CHAPTER VII

by Sinclair Lewis

　　CHAPTER VIIIHE solemnly finished the last copy of the American Magazine, while hiswife sighed, laid away her darning, and looked enviously at the lingeriedesigns in a women's magazine. The room was very still.It was a room which observed the best Floral Heights standards. The graywalls were divided into artificial paneling by strips of white-enameledpine. From the Babbitts' former house had come two much-carvedrocking-chairs, but the other chairs were new, very deep and restful,upholstered in blue and gold-striped velvet. A blue velvet davenportfaced the fireplace, and behind it was a cherrywood table and a tallpiano-lamp with a shade of golden silk. (Two out of every three housesin Floral Heights had before the fireplace a davenport, a mahogany tablereal or imitation, and a piano-lamp or a reading-lamp with a shade ofyellow or rose silk.)On the table was a runner of gold-threaded Chinese fabric, fourmagazines, a silver box containing cigarette-crumbs, and three"gift-books"--large, expensive editions of fairy-tales illustrated byEnglish artists and as yet unread by any Babbitt save Tinka.In a corner by the front windows was a large cabinet Victrola. (Eightout of every nine Floral Heights houses had a cabinet phonograph.)Among the pictures, hung in the exact center of each gray panel, werea red and black imitation English hunting-print, an anemic imitationboudoir-print with a French caption of whose morality Babbitt had alwaysbeen rather suspicious, and a "hand-colored" photograph of a Colonialroom--rag rug, maiden spinning, cat demure before a white fireplace.(Nineteen out of every twenty houses in Floral Heights had either ahunting-print, a Madame Feit la Toilette print, a colored photograph ofa New England house, a photograph of a Rocky Mountain, or all four.)It was a room as superior in comfort to the "parlor" of Babbitt'sboyhood as his motor was superior to his father's buggy. Though therewas nothing in the room that was interesting, there was nothing thatwas offensive. It was as neat, and as negative, as a block of artificialice. The fireplace was unsoftened by downy ashes or by sooty brick; thebrass fire-irons were of immaculate polish; and the grenadier andironswere like samples in a shop, desolate, unwanted, lifeless things ofcommerce.Against the wall was a piano, with another piano-lamp, but no one usedit save Tinka. The hard briskness of the phonograph contented them;their store of jazz records made them feel wealthy and cultured; and allthey knew of creating music was the nice adjustment of a bamboo needle.The books on the table were unspotted and laid in rigid parallels;not one corner of the carpet-rug was curled; and nowhere was therea hockey-stick, a torn picture-book, an old cap, or a gregarious anddisorganizing dog.IIAt home, Babbitt never read with absorption. He was concentrated enoughat the office but here he crossed his legs and fidgeted. When his storywas interesting he read the best, that is the funniest, paragraphs tohis wife; when it did not hold him he coughed, scratched his ankles andhis right ear, thrust his left thumb into his vest pocket, jingled hissilver, whirled the cigar-cutter and the keys on one end of his watchchain, yawned, rubbed his nose, and found errands to do. He wentupstairs to put on his slippers--his elegant slippers of seal-brown,shaped like medieval shoes. He brought up an apple from the barrel whichstood by the trunk-closet in the basement."An apple a day keeps the doctor away," he enlightened Mrs. Babbitt, forquite the first time in fourteen hours."That's so.""An apple is Nature's best regulator.""Yes, it--""Trouble with women is, they never have sense enough to form regularhabits.""Well, I--""Always nibbling and eating between meals.""George!" She looked up from her reading. "Did you have a light lunchto-day, like you were going to? I did!"This malicious and unprovoked attack astounded him. "Well, maybe itwasn't as light as--Went to lunch with Paul and didn't have much chanceto diet. Oh, you needn't to grin like a chessy cat! If it wasn't for mewatching out and keeping an eye on our diet--I'm the only member of thisfamily that appreciates the value of oatmeal for breakfast. I--"She stooped over her story while he piously sliced and gulped down theapple, discoursing:"One thing I've done: cut down my smoking."Had kind of a run-in with Graff in the office. He's getting too darnfresh. I'll stand for a good deal, but once in a while I got to assertmy authority, and I jumped him. 'Stan,' I said--Well, I told him justexactly where he got off."Funny kind of a day. Makes you feel restless."Wellllllllll, uh--" That sleepiest sound in the world, the terminalyawn. Mrs. Babbitt yawned with it, and looked grateful as he droned,"How about going to bed, eh? Don't suppose Rone and Ted will be in tillall hours. Yep, funny kind of a day; not terribly warm but yet--Gosh,I'd like--Some day I'm going to take a long motor trip.""Yes, we'd enjoy that," she yawned.He looked away from her as he realized that he did not wish to haveher go with him. As he locked doors and tried windows and set the heatregulator so that the furnace-drafts would open automatically in themorning, he sighed a little, heavy with a lonely feeling which perplexedand frightened him. So absent-minded was he that he could not