know about this last retraction option steal, both you and me would go to jail along with some nice clean pious high-up traction guns. Well, Stan looks like we're coming down to cases. That deal? There was nothing crooked about it. The only way you can get progress is for the broad-gaged men to get things done, and they got to be rewarded. Oh, for Pete's sake, don't get virtuous with me. As I gathered, I'm fired. All right. It's a good thing for me, and if I catch you knocking me to any other firm, I'll squeal all I know about you and Henry T. and the dirty little lip-spittle deals that you corporals of industry pull off the bigger and brainier crooks. And you'll get chased out of town and me? You're right, Babbit. I've been going crooked, but now I'm going straight. And the first step will be to get a job in some office where the boss doesn't talk about ideals. Bad luck, old dear. And you can stick that job up the sewer. Babbit sat for a long time, alternately raging. I'll have him arrested, in yearning. I wonder, no, I've never done anything that wasn't necessary to keep the wheels of progress moving. Next day he hired in Graf's place Fritz Wellinger, the salesman of his most injurious rival, the Eastside Homes and Development Company, and thus at once annoyed his competitor and acquired an excellent man. Young Fritz was a curlyheaded, merry tennis-playing youngster. He made customers welcome to the office. Babbit thought of him as a son. And in him, had much comfort. Three. An abandoned rice track on the outskirts of Chicago, a plot excellent for factory sites, was to be sold and Jake Offit asked Babbit to bid on it for him. The strain of the street traction deal and his disappointment in Stanley Graf had so shaken, Babbit, that he found it hard to sit at his desk and concentrate. He proposed to his family, Oh, look here, folks, do you know who's going to trot up to Chicago for a couple of days? Just a weekend won't lose but one day of school. Know who's going with the celebrated business ambassador, George F. Babbit? Why, Mr. Theater Roosevelt Babbit. Hooray, Ted shouted. Oh, maybe the Babbit men won't paint that old town red. And once away from the familiar implications of home, they were two men together. Ted was young only in his assumption of boldness. And the only realms, apparently in which Babbit had a larger and more grown-up knowledge than Ted's, were the details of real estate and the phrases of politics. When the other sages of the Pullman smoking compartment had left him to themselves, Babbit's voice did not drop into the playful and otherwise offensive tone in which one addresses children, but continued its overwhelming and monotonous rumble. And Ted tried to imitate it in his strident tenor. Gee, Dad, you certainly did show that poor boot when he got flip about the League of Nations. Well, trouble with a lot of fellows is they simply don't know what they're talking about. They don't get down to facts. What do you think of Ken Escott? I'll tell you, Dad, it strikes me Ken is a nice lad. No special faults except he smokes too much but slow, Lord. Why, if we don't give him a shove, the poor dumb bell never will propose. And Roan is just as bad, slow. Yes, guess you're right. They're slow. They haven't either one of them got our pep. That's right. They're slow, I swear, Dad. I don't know how Roan got into our family. I'll bet if the truth were known you were a bad old egg when you were a kid. Well, it wasn't slow. But you weren't. I'll bet you didn't miss many tricks. Well, when I was out with the girls, I didn't spend all the time telling them about the strike in the knitting industry. They roared together and together lighted cigars. What are we gonna do with them? Babbit consulted. Gosh, I don't know. I swear, sometimes I feel like taking Ken aside and putting him over the jumps and saying to him, young fellow me lad, are you going to marry young Roan or are you going to talk or to death? Here you are getting on toward 30 and you're only making 20 or 25 dollars a week. When you're going to develop a sense of responsibility and get a raise, there's anything that George F or I can do to help you. Call on us, but show a little speed anyway. Well, at that it might not be so bad if you or I talk to him, except he might not understand. He's one of those high brows. He can't come down to cases and lay his cards on the table and talk straight out from the shoulder like you and I can. That's right. He's like all those high brows. That's so like all of them. That's fact. They sighed and were silent and thoughtful and happy. The conductor came in. He had once called Babbit's office to ask about houses. All right, Mr. Babbit, we are going to have you with us to Chicago. This are your boy? This is my son Ted. Well, now, what do you know about that? Here I've been thinking you were a youngster yourself, not a day over 40 hardly and you with this great big fellow. Forty? Why, brother? I'll never see 45 again. Is that a fact? Wouldn't hardly have thought it. Yes, sir, it's a bad giveaway 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. Broadly, no, not till next fall. I'm just kind of giving the different colleges the once over now. As the conductor went on his affable way, huge watch changing against his blue chest. Babbit and Ted bravely considered colleges. They arrived at Chicago late at night. They lay a bed in the morning rejoicing. Pretty nice not to have to get up and get down to breakfast, eh? They were staying at the modest Eldon Hotel because Zenith businessman always stayed at the Aiden. But they had dinner in the brocade and crystal verse room of the Regency Hotel. Babbit 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 minced 