CHAPTER XVIII

by Sinclair Lewis

　　CHAPTER XVIIIITHOUGH he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed everydetail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbitt was no moreconscious 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. Gruensberg of the Gruensberg LeatherCompany; she did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveresdetails and never quite understands them; but she was one of thepeople who give an agitating impression of being on the point of doingsomething desperate--of leaving a job or a husband--without ever doingit. Babbitt was so hopeful about Escott's hesitant ardors that he becamethe playful parent. When he returned from the Elks he peered coyly intothe living-room and gurgled, "Has our Kenny been here to-night?" Henever credited Verona's protest, "Why, Ken and I are just good friends,and we only talk about Ideas. I won't have all this sentimentalnonsense, that would spoil everything."It was Ted who most worried Babbitt.With conditions in Latin and English but with a triumphant record inmanual training, basket-ball, and the organization of dances, Ted wasstruggling through his Senior year in the East Side High School. At homehe was interested only when he was asked to trace some subtle ill in theignition system of the car. He repeated to his tut-tutting father thathe did not wish to go to college or law-school, and Babbitt was equallydisturbed by this "shiftlessness" and by Ted's relations with EuniceLittlefield, next door.Though she was the daughter of Howard Littlefield, that wrought-ironfact-mill, that horse-faced priest of private ownership, Eunice wasa midge in the sun. She danced into the house, she flung herself intoBabbitt's lap when he was reading, she crumpled his paper, and laughedat him when he adequately explained that he hated a crumpled newspaperas he hated a broken sales-contract. She was seventeen now. Her ambitionwas to be a cinema actress. She did not merely attend the showing ofevery "feature film;" she also read the motion-picture magazines,those extraordinary symptoms of the Age of Pep-monthlies and weekliesgorgeously illustrated with portraits of young women who had recentlybeen manicure girls, not very skilful manicure girls, and who, unlesstheir every grimace had been arranged by a director, could not haveacted in the Easter cantata of the Central Methodist Church; magazinesreporting, quite seriously, in "interviews" plastered with pictures ofriding-breeches and California bungalows, the views on sculpture andinternational politics of blankly beautiful, suspiciously beautifulyoung men; outlining the plots of films about pure prostitutes andkind-hearted train-robbers; and giving directions for making bootblacksinto Celebrated Scenario Authors overnight.These authorities Eunice studied. She could, she frequently did, tellwhether it was in November or December, 1905, that Mack Harker? therenowned screen cowpuncher and badman, began his public career aschorus man in "Oh, You Naughty Girlie." On the wall of her room, herfather reported, she had pinned up twenty-one photographs of actors. Butthe signed portrait of the most graceful of the movie heroes she carriedin her young bosom.Babbitt was bewildered by this worship of new gods, and he suspectedthat Eunice smoked cigarettes. He smelled the cloying reek fromup-stairs, and heard her giggling with Ted. He never inquired. Theagreeable child dismayed him. Her thin and charming face was sharpenedby bobbed hair; her skirts were short, her stockings were rolled, and,as she flew after Ted, above the caressing silk were glimpses of softknees which made Babbitt uneasy, and wretched that she should considerhim old. Sometimes, in the veiled life of his dreams, when thefairy child came running to him she took on the semblance of EuniceLittlefield.Ted was motor-mad as Eunice was movie-mad.A thousand sarcastic refusals did not check his teasing for a car ofhis own. However lax he might be about early rising and the prosody ofVergil, he was tireless in tinkering. With three other boys he bought arheumatic Ford chassis, built an amazing racer-body out of tin and pine,went skidding round corners in the perilous craft, and sold it at aprofit. Babbitt gave him a motor-cycle, and every Saturday afternoon,with seven sandwiches and a bottle of Coca-Cola in his pockets, andEunice perched eerily on the rumble seat, he went roaring off to distanttowns.Usually Eunice and he were merely neighborhood chums, and quarreled witha wholesome and violent lack of delicacy; but now and then, after thecolor and scent of a dance, they were silent together and a littlefurtive, and Babbitt was worried.Babbitt was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying,opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents, he