rememberwhich window-catches he had inspected, and through the darkness,fumbling at unseen perilous chairs, he crept back to try them all overagain. His feet were loud on the steps as he clumped upstairs at the endof this great and treacherous day of veiled rebellions.IIIBefore breakfast he always reverted to up-state village boyhood, andshrank from the complex urban demands of shaving, bathing, decidingwhether the current shirt was clean enough for another day. Whenever hestayed home in the evening he went to bed early, and thriftily gotahead in those dismal duties. It was his luxurious custom to shave whilesitting snugly in a tubful of hot water. He may be viewed to-night as aplump, smooth, pink, baldish, podgy goodman, robbed of the importance ofspectacles, squatting in breast-high water, scraping his lather-smearedcheeks with a safety-razor like a tiny lawn-mower, and with melancholydignity clawing through the water to recover a slippery and active pieceof soap.He was lulled to dreaming by the caressing warmth. The light fell on theinner surface of the tub in a pattern of delicate wrinkled lines whichslipped with a green sparkle over the curving porcelain as the clearwater trembled. Babbitt lazily watched it; noted that along thesilhouette of his legs against the radiance on the bottom of the tub,the shadows of the air-bubbles clinging to the hairs were reproducedas strange jungle mosses. He patted the water, and the reflected lightcapsized and leaped and volleyed. He was content and childish. Heplayed. He shaved a swath down the calf of one plump leg.The drain-pipe was dripping, a dulcet and lively song: drippety dripdrip dribble, drippety drip drip drip. He was enchanted by it. He lookedat the solid tub, the beautiful nickel taps, the tiled walls of theroom, and felt virtuous in the possession of this splendor.He roused himself and spoke gruffly to his bath-things. "Come here!You've done enough fooling!" he reproved the treacherous soap, anddefied the scratchy nail-brush with "Oh, you would, would you!" Hesoaped himself, and rinsed himself, and austerely rubbed himself; henoted a hole in the Turkish towel, and meditatively thrust a fingerthrough it, and marched back to the bedroom, a grave and unbendingcitizen.There was a moment of gorgeous abandon, a flash of melodrama such as hefound in traffic-driving, when he laid out a clean collar, discoveredthat it was frayed in front, and tore it up with a magnificent yeeeeeingsound.Most important of all was the preparation of his bed and thesleeping-porch.It is not known whether he enjoyed his sleeping-porch because of thefresh air or because it was the standard thing to have a sleeping-porch.Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber ofCommerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined hisevery religious belief and the senators who controlled the RepublicanParty decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should thinkabout disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large nationaladvertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to behis individuality. These standard advertised wares--toothpastes, socks,tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters--were his symbols andproofs of excellence; at first the signs, then the substitutes, for joyand passion and wisdom.But none of these advertised tokens of financial and social success wasmore significant than a sleeping-porch with a sun-parlor below.The rites of preparing for bed were elaborate and unchanging. Theblankets had to be tucked in at the foot of his cot. (Also, the reasonwhy the maid hadn't tucked in the blankets had to be discussed with Mrs.Babbitt.) The rag rug was adjusted so that his bare feet would strike itwhen he arose in the morning. The alarm clock was wound. The hot-waterbottle was filled and placed precisely two feet from the bottom of thecot.These tremendous undertakings yielded to his determination; one byone they were announced to Mrs. Babbitt and smashed through toaccomplishment. At last his brow cleared, and in his "Gnight!" rangvirile power. But there was yet need of courage. As he sank into sleep,just at the first exquisite relaxation, the Doppelbrau car came home.He bounced into wakefulness, lamenting, "Why the devil can't some peoplenever get to bed at a reasonable hour?" So familiar was he with theprocess of putting up his own car that he awaited each step like an ableexecutioner condemned to his own rack.The car insultingly cheerful on the driveway. The car door opened andbanged shut, then the garage door slid open, grating on the sill, andthe car door again. The motor raced for the climb up into the garage andraced once more, explosively, before it was shut off. A final openingand slamming of the car door. Silence then, a horrible silence filledwith waiting, till the leisurely Mr. Doppelbrau had examined the stateof his tires and had at last shut the garage door. Instantly, forBabbitt, a blessed state of oblivion.IVAt that moment In the city of Zenith, Horace Updike was making love toLucile McKelvey in her mauve drawing-room on Royal Ridge, after theirreturn from a lecture by an eminent English novelist. Updike wasZenith's professional bachelor; a slim-waisted man of forty-six withan effeminate voice and taste in flowers, cretonnes, and flappers. Mrs.McKelvey