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 a lobby, arm and arm, between acts, and in the glee of his first release from the shame which deceivers fathers and sons, Ted chuckled, Dad, did you ever hear the one about the three mille warriors and the judge? When Ted had returned to Zenith, Babbit was lonely. As he was trying to make alliance between Offit and certain Milwaukee interests, which wanted the racetrack 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 weirdly, Mr. Sagan, not in yet? Didn't 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 his twentieth discovery that it resembled a shoe, lighting a cigarette, then bound to the telephone with no ashtray to 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 the snow-rutted streets of which he had never heard, streets of small tenements and two family houses, and maroon cottages. It came to him that he had nothing to do, that was nothing he wanted to do. He was bleakly lonely in the evening. When he dined by himself at the Regency's Hotel, he sat in a lobby afterward in a plush chair bedecked with the Saxe-Coburg arms, lighting a cigar and looking for someone 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. Came to Babbitt with a pyrotechnic crash. The Mellon College stranger was Sir Gerald Doak. Instinctively, Babbitt rose, bumbling, How are you, Sir Gerald? Remember we met in Zenith at Charlie McKevley's? Babbitt's my name, real estate. Oh, how do you do, Sir Gerald shook hands, flabbily. Embarrassed, standing, wondering how he could retreat, Babbitt meandered. Well, I suppose you've 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 them, 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 condition's not so doggone good, eh? No, business conditions weren't at all what I had 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 to do so I could do this evening. Don't know a soul in Chicago. Wonder if you happen to know whether there's a good theater in this city. Good. Why, say, they're running grand opera tonight. I guess maybe you'd like that? Eh, eh, went to the opera once in London. Covenant Garden, sort of thing. Shocking. I was wondering if there was a good cinema show. Babbitt was sitting down, hitching his share over, shouting, movie. Say, Sir Gerald, I suppose of course you had a raft of dames wanting to lead you out to some soiree. God forbid. But if you haven't, what do you say we go to a movie? There's a peach of a film at the Grantham. Bill Hart in a bandit picture. Rado, 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 Dope to the movie palace and in silent bliss sat beside him, trying not to be too enthusiastic. Lest the night despise his adoration of sick shooters and broncos. At the end, Sir Gerald Murmured. Got a good picture. This so awful decent of you to take me. Haven't enjoyed myself so much in weeks. All those hostesses and they never let you go to the cinema. The devil you say. Babbitt's speech had lost a delicate refinement in all the broad days, with which he had adorned it and became hearty and natural. Well, I'm tickled to death. You liked it, Sir Gerald. They crawled past the knees of a fat woman into the aisle. They stood in a lobby waving their arms in the right of putting on overcoats. Babbitt hidden. Eh, how about a little something to eat? I know a place where we could get a swell, Babbitt. And we might dig up a little drink, that is, if you ever touch this stuff. Rather, but why not come to my room? I've some scotch, not half bad. Oh, I don't want to use up all your hooch. 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 those dances. No chance to discuss business and that sort of thing. It'll be a good chap and come along, won't you? Well, 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 condition after he's been to all these balls and masquerades and banquets and all that society stuff. I often feel that way in Zena. Sure, you bet I'll come. Oh, it'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? Well, now quit your kidding. Gush, you with court balls and functions and everything? No, really, old chap. Mother and I, Lady Doke, I should say, we usually play a hand of Bessieck 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. McCevely, your friend? Oh, Lucille, good kid. She asked me which of the galleries I like best in Florence or was it Ferenzy? Never been to Edelina my life and primitives? Did I like primitives? Do you know what the deuce of primitive is? Me? I should say not, but I know what a discount for cash is. Rather, so do I. By George, but primitives? Uh, primitives. They laughed with the sound of a booster's 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 whiskey flask. Looked proud and hospitable and chuckled. They went, old chap. It was after the third drink that Sir Gerald proclaimed. How do you Yankees getting the notion that writing chaps like Bernard Shaw and this Wells represent us? The real business, England. We think these chaps are traders. Both our countries have their comics, old aristocracy, you know, old country 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 businessmen who run the whole show. You bet. Here's to the real guys. And 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 drink that Babbitt began to call him Jerry and Sir Gerald confided. I say, do you mind if I pull off my boots and aesthetically stretch his nightly feet? His poor tired, hot, swollen feet out on the bed. After the sixth, Babbitt irregularly rose. Um, better get to hiking along, Jerry. You're a regular human being. I wish to thunder we'd been better acquainted and zenith. Look it, can't you come back and stay with me for a while? So sorry, must go to New York tomorrow. Most awfully sorry, old boy. I haven't enjoyed an evening so much since I've been in the stage, 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 thought I'd have to talk to women about primitives and polo, goodly 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 tonight. Goodbye, old chap. Goodbye. 