CHAPTER II

by Sinclair Lewis

　　CHAPTER IIRELIEVED of Babbitt's bumbling and the soft grunts with which his wifeexpressed the sympathy she was too experienced to feel and muchtoo experienced not to show, their bedroom settled instantly intoimpersonality.It gave on the sleeping-porch. It served both of them as dressing-room,and on the coldest nights Babbitt luxuriously gave up the duty of beingmanly and retreated to the bed inside, to curl his toes in the warmthand laugh at the January gale.The room displayed a modest and pleasant color-scheme, after one of thebest standard designs of the decorator who "did the interiors" for mostof the speculative-builders' houses in Zenith. The walls were gray, thewoodwork white, the rug a serene blue; and very much like mahogany wasthe furniture--the bureau with its great clear mirror, Mrs. Babbitt'sdressing-table with toilet-articles of almost solid silver, the plaintwin beds, between them a small table holding a standard electricbedside lamp, a glass for water, and a standard bedside bookwith colored illustrations--what particular book it was cannot beascertained, since no one had ever opened it. The mattresses were firmbut not hard, triumphant modern mattresses which had cost a great dealof money; the hot-water radiator was of exactly the proper scientificsurface for the cubic contents of the room. The windows were largeand easily opened, with the best catches and cords, and Hollandroller-shades guaranteed not to crack. It was a masterpiece amongbedrooms, right out of Cheerful Modern Houses for Medium Incomes. Onlyit had nothing to do with the Babbitts, nor with any one else. If peoplehad ever lived and loved here, read thrillers at midnight and lain inbeautiful indolence on a Sunday morning, there were no signs of it. Ithad the air of being a very good room in a very good hotel. One expectedthe chambermaid to come in and make it ready for people who would staybut one night, go without looking back, and never think of it again.Every second house in Floral Heights had a bedroom precisely like this.The Babbitts' house was five years old. It was all as competentand glossy as this bedroom. It had the best of taste, the best ofinexpensive rugs, a simple and laudable architecture, and the latestconveniences. Throughout, electricity took the place of candles andslatternly hearth-fires. Along the bedroom baseboard were three plugsfor electric lamps, concealed by little brass doors. In the halls wereplugs for the vacuum cleaner, and in the living-room plugs for the pianolamp, for the electric fan. The trim dining-room (with its admirable oakbuffet, its leaded-glass cupboard, its creamy plaster walls, its modestscene of a salmon expiring upon a pile of oysters) had plugs whichsupplied the electric percolator and the electric toaster.In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt house: It was nota home.IIOften of a morning Babbitt came bouncing and jesting in to breakfast.But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As he pontifically tread theupper hall he looked into Verona's bedroom and protested, "What's theuse of giving the family a high-class house when they don't appreciateit and tend to business and get down to brass tacks?"He marched upon them: Verona, a dumpy brown-haired girl of twenty-two,just out of Bryn Mawr, given to solicitudes about duty and sex andGod and the unconquerable bagginess of the gray sports-suit she was nowwearing. Ted--Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt--a decorative boy of seventeen.Tinka--Katherine--still a baby at ten, with radiant red hair and athin skin which hinted of too much candy and too many ice cream sodas.Babbitt did not show his vague irritation as he tramped in. He reallydisliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging was as meaningless as itwas frequent. He shouted at Tinka, "Well, kittiedoolie!" It was the onlypet name in his vocabulary, except the "dear" and "hon." with which herecognized his wife, and he flung it at Tinka every morning.He gulped a cup of coffee in the hope of pacifying his stomach and hissoul. His stomach ceased to feel as though it did not belong to him,but Verona began to be conscientious and annoying, and abruptly therereturned to Babbitt the doubts regarding life and families and businesswhich had clawed at him when his dream-life and the slim fairy girl hadfled.Verona had for six months been filing-clerk at the Gruensberg LeatherCompany offices, with a prospect of becoming secretary to Mr. Gruensbergand thus, as Babbitt defined it, "getting some good out of yourexpensive college education till you're ready to marry and settle down."But now said Verona: "Father! I was talking to a classmate of minethat's working for the Associated Charities--oh, Dad, there's thesweetest little babies that come to the milk-station there!