was red-haired, creamy, discontented, exquisite, rude, andhonest. Updike tried his invariable first maneuver--touching her nervouswrist."Don't be an idiot!" she said."Do you mind awfully?""No! That's what I mind!"He changed to conversation. He was famous at conversation. He spokereasonably of psychoanalysis, Long Island polo, and the Ming platterhe had found in Vancouver. She promised to meet him in Deauville, thecoming summer, "though," she sighed, "it's becoming too dreadfullybanal; nothing but Americans and frowsy English baronesses."And at that moment in Zenith, a cocaine-runner and a prostitute weredrinking cocktails in Healey Hanson's saloon on Front Street. Sincenational prohibition was now in force, and since Zenith was notoriouslylaw-abiding, they were compelled to keep the cocktails innocentby drinking them out of tea-cups. The lady threw her cup at thecocaine-runner's head. He worked his revolver out of the pocket in hissleeve, and casually murdered her.At that moment in Zenith, two men sat in a laboratory. For thirty-sevenhours now they had been working on a report of their investigations ofsynthetic rubber.At that moment in Zenith, there was a conference of four union officialsas to whether the twelve thousand coal-miners within a hundred milesof the city should strike. Of these men one resembled a testy andprosperous grocer, one a Yankee carpenter, one a soda-clerk, and onea Russian Jewish actor The Russian Jew quoted Kautsky, Gene Debs, andAbraham Lincoln.At that moment a G. A. R. veteran was dying. He had come from theCivil War straight to a farm which, though it was officially withinthe city-limits of Zenith, was primitive as the backwoods. He had neverridden in a motor car, never seen a bath-tub, never read any book savethe Bible, McGuffey's readers, and religious tracts; and he believedthat the earth is flat, that the English are the Lost Ten Tribes ofIsrael, and that the United States is a democracy.At that moment the steel and cement town which composed the factory ofthe Pullmore Tractor Company of Zenith was running on night shift tofill an order of tractors for the Polish army. It hummed like a millionbees, glared through its wide windows like a volcano. Along the highwire fences, searchlights played on cinder-lined yards, switch-tracks,and armed guards on patrol.At that moment Mike Monday was finishing a meeting. Mr. Monday, thedistinguished evangelist, the best-known Protestant pontiff in America,had once been a prize-fighter. Satan had not dealt justly with him. Asa prize-fighter he gained nothing but his crooked nose, his celebratedvocabulary, and his stage-presence. The service of the Lord had beenmore profitable. He was about to retire with a fortune. It had been wellearned, for, to quote his last report, "Rev. Mr. Monday, the Prophetwith a Punch, has shown that he is the world's greatest salesman ofsalvation, and that by efficient organization the overhead of spiritualregeneration may be kept down to an unprecedented rock-bottom basis. Hehas converted over two hundred thousand lost and priceless souls at anaverage cost of less than ten dollars a head."Of the larger cities of the land, only Zenith had hesitated to submitits vices to Mike Monday and his expert reclamation corps. The moreenterprising organizations of the city had voted to invite him--Mr.George F. Babbitt had once praised him in a speech at the Boosters'Club. But there was opposition from certain Episcopalian andCongregationalist ministers, those renegades whom Mr. Monday so finelycalled "a bunch of gospel-pushers with dish-water instead of blood, agang of squealers that need more dust on the knees of their pants andmore hair on their skinny old chests." This opposition had beencrushed when the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce had reported to acommittee of manufacturers that in every city where he had appeared, Mr.Monday had turned the minds of workmen from wages and hours to higherthings, and thus averted strikes. He was immediately invited.An expense fund of forty thousand dollars had been underwritten; out onthe County Fair Grounds a Mike Monday Tabernacle had been erected,to seat fifteen thousand people. In it the prophet was at this momentconcluding his message:"There's a lot of smart college professors and tea-guzzling slobs inthis burg that say I'm a roughneck and a never-wuzzer and my knowledgeof history is not-yet. Oh, there's a gang of woolly-whiskered book-licethat think they know more than Almighty God, and prefer a lot of Hunscience and smutty German criticism to the straight and simple Wordof God. Oh, there's a swell bunch of Lizzie boys and lemon-suckers andpie-faces and infidels and beer-bloated scribblers that love to fire offtheir filthy mouths and yip that Mike Monday is vulgar and full of mush.Those pups are saying now that I hog the gospel-show, that I'm in itfor the coin. Well, now listen, folks! I'm going to give those birds achance! They can stand right up here and tell me to my face that I'm agaloot and a liar and a hick! Only if they do--if they do!