enjoyedthe game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong, then virtuouslypouncing. He justified himself by croaking, "Well, Ted's mother spoilshim. Got to be somebody who tells him what's what, and me, I'm electedthe goat. Because I try to bring him up to be a real, decent, humanbeing and not one of these sapheads and lounge-lizards, of course theyall call me a grouch!"Throughout, with the eternal human genius for arriving by the worstpossible routes at surprisingly tolerable goals, Babbitt loved his sonand warmed to his companionship and would have sacrificed everything forhim--if he could have been sure of proper credit.IITed was planning a party for his set in the Senior Class.Babbitt meant to be helpful and jolly about it. From his memory ofhigh-school pleasures back in Catawba he suggested the nicest games:Going to Boston, and charades with stew-pans for helmets, andword-games in which you were an Adjective or a Quality. When he was mostenthusiastic he discovered that they weren't paying attention; they wereonly tolerating him. As for the party, it was as fixed and standardizedas a Union Club Hop. There was to be dancing in the living-room, a noblecollation in the dining-room, and in the hall two tables of bridge forwhat Ted called "the poor old dumb-bells that you can't get to dancehardly more 'n half the time."Every breakfast was monopolized by conferences on the affair. No onelistened to Babbitt's bulletins about the February weather or to histhroat-clearing comments on the headlines. He said furiously, "If I maybe PERMITTED to interrupt your engrossing private CONVERSATION--Juh hearwhat I SAID?""Oh, don't be a spoiled baby! Ted and I have just as much right to talkas you have!" flared Mrs. Babbitt.On the night of the party he was permitted to look on, when he was nothelping Matilda with the Vecchia ice cream and the petits fours. He wasdeeply disquieted. Eight years ago, when Verona had given a high-schoolparty, the children had been featureless gabies. Now they were menand women of the world, very supercilious men and women; the boyscondescended to Babbitt, they wore evening-clothes, and with hauteurthey accepted cigarettes from silver cases. Babbitt had heard storiesof what the Athletic Club called "goings on" at young parties; ofgirls "parking" their corsets in the dressing-room, of "cuddling" and"petting," and a presumable increase in what was known as Immorality.To-night he believed the stories. These children seemed bold to him, andcold. The girls wore misty chiffon, coral velvet, or cloth of gold, andaround their dipping bobbed hair were shining wreaths. He had it, uponurgent and secret inquiry, that no corsets were known to be parkedupstairs; but certainly these eager bodies were not stiff with steel.Their stockings were of lustrous silk, their slippers costly andunnatural, their lips carmined and their eyebrows penciled. They dancedcheek to cheek with the boys, and Babbitt sickened with apprehension andunconscious envy.Worst of them all was Eunice Littlefield, and maddest of all the boyswas Ted. Eunice was a flying demon. She slid the length of the room; hertender shoulders swayed; her feet were deft as a weaver's shuttle; shelaughed, and enticed Babbitt to dance with her.Then he discovered the annex to the party.The boys and girls disappeared occasionally, and he remembered rumorsof their drinking together from hip-pocket flasks. He tiptoed round thehouse, and in each of the dozen cars waiting in the street he saw thepoints of light from cigarettes, from each of them heard high giggles.He wanted to denounce them but (standing in the snow, peering roundthe dark corner) he did not dare. He tried to be tactful. When he hadreturned to the front hall he coaxed the boys, "Say, if any of youfellows are thirsty, there's some dandy ginger ale.""Oh! Thanks!" they condescended.He sought his wife, in the pantry, and exploded, "I'd like to go inthere and throw some of those young pups out of the house! They talkdown 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 to theircars to have a drink, they won't come to your house any more, and wewouldn'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 in to be polite, lest Ted be left out of things.But, he resolved, if he found that the boys were drinking, hewould--well, he'd "hand 'em something that would surprise 'em." Whilehe was trying to be agreeable to large-shouldered young bullies he wasearnestly sniffing at them Twice he caught the reek of prohibition-timewhisky, 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 andEunice were dancing, moving together like one body. Littlefield gasped.He called Eunice. There was a whispered duologue, and Littlefieldexplained to Babbitt that Eunice's mother had a headache and needed her.She went