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. Four. Babbitt lay a bed at his hotel imagining the zenith athletic club asking him, what kind of time do you have in Chicago in his entering? Fair, ran around with Sir Gerald Doke a lot, picturing himself meeting Lucille McKevilly in the monastery. All right, missus Mack, when you aren't trying to pull this high brow pose, it's just as Gerald Doke 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. He said to me, Georgie, old bean, I like Lucille first rate, but you know me, Georgie, we got to make her get over this hidey-tidy hoopadittle the way she's got. But that evening a thing happened which wrecked his pride. Five. At the Regency Hotel's cigar counter, he felt a talking with a salesman of pianos and they dined together. Babbitt was filled with friendliness and well-being. He enjoyed the gorgeousness of the dining room, the chandeliers, the loop-brocade curtains, the portraits of French kings, the guest paneled of Gilded Oak. He enjoyed the crowd, pretty women, good solid fellows who were liberal spenders. He gasped, he stared and turned away, stared again. Three tables off, with a doubtful sort of woman, a woman at once coy and withered, was Paul Reisling. And Paul was supposed to be an acron, selling tar-roofing. The woman was tapping his hand, moaning at him and giggling. Babbitt felt that he had encountered something involved and harmful. Paul was talking with the rapt earnestness of a man who was telling his troubles. He was concentrated on the woman's faded eyes. Once he held her hand and, once blind to the other guests, he puckered his lips as though he was pretending to kiss her. Babbitt had so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he could feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving. But he felt desperately that he must be diplomatic and not till he saw Paul paying the check did he bluster to the piano salesman. Buying all in front of mine over there, excuse me second, just say hello to him. He touched Paul's shoulder and cried, Well, when did you hit town? Paul glared up at him, face hardening. Oh, hello, George. Thought you'd gone back to Zena. He didn't introduce his companion, Babbitt peeped at her. She was a flabbily pretty, weakly flirtatious woman of 42 or 43, in an entrocious flowery hat. Her rouging was thorough but unskillful. Where are you staying, Paulibus? The woman turned yawned, examined her nails. She seemed accustomed to not being introduced. Paul grumbled. Campbell in on the south side. Alone? It sounded insinuating. Yes, unfortunately. Futurously Paul turned toward the woman, smiling with a fondness sickening to Babbitt. Me? I want to introduce you. Mrs. Arnold? This is my old acquaintance, George Babbitt. Where to meet ya? growled Babbitt. While she gurgled. Oh, I'm pleased to meet any friend of Mr. Riselings, I'm sure. Babbitt demanded. We're back there later this evening, Paul. I'll drop down and see you. No better. We better lunch together tomorrow. All right, but I'll see you tonight too, Paul. I'll go down to your hotel and I'll wait for you. End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 1 He sat smoking with a piano salesman clinging to the warm refuge of gossip. Freed to venture into the thoughts of Paul. He was the more affable on a surface as secretly he became more apprehensive, felt more hollow. He was certain that Paul was in Chicago without Zilia's knowledge, and that he was doing things not at all moral and secure. When the salesman yawned that he had to write up his orders, Babbitt left him, left the hotel, in leisurely calm, but savagely he said, Campbell Inn, to the taxi driver. He sat agitated on a slippery leather seat in that chilled dimness which smelled of dust and perfume and turkey cigarettes. He did not heed the snowy lakefront, the dark spaces and sudden bright corners in the unknown land south of the loop. The office of the Campbell Inn was hard, bright new. The night clerk harder and brighter. Yep. He said to Babbitt, Mr. Paul Riesling registered here. Yep. Is he here now? Nope. Then if you'll give me his key I'll wait for him. Can't do that, brother. Wait down here if you wanna. Babbitt had spoken with a deference which all the clan of good fellows give to hotel clerks. Now he said with snarling abruptness, I may have to wait some time. I'm Riesling's brother-in-law. I'll go up to his room. Do I look like a sneak-thief? His voice was low and not pleasant. With considerable haste the clerk took down the key, protesting. Never said you look like a sneak-thief. Just rules to the hotel, but if you want to. On his way up in the elevator, Babbitt wondered why he was here. Why shouldn't Paul be dining with a respectable married woman? Why had he lied to the clerk about being Paul's brother-in-law? He had acted like a child. He must be careful not to say foolish dramatic things to Paul. As he settled down he tried to look pompous and placid. Then he thought, suicide. He'd been dreading that without knowing it. Paul would be just the person to do something like that. He must be out of his head or he wouldn't be confiding in that. Dried up, old hag. Zilla. Oh, damn Zilla now. How gladly he'd throttled that nagging fiend of a woman. She'd probably succeed at last and driven Paul crazy. Suicide. Out there on the lake, way out. Beyond the piled ice, along the shore. Becast the cold to drop into the water tonight. Or, throat-cut in the bathroom. Babbot flung into Paul's