--don't faintwith surprise if some of those rum-dumm liars get one good swift pokefrom Mike, with all the kick of God's Flaming Righteousness behind thewallop! Well, come on, folks! Who says it? Who says Mike Monday is afourflush and a yahoo? Huh? Don't I see anybody standing up? Well, thereyou are! Now I guess the folks in this man's town will quit listening toall this kyoodling from behind the fence; I guess you'll quit listeningto the guys that pan and roast and kick and beef, and vomit out filthyatheism; and all of you 'll come in, with every grain of pep andreverence you got, and boost all together for Jesus Christ and hiseverlasting mercy and tenderness!"At that moment Seneca Doane, the radical lawyer, and Dr. Kurt Yavitch,the histologist (whose report on the destruction of epithelial cellsunder radium had made the name of Zenith known in Munich, Prague, andRome), were talking in Doane's library."Zenith's a city with gigantic power--gigantic buildings, giganticmachines, gigantic transportation," meditated Doane."I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life. Itis one big railroad station--with all the people taking tickets for thebest cemeteries," Dr. Yavitch said placidly.Doane roused. "I'm hanged if it is! You make me sick, Kurt, with yourperpetual whine about 'standardization.' Don't you suppose any othernation is 'standardized?' Is anything more standardized than England,with every house that can afford it having the same muffins at the sametea-hour, and every retired general going to exactly the same evensongat the same gray stone church with a square tower, and every golfingprig in Harris tweeds saying 'Right you are!' to every other prosperousass? Yet I love England. And for standardization--just look at thesidewalk cafes in France and the love-making in Italy!"Standardization is excellent, per se. When I buy an Ingersoll watch ora Ford, I get a better tool for less money, and I know precisely whatI'm getting, and that leaves me more time and energy to be individualin. And--I remember once in London I saw a picture of an Americansuburb, in a toothpaste ad on the back of the Saturday Evening Post--anelm-lined snowy street of these new houses, Georgian some of 'em, orwith low raking roofs and--The kind of street you'd find here in Zenith,say in Floral Heights. Open. Trees. Grass. And I was homesick! There'sno other country in the world that has such pleasant houses. And I don'tcare if they ARE standardized. It's a corking standard!"No, what I fight in Zenith is standardization of thought, and, ofcourse, the traditions of competition. The real villains of the pieceare the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand oftrickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worstthing about these fellows is that they're so good and, in their workat least, so intelligent. You can't hate them properly, and yet theirstandardized minds are the enemy."Then this boosting--Sneakingly I have a notion that Zenith is a betterplace to live in than Manchester or Glasgow or Lyons or Berlin orTurin--""It is not, and I have lift in most of them," murmured Dr. Yavitch."Well, matter of taste. Personally, I prefer a city with a future sounknown that it excites my imagination. But what I particularly want--""You," said Dr. Yavitch, "are a middle-road liberal, and you haven'tthe slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactlywhat I want--and what I want now is a drink."VIAt that moment in Zenith, Jake Offutt, the politician, and Henry T.Thompson were in conference. Offutt suggested, "The thing to do is toget your fool son-in-law, Babbitt, to put it over. He's one of thesepatriotic guys. When he grabs a piece of property for the gang, he makesit look like we were dyin' of love for the dear peepul, and I do love tobuy respectability--reasonable. Wonder how long we can keep it up, Hank?We're safe as long as the good little boys like George Babbitt and allthe nice respectable labor-leaders think you and me are rugged patriots.There's swell pickings for an honest politician here, Hank: a whole cityworking to provide cigars and fried chicken and dry martinis for us,and rallying to our banner with indignation, oh, fierce indignation,whenever some squealer like this fellow Seneca Doane comes along!Honest, Hank, a smart codger like me ought to be ashamed of himself ifhe didn't milk cattle like them, when they come around mooing for it!But the Traction gang can't get away with grand larceny like it usedto. I wonder when--Hank, I wish we could fix some way to run this fellowSeneca Doane out of town. It's him or us!"At that moment in Zenith, three hundred and forty or fifty thousandOrdinary People were asleep, a vast unpenetrated shadow. In the slumbeyond the railroad tracks, a young man who for six months had soughtwork turned on the gas and killed himself and his wife.At that moment Lloyd Mallam, the poet, owner of the Hafiz Book Shop,was finishing a rondeau to show how diverting was life amid the feuds ofmedieval Florence, but how dull it was in so obvious a place as Zenith.And at that moment George F. Babbitt turned ponderously in bed--thelast turn, signifying that he'd had enough of this worried business offalling asleep and was about it in earnest.Instantly he was in the magic dream. He was somewhere among unknownpeople who laughed at him. He slipped away, ran down the paths of amidnight garden, and at the gate the fairy child was waiting. Herdear and tranquil hand caressed his cheek. He was gallant and wise andwell-beloved; warm ivory were her arms; and beyond perilous moors thebrave sea glittered.