off in tears. Babbitt looked after them furiously. "That littledevil! Getting Ted into trouble! And Littlefield, the conceited oldgas-bag, acting like it was Ted that was the bad influence!"Later he smelled whisky on Ted's breath.After the civil farewell to the guests, the row was terrific, a thoroughFamily Scene, like an avalanche, devastating and without reticences.Babbitt thundered, Mrs. Babbitt wept, Ted was unconvincingly defiant,and Verona in confusion as to whose side she was taking.For several months there was coolness between the Babbitts and theLittlefields, each family sheltering their lamb from the wolf-cub nextdoor. Babbitt and Littlefield still spoke in pontifical periods aboutmotors and the senate, but they kept bleakly away from mention of theirfamilies. Whenever Eunice came to the house she discussed with pleasantintimacy the fact that she had been forbidden to come to the house; andBabbitt tried, with no success whatever, to be fatherly and advisorywith her.III"Gosh all fishhooks!" Ted wailed to Eunice, as they wolfed hotchocolate, lumps of nougat, and an assortment of glace nuts, in themosaic splendor of the Royal Drug Store, "it gets me why Dad doesn'tjust pass out from being so poky. Every evening he sits there, abouthalf-asleep, and if Rone or I say, 'Oh, come on, let's do something,' hedoesn't even take the trouble to think about it. He just yawns and says,'Naw, this suits me right here.' He doesn't know there's any fun goingon anywhere. I suppose he must do some thinking, same as you and I do,but gosh, there's no way of telling it. I don't believe that outside ofthe office and playing a little bum golf on Saturday he knows there'sanything in the world to do except just keep sitting there-sittingthere every night--not wanting to go anywhere--not wanting to doanything--thinking us kids are crazy--sitting there--Lord!"IVIf he was frightened by Ted's slackness, Babbitt was not sufficientlyfrightened by Verona. She was too safe. She lived too much in the neatlittle airless room of her mind. Kenneth Escott and she were alwaysunder foot. When they were not at home, conducting their cautiouslyradical courtship over sheets of statistics, they were trudging off tolectures by authors and Hindu philosophers and Swedish lieutenants."Gosh," Babbitt wailed to his wife, as they walked home from theFogartys' bridge-party, "it gets me how Rone and that fellow can be sopoky. They sit there night after night, whenever he isn't working,and they don't know there's any fun in the world. All talk anddiscussion--Lord! Sitting there--sitting there--night after night--notwanting to do anything--thinking I'm crazy because I like to go out andplay a fist of cards--sitting there--gosh!"Then round the swimmer, bored by struggling through the perpetual surfof family life, new combers swelled.VBabbitt's father- and mother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Henry T. Thompson,rented their old house in the Bellevue district and moved to the HotelHatton, that glorified boarding-house filled with widows, red-plushfurniture, and the sound of ice-water pitchers. They were lonely there,and every other Sunday evening the Babbitts had to dine with them, onfricasseed chicken, discouraged celery, and cornstarch ice cream, andafterward sit, polite and restrained, in the hotel lounge, while a youngwoman violinist played songs from the German via Broadway.Then Babbitt's own mother came down from Catawba to spend three weeks.She was a kind woman and magnificently uncomprehending. Shecongratulated the convention-defying Verona on being a "nice, loyalhome-body without all these Ideas that so many girls seem to havenowadays;" and when Ted filled the differential with grease, out of purelove of mechanics and filthiness, she rejoiced that he was "so handyaround the house--and helping his father and all, and not going out withthe girls all the time and trying to pretend he was a society fellow."Babbitt loved his mother, and sometimes he rather liked her, but he wasannoyed by her Christian Patience, and he was reduced to pulpiness whenshe discoursed about a quite mythical hero called "Your Father":"You won't remember it, Georgie, you were such a little fellow at thetime--my, I remember just how you looked that day, with your goldy browncurls and your lace collar, you always were such a dainty child, andkind of puny and sickly, and you loved pretty things so much and the redtassels on your little bootees and all--and Your Father was taking us tochurch and a man stopped us and said 'Major'--so many of the neighborsused to call Your Father 'Major;' of course he was only a private in TheWar but everybody knew that was because of the jealousy of his captainand he ought to have been a high-ranking officer, he had that naturalability to