--and I feelas though I ought to be doing something worth while like that.""What do you mean 'worth while'? If you get to be Gruensberg'ssecretary--and maybe you would, if you kept up your shorthand and didn'tgo sneaking off to concerts and talkfests every evening--I guess you'llfind thirty-five or forty bones a week worth while!""I know, but--oh, I want to--contribute--I wish I were working in asettlement-house. I wonder if I could get one of the department-storesto let me put in a welfare-department with a nice rest-room and chintzesand wicker chairs and so on and so forth. Or I could--""Now you look here! The first thing you got to understand is that allthis uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothingin God's world but the entering wedge for socialism. The sooner a manlearns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of freegrub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for hiskids unless he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job andproduce--produce--produce! That's what the country needs, and not allthis fancy stuff that just enfeebles the will-power of the working manand gives his kids a lot of notions above their class. And you--if you'dtend to business instead of fooling and fussing--All the time! When Iwas a young man I made up my mind what I wanted to do, and stuck to itthrough thick and thin, and that's why I'm where I am to-day, and--Myra!What do you let the girl chop the toast up into these dinky littlechunks for? Can't get your fist onto 'em. Half cold, anyway!"Ted Babbitt, junior in the great East Side High School, had been makinghiccup-like sounds of interruption. He blurted now, "Say, Rone, yougoing to--"Verona whirled. "Ted! Will you kindly not interrupt us when we'retalking about serious matters!""Aw punk," said Ted judicially. "Ever since somebody slipped up and letyou out of college, Ammonia, you been pulling these nut conversationsabout what-nots and so-on-and-so-forths. Are you going to--I want to usethe car tonight."Babbitt snorted, "Oh, you do! May want it myself!" Verona protested,"Oh, you do, Mr. Smarty! I'm going to take it myself!" Tinka wailed,"Oh, papa, you said maybe you'd drive us down to Rosedale!" and Mrs.Babbitt, "Careful, Tinka, your sleeve is in the butter." They glared,and Verona hurled, "Ted, you're a perfect pig about the car!""Course you're not! Not a-tall!" Ted could be maddeningly bland. "Youjust want to grab it off, right after dinner, and leave it in front ofsome skirt's house all evening while you sit and gas about lite'atureand the highbrows you're going to marry--if they only propose!""Well, Dad oughtn't to EVER let you have it! You and those beastly Jonesboys drive like maniacs. The idea of your taking the turn on ChautauquaPlace at forty miles an hour!""Aw, where do you get that stuff! You're so darn scared of the car thatyou drive up-hill with the emergency brake on!""I do not! And you--Always talking about how much you know about motors,and Eunice Littlefield told me you said the battery fed the generator!""You--why, my good woman, you don't know a generator from adifferential." Not unreasonably was Ted lofty with her. He was a naturalmechanic, a maker and tinkerer of machines; he lisped in blueprints forthe blueprints came."That'll do now!" Babbitt flung in mechanically, as he lighted thegloriously satisfying first cigar of the day and tasted the exhilaratingdrug of the Advocate-Times headlines.Ted negotiated: "Gee, honest, Rone, I don't want to take the old boat,but I promised couple o' girls in my class I'd drive 'em down tothe rehearsal of the school chorus, and, gee, I don't want to, but agentleman's got to keep his social engagements.""Well, upon my word! You and your social engagements! In high school!""Oh, ain't we select since we went to that hen college! Let me tell youthere isn't a private school in the state that's got as swell a bunch aswe got in Gamma Digamma this year. There's two fellows that their dadsare millionaires. Say, gee, I ought to have a car of my own, like lotsof the fellows." Babbitt almost rose. "A car of your