bathroom. It was empty. He smiled feebly. He pulled at his choking collar, looked at his watch, opened the window to stare down the street, looked at his watch, tried to read the evening paper laying on the glass-top bureau. Looked again at his watch. Three minutes had gone by since he had first looked at it. And he waited for three hours. He was sitting fixed, chilled, when the doorknob turned. Paul came in, clawing. Hello, Paul said. Been waiting? Well, a little while. Well? Well what? Just thought I'd drop in to see how you made out of knackering. All right. Difference doesn't make. Oh, gosh, Paul, what are you sore about? What are you butting into my affairs for? Paul, there's no way to talk. I'm not butting into nothing. I was so glad to see your ugly old fizz that I just dropped by in to say howdy. Well, I'm not going to have anybody following me around and trying to boss me. I've had all of that I'm going to stand. Oh, gosh, I'm not. I didn't like the way you looked at May Arnold, or the snooty way you talked. Well, all right then. If you think I'm a bunisky, then I'll just butt in. I don't know who your May Arnold is, but I know dog gone good and well that you and her weren't talking about tar roofing, nor about playing the violin, either. If you haven't gotten any moral consideration for yourself, you ought to have some for your position in the community. The idea of you going around places, quopping in female's eyes like a love-sick pup. I can understand all the fellow slipping once, but I don't propose to see a fellow that's been as chummy with me as you have getting started on the downward path and sneaking off from his wife, even as cranky as one of the zealots to go woman chasing. Oh, you're a perfectly moral little husband. And by God, I never looked at a woman except Myra since I've been married, practically, and I never will. I'll tell you there's nothing to immortality. Don't pay. Can't you see, old man? It just makes zealots still crankier. Slide of resolution as it was of body, pawl through his snow-beated overcoat on the floor and crouched on a flimsy cane chair. Oh, you're an old blowhard and you know less about morality than tinka. But you're all right, Georgie. But you can't understand that I'm through. I can't go zillias hammering any longer. She's made up her mind that I'm a devil. Regular Inquisition Torture. She enjoys it. It's a game to see how sore she can make me in me. Either it's find a little comfort, any comfort anywhere, or else do something a lot worse. Now, this Miss Arnold, she's not so young, but she's a fine woman and she understands a fella, and she's had her own troubles. Yeah, I suppose she's one of those hens whose husband doesn't understand her. I don't know, maybe. He was killed in the war. Babbit lumbered up, stood beside Paul, patting his shoulder, making soft, apologetic noises. Honest, George, she's a fine woman and she's had one hell of a time. We manage to jolly each other a lot. We tell each other we're the dandiest pair on earth. Maybe we don't believe it, but it helps a lot to have somebody with whom you can be perfectly simple. And not all this discussing, explaining, and that's as far as you go. It is not gone, say it. Well, I don't, I can't see. I like it, but with a burst which left him feeling large and shining with generosity. None of my damn business. I'll do anything I can for you, if there's anything I can do. It might be, I judge from Zelia's letters that I've been forwarded from Macron that she's getting suspicious about my staying away so long. She'd be perfectly capable of having me shadowed and of coming to Chicago and bursting into a hotel dining room and bawling me out before everybody. I'll take care of Zelia. I'll hand her a good fairy story when I get back to Zenith. I don't know. I don't think you'd better try it. You're a good fellow. But I don't know that diplomacy is your strong point. Babbit looked hurt, then irritated. I mean with women. With women, I mean. Of course, they got to go some to beat you in business diplomacy, but I just mean with women. Zelia may do a lot of rough talking, but she's pretty shrewd. She'd have the story out of you in no time. All right, but Babbit was still pathetic at not being allowed to play secret agent, Paul Soothe. Of course, maybe you might tell her you'd been in Akron and seen me there. Well, sure, you bet. Don't I have to look at candy store property in Akron, didn't I? Ain't it a shame I have to stop off there when I'm so anxious to get home? Ain't it regular shame? I'll say it is. I'll say it's a dog-gone shame. Fine, but for Gloria Halleluy, you say don't go putting any fancy fixings on the story. When men lie, they always try to make it too artistic. And that's why women get suspicious and some would drink Georgie. I've got some gin and a little vermouth. The Paul who normally refused a second cocktail took a second now and a third. He became red-eyed and thick-tongued. He was embarrassingly jocular and salacious. In a taxicab, Babbit incredulously found tears crowding into his eyes. Two. He had not told Paul of his plan, but he did stop at Akron, between trains, for the one purpose of sending a postcard to Zilla. With? Had to come here for the day, ran into Paul. In zenith he called on her. If for public appearances Zilla was over-quaught, over-painted and resolutely corseted. For private misery she wore a filthy blue dressing gown and torn stockings, thrust into streaky pink satin mules. Her face was sunken. She seemed to have but half as much hair as Babbit remembered, and that half was stringy. She sat in a rocker amid a debris of candy boxes and cheap magazines. And she sounded dull-rous when she did not sound derisive. But Babbit was exceedingly