command that so very, very few men have--and this man cameout into the road and held up his hand and stopped the buggy and said,'Major,' he said, 'there's a lot of the folks around here that havedecided to support Colonel Scanell for congress, and we want you tojoin us. Meeting people the way you do in the store, you could help us alot.'"Well, Your Father just looked at him and said, 'I certainly shall donothing of the sort. I don't like his politics,' he said. Well, theman--Captain Smith they used to call him, and heaven only knowswhy, because he hadn't the shadow or vestige of a right to be called'Captain' or any other title--this Captain Smith said, 'We'll make ithot for you if you don't stick by your friends, Major.' Well, you knowhow Your Father was, and this Smith knew it too; he knew what a Real Manhe was, and he knew Your Father knew the political situation from A toZ, and he ought to have seen that here was one man he couldn't imposeon, but he went on trying to and hinting and trying till Your Fatherspoke up and said to him, 'Captain Smith,' he said, 'I have a reputationaround these parts for being one who is amply qualified to mind his ownbusiness and let other folks mind theirs!' and with that he drove on andleft the fellow standing there in the road like a bump on a log!"Babbitt was most exasperated when she revealed his boyhood to thechildren. He had, it seemed, been fond of barley-sugar; had worn the"loveliest little pink bow in his curls" and corrupted his own name to"Goo-goo." He heard (though he did not officially hear) Ted admonishingTinka, "Come on now, kid; stick the lovely pink bow in your curls andbeat it down to breakfast, or Goo-goo will jaw your head off."Babbitt's half-brother, Martin, with his wife and youngest baby, camedown from Catawba for two days. Martin bred cattle and ran the dustygeneral-store. He was proud of being a freeborn independent American ofthe good old Yankee stock; he was proud of being honest, blunt, ugly,and disagreeable. His favorite remark was "How much did you pay forthat?" He regarded Verona's books, Babbitt's silver pencil, and flowerson the table as citified extravagances, and said so. Babbitt would havequarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the baby, whom Babbittteased and poked fingers at and addressed:"I think this baby's a bum, yes, sir, I think this little baby's a bum,he's a bum, yes, sir, he's a bum, that's what he is, he's a bum, thisbaby's a bum, he's nothing but an old bum, that's what he is--a bum!"All the while Verona and Kenneth Escott held long inquiries intoepistemology; Ted was a disgraced rebel; and Tinka, aged eleven, wasdemanding that she be allowed to go to the movies thrice a week, "likeall the girls."Babbitt raged, "I'm sick of it! Having to carry three generations. Wholedamn bunch lean on me. Pay half of mother's income, listen to HenryT., listen to Myra's worrying, be polite to Mart, and get called an oldgrouch for trying to help the children. All of 'em depending on me andpicking on me and not a damn one of 'em grateful! No relief, and nocredit, and no help from anybody. And to keep it up for--good Lord, howlong?"He enjoyed being sick in February; he was delighted by theirconsternation that he, the rock, should give way.He had eaten a questionable clam. For two days he was languorous andpetted and esteemed. He was allowed to snarl "Oh, let me alone!" withoutreprisals. He lay on the sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slidealong the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale blood red.The shadow of the draw-rope was dense black, in an enticing ripple onthe canvas. He found pleasure in the curve of it, sighed as the fadinglight blurred it. He was conscious of life, and a little sad. With noVergil Gunches before whom to set his face in resolute optimism, hebeheld, and half admitted that he beheld, his way of life as incrediblymechanical. Mechanical business--a brisk selling of badly built houses.Mechanical religion--a dry, hard church, shut off from the real lifeof the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat. Mechanical golf anddinner-parties and bridge and conversation. Save with Paul Riesling,mechanical friendships--back-slapping and jocular, never daring to essaythe test of quietness.He turned uneasily in bed.He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweetafternoons which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittlepretentiousness. He thought of telephoning about leases, of cajoling menhe hated, of making business calls and waiting in dirty anterooms--haton knee, yawning at fly-specked calendars, being polite to office-boys."I don't hardly want to go back to work," he prayed. "I'd like to--Idon't know."But he was back next day, busy and of doubtful temper.