own! Don't you wanta yacht, and a house and lot? That pretty nearly takes the cake! A boythat can't pass his Latin examinations, like any other boy ought to, andhe expects me to give him a motor-car, and I suppose a chauffeur, and anareoplane maybe, as a reward for the hard work he puts in going to themovies with Eunice Littlefield! Well, when you see me giving you--"Somewhat later, after diplomacies, Ted persuaded Verona to admit thatshe was merely going to the Armory, that evening, to see the dog andcat show. She was then, Ted planned, to park the car in front of thecandy-store across from the Armory and he would pick it up. There weremasterly arrangements regarding leaving the key, and having the gasolinetank filled; and passionately, devotees of the Great God Motor, theyhymned the patch on the spare inner-tube, and the lost jack-handle.Their truce dissolving, Ted observed that her friends were "a scream ofa bunch-stuck-up gabby four-flushers." His friends, she indicated,were "disgusting imitation sports, and horrid little shrieking ignorantgirls." Further: "It's disgusting of you to smoke cigarettes, and so onand so forth, and those clothes you've got on this morning, they're tooutterly ridiculous--honestly, simply disgusting."Ted balanced over to the low beveled mirror in the buffet, regarded hischarms, and smirked. His suit, the latest thing in Old Eli Togs, wasskin-tight, with skimpy trousers to the tops of his glaring tan boots, achorus-man waistline, pattern of an agitated check, and across the backa belt which belted nothing. His scarf was an enormous black silk wad.His flaxen hair was ice-smooth, pasted back without parting. When hewent to school he would add a cap with a long vizor like a shovel-blade.Proudest of all was his waistcoat, saved for, begged for, plotted for;a real Fancy Vest of fawn with polka dots of a decayed red, the pointsastoundingly long. On the lower edge of it he wore a high-school button,a class button, and a fraternity pin.And none of it mattered. He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes(which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was notover-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: "Yes, Iguess we're pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess ournew necktie is some smear!"Babbitt barked: "It is! And while you're admiring yourself, let me tellyou it might add to your manly beauty if you wiped some of that egg offyour mouth!"Verona giggled, momentary victor in the greatest of Great Wars, whichis the family war. Ted looked at her hopelessly, then shrieked at Tinka:"For the love o' Pete, quit pouring the whole sugar bowl on your cornflakes!"When Verona and Ted were gone and Tinka upstairs, Babbitt groaned to hiswife: "Nice family, I must say! I don't pretend to be any baa-lamb, andmaybe I'm a little cross-grained at breakfast sometimes, but the waythey go on jab-jab-jabbering, I simply can't stand it. I swear, I feellike going off some place where I can get a little peace. I do thinkafter a man's spent his lifetime trying to give his kids a chance anda decent education, it's pretty discouraging to hear them all the timescrapping like a bunch of hyenas and never--and never--Curious; herein the paper it says--Never silent for one mom--Seen the morning paperyet?""No, dear." In twenty-three years of married life, Mrs. Babbitt had seenthe paper before her husband just sixty-seven times."Lots of news. Terrible big tornado in the South. Hard luck, all right.But this, say, this is corking! Beginning of the end for those fellows!New York Assembly has passed some bills that ought to completely outlawthe socialists! And there's an elevator-runners' strike in New York anda lot of college boys are taking their places. That's the stuff! Anda mass-meeting in Birmingham's demanded that this Mick agitator, thisfellow De Valera, be deported. Dead right, by golly! All these agitatorspaid with German gold anyway. And we got no business interfering withthe Irish or any other foreign government. Keep our hands strictly off.And there's another well-authenticated rumor from Russia that Lenin isdead. That's fine. It's beyond me why we don't just step in there andkick those Bolshevik cusses out.""That's so," said Mrs. Babbitt."And it says here a fellow was inaugurated mayor in overalls--apreacher, too! What do you think of that!""Humph! Well!"He searched for an attitude, but neither as a Republican, aPresbyterian, an Elk, nor a real-estate