breezy. Well, well, Zilla, oh dear, having a good loaf while Huppie's away? That's the ideal, I'll bet a hat, Myra never got up till ten while I was in Chicago. Say, could I borrow your thermos? Just dropped in to see if I could borrow your thermos bottle. We're going to have a toboggan party. Won't you take some coffee, mid? Oh, did you get my card from Akron saying I'd run into Paul? Yes, what was he doing? How do you mean? He unbuttoned his overcoat, sat tentatively on the arm of a chair. You know what I mean. She slapped the pages of a magazine with an irritable clatter. I suppose he was trying to make love to some hotel waitress or manicure girl or somebody. Hang it, you're always letting on that Paul goes around chasing skirts. He doesn't, in the first place. And if he did, it would probably be because you keep hitting at him and dinging at him so much. I hadn't meant to, Zula, but since Paul is away in Akron, he really is an Akron. I know he has some horrible woman that he writes to in Chicago. Didn't I tell you I saw him in Akron? Were you trying to make me out a liar? No, but I'm just, I guess, worried. Now there you are. That's what gets me. Here you love Paul, and you plague him and cuss him out as if you hated him. I simply can't understand why it is that the more some folks love people, the harder they try to make him miserable. You love Ted and Ron, I suppose, and you nag them? Oh, well, that's different. Besides, I don't nag him. Not what you'd call nagging, but as I sing. Now here's Paul, the nicest, most sensitive critter on God's green earth. You ought to be ashamed of yourself the way you pan him. Why, you talk to him like a washerwoman. I'm surprised you can act so dog-gone commons, Zula. She brooded over her linked fingers. Oh, no, I do go and get mean sometimes, and I'm sorry afterwards, but, oh, Georgie, Paul is so aggravating. Honestly, I've tried awfully hard these last few years to be nice to him, but just because I used to be spiteful or I seem so, I wasn't really but I used to speak up and say anything that came into my head, and so he made up his mind that everything was my fault. Everything can't always be my fault, can it? And now if I get to fussing, he just turns silent, also dreadfully silent, and he won't look at me. He just ignores me. He simply isn't human, and he deliberately keeps it up till I bust out and say a lot of things I don't mean so silent. Oh, you righteous men, how wicked you are, how rotten, wicked! They thrashed things over and over for half an hour. At the end, weeping, dreadfully, Zula promised to restrain yourself. Paul returned four days later, and the babbits and raislings went festively to the movies and had chop suey at a Chinese restaurant. As they walked to the restaurant, through a street of tailor shops and barbershops, the two wives in front, chattering about cooks, babbit murmured to Paul, they all seemed a lot nicer now. Yes, she has been excepted once or twice, but it's too late now. I just—I'm not going to discuss it, but I'm afraid of her. There's nothing left I don't ever want to see her. Someday I'm going to break away from her. Somehow. The International Organization of Boosters Clubs has become a world force for optimism, mainly pleasantry and good business. Chapters are to be found now in thirty countries, nine hundred and twenty of the thousand chapters, however, are in the United States. None of these is more ardent than the Zenith Boosters Club. The second March launch of the Zenith Boosters was the most important of the year as it was to be followed by the annual election of officers. There was agitation abroad, the lunch was held in the ballroom of the Ohern House, as each of the four hundred boosters entered he took from a wallboard a huge cello-light button announcing his name, his nickname, and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a fellow booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbit joyfully checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of Ho, Chut, and Ho, you shorty, and top of the morning, Mac. They sat at friendly tables for eight, choosing places by lot. Babbit was with Abbot Booze, the merchant-tailor, Hector Sey Bolt of the Little Sweetheart Condensed Milk Company, Emo Wingret, the jeweler Professor Pomp Roy of the Rightway Business College, Dr. Walter Gorbit, Roy Teagarden, the photographer, and Ben Berkeley, the photo engraver. One of the merits of the Booster Club was that only two persons from each department of business were permitted to join, so that you had once encountered the ideals of other occupations and realized the metaphysical oneness of all occupations, plumbing and portrait painting, medicine, and the manufacture of chewing gum. Babbit's table was particularly happy today because Professor Pomp Roy had just had a birthday and was therefore open to teasing. Let's pump, pump, about how old he is, said Emo Wingret. Nah, let's paddle him with a dancing pump, said Ben Berkeley. But it was Babbit who had the applause with, Don't talk about pumps to that guy. The only pump he knows is a bottle. Honest, they tell me he's starting a class in home brewing at the old college. At each place was the Booster Club booklet, listing the members. Though the object of the club was good fellowship, yet they never lost sight of the importance of doing a little more business. After each name was the member's occupation. There were scores of advertisements in the booklet, and on one page they abdimensioned, There's no rule that you have to trade with your fellow boosters, but get wise, boy. What's the use of letting this good money go outside our happy family? And at each place today. There was a present, a card printed in artistic red and black. Service and Boosterism. Service finds its finest opportunity and development only in its broadest and deepest application, and the consideration of its perpetual action upon reaction. I believe the highest type of service, like the most progressive tenets of ethics, senses unceasingly and is motivated by active adherence and loyalty to that which is the essential principle of Boosterism, good citizenship, in all its factors and aspects. Dad Peterson. Compliments of Dadbury Peterson Advertising Corporation. Ads not fads and dads. The boosters all read Mr. Peterson's aphorism and said they understood it perfectly. The meeting opened with the regular weekly stunts. Retiring President Virgil Gunch was in his chair, his stiff hair like a hedge, his voice like a brazen gong of festival. Members who had brought guests introduced him publicly. This tall red-headed piece of misinformation is the sporting editor of the press, said Willis Jemez and H. H. Hazen, the drug is chanted. Boys, when you're on a long motor tour and finally get to a romantic spot or scene and drop and remark to the wife. This is certainly a romantic place. It sends a glow right up and down your vertebrae. Well, my guest today is from such a place, Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in the beautiful Southland, with memories of good old General Robert E. Lee and that brave soul, John Brown, who, like every good booster, goes marching on. There were two especially distinguished guests. The leading man of the Bird of Paradise, company playing is weak, at the Dotsworth Theatre and the Mayor of Zenith, the Honorable Lucas Prout. Virgil Gutts slundered. When we managed to grab this celebrated thespian off his lovely aggregation of beautiful actresses and I got to admit I butted right into his dressing room and told him how the boosters appreciated the high-class artistic performance he's giving us. And don't forget that the treasurer of the Dotsworth is a booster and will appreciate our patronage. And when on top of that we yank his honor out of the Mount Fuchsia's duties at City Hall, then I feel we've done ourselves proud. And Mr. Prout, we'll now say a few words about the problems and duties. By rising vote, the booster decided which was the handsomest and which the ugliest guest. And to each of them was given a bunch of carnations donated, President Gulch noted by Brother Booster H. G. Yeager, the Jennifer Avenue florist. Each week in rotation, four boosters were privileged to obtain the pleasures of generosity and publicity by donating goods or services to four fellow members, chosen by lot. There was laughter this week when one of the contributors was announced as Barnabas Joy, the Undertaker. Everybody whispered, I can think of a couple of good guys to be buried if his donation is a free funeral. Through all these diversions the boosters were lunching on chicken croquettes, peas, fried potatoes, coffee, apple pie, and American cheese. Gulch did not lump the speeches. Presently he called on the visiting secretary of the Zenith's Rotary Club, a rival organization. The secretary had the distinction of possessing state motor car license number five. The Rotary Secretary laughingly admitted that wherever he drove in the state, so low a number created a sensation. And, though it was pretty nice to have the honor, yet traffic cops remembered it only too darn well. And sometimes he didn't know, but what he'd almost as soon have just plain, be five, six, eight, seven, six, or something like that. Only let any dog-gun booster try to get number five away from a live Rotarian next year and watch the fur fly. And if they'd permit it, he'd wind up calling for a cheer for the boosters and Rotarians and the Kiwanis all together. Babbit sighed to Professor Pumphrey. Very pretty nice to have a low number of that. Everybody'd say, you must be an important guy. Wonder how he got it. I'll bet he wind and dined a superintendent of Motor License Bureau to fare you well. Then Chump Frank addressed them. Some of you may feel that it's out of place here to talk on a strictly high-brow and artistic subject. But I want to come out flat-footed and ask you, boys, to okay the proposition of a symphony orchestra for Xena. Now, where a lot of you make your mistake is assuming that if you don't like classical music and all that junk, you ought to oppose it. Now, I want to confess that though I'm a literary guy by profession, I don't care a rap for all this long-haired music. I'd rather listen to a good jazz band at any time to some piece by Beethoven that hasn't any more tune to it than a bunch of fighting cats. And you couldn't whistle it to save your life. But that isn't a point. Culture has become as necessary an endowment and advertisement for a city today as pavements or bank clearances. It's culture in theaters and art galleries and so on that brings thousands of visitors to New York every year. And to be frank, for all our splendid attainments, we haven't yet got the culture of a New York or Chicago or Boston. Or at least we don't get the credit for it. The thing to do then as a blive bunch of go-getters is to capitalize culture. To go right out and grab it. Pictures and books are fine for those that have the time to study them. But they don't shoot out on the road in horror. This is what little old Zenith can put up in the way of culture. That's precisely what a symphony orchestra does. Look at the credit Minneapolis and Cincinnati get. An orchestra with first-class musicers and a swell conductor. And I believe we ought to do the thing up brown and get one of the highest paid conductors on the market, providing Yeana Hun. It goes right into Beantown and New York and Washington. It plays at the best theaters to the