broker did he have any doctrineabout preacher-mayors laid down for him, so he grunted and went on. Shelooked sympathetic and did not hear a word. Later she would read theheadlines, the society columns, and the department-store advertisements."What do you know about this! Charley McKelvey still doing the sassietystunt as heavy as ever. Here's what that gushy woman reporter says aboutlast night:"Never is Society with the big, big S more flattered than when they arebidden to partake of good cheer at the distinguished and hospitableresidence of Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. McKelvey as they were last night.Set in its spacious lawns and landscaping, one of the notable sightscrowning Royal Ridge, but merry and homelike despite its mighty stonewalls and its vast rooms famed for their decoration, their home wasthrown open last night for a dance in honor of Mrs. McKelvey's notableguest, Miss J. Sneeth of Washington. The wide hall is so generous inits proportions that it made a perfect ballroom, its hardwood floorreflecting the charming pageant above its polished surface. Eventhe delights of dancing paled before the alluring opportunities fortete-a-tetes that invited the soul to loaf in the long library beforethe baronial fireplace, or in the drawing-room with its deep comfyarmchairs, its shaded lamps just made for a sly whisper of prettynothings all a deux; or even in the billiard room where one could takea cue and show a prowess at still another game than that sponsored byCupid and Terpsichore.There was more, a great deal more, in the best urban journalisticstyle of Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, the popular society editor of theAdvocate-Times. But Babbitt could not abide it. He grunted. He wrinkledthe newspaper. He protested: "Can you beat it! I'm willing to hand a lotof credit to Charley McKelvey. When we were in college together, he wasjust as hard up as any of us, and he's made a million good bucks outof contracting and hasn't been any dishonester or bought any more citycouncils than was necessary. And that's a good house of his--though itain't any 'mighty stone walls' and it ain't worth the ninety thousandit cost him. But when it comes to talking as though Charley McKelveyand all that booze-hoisting set of his are any blooming bunch of of, ofVanderbilts, why, it makes me tired!"Timidly from Mrs. Babbitt: "I would like to see the inside of theirhouse though. It must be lovely. I've never been inside.""Well, I have! Lots of--couple of times. To see Chaz about businessdeals, in the evening. It's not so much. I wouldn't WANT to go there todinner with that gang of, of high-binders. And I'll bet I make a wholelot more money than some of those tin-horns that spend all they got ondress-suits and haven't got a decent suit of underwear to their name!Hey! What do you think of this!"Mrs. Babbitt was strangely unmoved by the tidings from the Real Estateand Building column of the Advocate-Times: Ashtabula Street, 496--J. K. Dawson to Thomas Mullally, April 17, 15.7 X 112.2, mtg. $4000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nom And this morning Babbitt was too disquieted to entertain her with itemsfrom Mechanics' Liens, Mortgages Recorded, and Contracts Awarded. Herose. As he looked at her his eyebrows seemed shaggier than usual.Suddenly:"Yes, maybe--Kind of shame to not keep in touch with folks like theMcKelveys. We might try inviting them to dinner, some evening. Oh,thunder, let's not waste our good time thinking about 'em! Our littlebunch has a lot liver times than all those plutes. Just compare a realhuman like you with these neurotic birds like Lucile McKelvey--allhighbrow talk and dressed up like a plush horse! You're a great oldgirl, hon.!"He covered his betrayal of softness with a complaining: "Say, don't letTinka go and eat any more of that poison nutfudge. For Heaven's sake,try to keep her from ruining her digestion. I tell you, most folks don'tappreciate how important it is to have a good digestion and regularhabits. Be back 'bout usual time, I guess."He kissed her--he didn't quite kiss her--he laid unmoving lips againsther unflushing cheek. He hurried out to the garage, muttering: "Lord,what a family! And now Myra is going to get pathetic on me because wedon't train with this millionaire outfit. Oh, Lord, sometimes I'd liketo quit the whole game. And the office worry and detail just as bad. AndI act cranky and--I don't mean to, but I get--So darn tired!"