most cultured and moneyed people. It gives such class advertising as a town can get in no other way. And the guy who is so short-sighted as to grip his orchestra of proposition is passing up the chance to impress the glorious name of Zenith on some big New York millionaire that might, that might establish a branch factory here. I could also go into the fact that for our daughters who show an interest in high brown music and may want to teach it, having an A1 local organization is of great benefit. But let's keep this on a practical basis. And I call on you good brothers to whoop it up for culture and a world-beating symphony orchestra. They applauded. To a rustle of excitement, President Gunch proclaimed, gentlemen, we will now proceed to the annual election of officers. For each of the six offices, three candidates had been chosen by a committee. The second name among the candidates for vice president was Babbins. He was surprised he looked self-conscious, his heart pounded. He was still more agitated than when the ballots were counted and Gunch has said. It's a pleasure to announce that Georgie Babbitt will be the honest, assistant gavel-wielder. I know of no man who stands more staunchly for common sense and enterprise than good old George. Come on, let's give him our best long yell. As they adjourned, a hundred men crashed into, slapped his back. He had never known a higher moment. He drove away in a blur of wonder. He lunged into his office, chuckling to Miss McGowan, Well, I guess you better congratulate your boss. Been elected vice president of the boosters. He was disappointed. She answered only, Yeah, so Mrs. Babbitt been trying to get you on the phone. But the new salesman, Fritz Weingart said, By golly, chief, say, that's great. That's perfectly great. I'm tickled to death. Congratulations. Babbitt called the house and crowed to his wife. Heard you're trying to get me, Myra. Say, you got to hand it to little Georgie this time. Better talk careful. You are now addressing the vice president of the boosters club. Oh, Georgie. Very nice, huh? Willis Ijams is a new president. But when he's away, little old Georgie takes a gavel and whoops, I'm up and introduces the speaker. No matter if they're the governor himself and George, listen, it puts him in solid with big men like Doc Dilling and George Paul Riesling. Yeah, sure. I'll phone Paul and let him know about it right away. Georgie, listen, Paul's in jail. He shot his wife. He shot Celia this noon. She may not live. End of Chapter 21 Chapter 22 of Babbitt. This Lea Provox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti. Mike Vendetti.com. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 22 One. He drove to the city prison not blindly, but with unusually fussy care at corners. The fussiness of an old woman potting plants. It kept him from facing the obscenity of fate. The attendant said, No, you can't see any of the prisoners till 3.30, visiting hour. It was three. For half an hour, Babbitt sat looking at a calendar and a clock on the white-washed wall. The chair was hard and mean and quicky. People went through the office and he thought stared at him. He felt a belligerent defiance which broke into a wincing fear of this machine which was grinding Paul. Paul. Exactly at half past three he sent in his name. The attendant returned with, Riesling says he don't want to see you. You're crazy. He didn't give him my name, time as George wants to see him. George Babbitt. Yeah, I told him, all right, all right. He said he didn't want to see you. Then take me in anyway. Nothing doing. If you ain't his lawyer, if he don't want to see you, that's all there is to it. But my God, say let me see the warden. He's busy. Come on now, you. Babbitt reared over him. The attendance hastily changed to a coaxing. You can come back and try tomorrow. Probably the poor guy is off his nut. Babbitt drove, not at all carefully or fussily, sliding viciously past trucks, ignoring the trucker's curses to the city hall. He stopped with a grind of wheels against the curb and ran up the marble steps to the office of the Honorable Mr. Lucas Prout, the mayor. He bribed the mayor's doorman with a dollar. He was instantly inside, demanding, You remember me, Mr. Prout? Babbitt, Vice President of the Boosters, campaigning for you. Say, have you heard about poor Riesling? Well, I want an order on the warden or whatever you call him of the city, prison, to take me back and see him. Good. Thanks. In fifteen minutes he was pounding down the prison corridor to a cage where Paul Riesling sat on a cot. Twisted like an old beggar, his legs crossed, arms in a knot, fighting at his clenched fist. Paul looked up blankly as the keeper unlocked the cell, admitted Babbitt, and left him together. He spoke slowly. Ron, be moral. Babbitt plumped on the couch beside him. I'm not going to be moral. I don't care what happened. I just want to do anything I can. I'm glad Zilla got what was coming to her. Paul said argumentatively, Now, don't go jumping on Zilla. I've been thinking about maybe she hadn't had any too easy a time. Just after I shot her, I didn't hardly mean to, but she got to deviling me so I went crazy just for a second, and pulled out that old revolver you and I used to shoot rabbits with, and took a crack at her. Didn't hardly mean to after that. When I was trying to stop the blood it was terrible when I did to her shoulder, and she had beautiful skin. Maybe she won't die. I hope it won't leave her skin all scarred. But just afterward when I was hunting through the bathroom for some cotton to stop the blood, I ran onto the fuzzy little yellow duck we hung on the tree one Christmas, and I remembered she and I had been awfully happy then. Hell, I can't hardly believe it's me here. As Babbitt's arm tightened about his shoulder, Paul sighed. I'm glad you came. But I thought maybe you'd lecture me when you've committed a murder, and been brought here and everything. There was a big crowd outside the apartment house all staring, and the cops took me through it. I'm not going to talk about it any more. But he went on in a monotonous, terrified, insane mumble. To divert him, Babbitt said, Well, you got a scar on your cheek. Yes, that's where the cop hit me. I suppose cops get a lot of fun out of lecturing murderers, too. He was a big fellow, and they wouldn't let me help carry Zilla down to the ambulance. Paul quit it. Listen, she won't die, and when it's all over, you and I'll go off to Maine again, and maybe we can get that Mayor Arnold to go along. I'll go up to Chicago and ask her good woman by Gawley, and afterwards I'll see that you get started in business out west somewhere, maybe Seattle. They say it's a lovely city. Paul was half-smiling. It was Babbitt who rambled now. He could not tell whether Paul was heeding, but he droned on till the coming of Paul's lawyer, P. J. Maxwell, a thin, busy, unfriendly man who knotted at Babbitt and hinted, if Riesling and I could be alone for a moment. Babbitt wrung Paul's hands and waited in the office till Maxwell came pattering out. Look, oh, man! What can I do? He begged. Nothing, not a thing. Not just now, said Maxwell. Sorry, got to hurry. And don't try to see him. I've had to doctor give him a shot of morphing, so he'll sleep. It seemed somehow wicked to return to the office. Babbitt felt as though he had just come from a funeral. He drifted out to the city hospital to inquire about Zilla. She was not likely to die. He learned the bullet from Paul's old .44 Army revolver had smashed her shoulder and torn upward and out. He wandered home and found his wife radiant with the horrified interest we have in the tragedies of our friends. Of course, Paul isn't altogether a little blame, but this is what comes of his chasing after another woman instead of bearing his cross in a Christian way, she exalted. He was too languid to respond as he desired. He said what was to be said about the Christian bearing of crosses and went out to clean the car. Dully patiently, he scrapped linty grease from the drip pan gouged at the mud cake on the wheels. He used up many minutes in washing his hands, scoured them with gritty kitchen soap, rejoiced in hurting his plump knuckles. Damn soft hands like a woman. At dinner, when his wife began the inevitable, he bellowed, I forbid any of you to say a word about Paul. I'll tend to all the talking about this that's necessary. Hear me? There's going to be one house in this scandal-mongering town tonight that isn't going to spring the holier than thou and throw those filthy evening papers out of the house. But he himself read the papers after dinner. Before nine, he set out for the house of lawyer Maxwell. He was received without cordiality. Well, said Maxwell, I want to offer my services in the trial. I've got an idea. Why couldn't I go on the stand and swear I was there? And she pulled the gun first and he wrestled with her and the gun would off accidentally. And perjure yourself. Huh? Yes, I suppose it would be perjure. Wouldn't it help? But my dear fellow, perjuree. Oh, don't be a fool. Excuse me, Maxwell. I didn't mean to get your goat. I just mean I've known and you've known many and many a case of perjuree just to annex some rotten little piece of real estate in here where it's a case of saving Paul from going to prison. I'd perjure myself black in the face. No, aside from the ethics of the matter, I'm afraid it isn't practicable the prosecutor would tear your testimony to pieces. It's known that only Reisling and his wife were there at the time. And look here. Let me go on the stand and swear and this would be the God's truth that she pestered him till he kind of went crazy. No, sorry, Reisling absolutely refuses to have any testimony reflecting on his wife. He insists on pleading guilty. Well, let me go up and testify something. Whatever you say, let me do something. I'm sorry, Babbit, but the best thing you can do, I hate to say it, but you could help us most by keeping strictly out of it. Babbit revolving his hat like a defending poor tenet winched so visibly that Maxwell condescended. I don't like to hurt your feelings, but you see, we both want to do our best for Reisling, and we mustn't consider any other factor. The trouble with you, Babbit, is that you're one of those fellows who talk too readily. You like to hear your own voice. If there were anything for which I could put you in the witness box, you'd get going and give the whole show away. Sorry. Now I must look over some papers. So sorry. Two. He spent most of the next morning nerving himself to face the guerrillas world of the Athletic Club. They would talk about Paul. They would be lip-licking and rotten. But at the rough next table, they did not mention Paul. They spoke with Zeal of the coming baseball season. He loved them as he never had before. Three. He had doubtless from some storybook pictured Paul's trial as a long struggle, with bitter arguments a taut crowd and sudden and overwhelming new testimony. Actually, trial occupied less than fifteen minutes, largely filled with the evidence of doctors that Zilla would recover and that Paul must have been temporarily insane. Next day Paul was sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary and taken off, quite undramatically, not handcuffed, merely plotting in a tired way beside a cheerful deputy-sheriff. And after saying good-bye to him at the station, Babbit returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless.