Babbit (24 page)

  In the exhibit-room were plans of the new suburbs of
Sparta, pictures of the new state capitol, at Galop de Vache, and
large ears of corn with the label, "Nature's Gold, from Shelby
County, the Garden Spot of God's Own Country."

  The real convention consisted of men muttering in
hotel bedrooms or in groups amid the badge-spotted crowd in the
hotel-lobby, but there was a show of public meetings.

  The first of them opened with a welcome by the mayor
of Monarch. The pastor of the First Christian Church of Monarch, a
large man with a long damp frontal lock, informed God that the
real-estate men were here now.

  The venerable Minnemagantic realtor, Major Carlton
Tuke, read a paper in which he denounced cooperative stores.
William A. Larkin of Eureka gave a comforting prognosis of "The
Prospects for Increased Construction," and reminded them that
plate-glass prices were two points lower.

  The convention was on.

  The delegates were entertained, incessantly and
firmly. The Monarch Chamber of Commerce gave them a banquet, and
the Manufacturers' Association an afternoon reception, at which a
chrysanthemum was presented to each of the ladies, and to each of
the men a leather bill-fold inscribed "From Monarch the Mighty
Motor Mart."

  Mrs. Crosby Knowlton, wife of the manufacturer of
Fleetwing Automobiles, opened her celebrated Italian garden and
served tea. Six hundred real-estate men and wives ambled down the
autumnal paths. Perhaps three hundred of them were quietly
inconspicuous; perhaps three hundred vigorously exclaimed, "This is
pretty slick, eh?" surreptitiously picked the late asters and
concealed them in their pockets, and tried to get near enough to
Mrs. Knowlton to shake her lovely hand. Without request, the Zenith
delegates (except Rountree) gathered round a marble dancing nymph
and sang "Here we come, the fellows from Zenith, the Zip
Citee."

  It chanced that all the delegates from Pioneer
belonged to the Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks, and they
produced an enormous banner lettered: "B. P. O. E. - Best People on
Earth - Boost Pioneer, Oh Eddie." Nor was Galop de Vache, the state
capital, to be slighted. The leader of the Galop de Vache
delegation was a large, reddish, roundish man, but active. He took
off his coat, hurled his broad black felt hat on the ground, rolled
up his sleeves, climbed upon the sundial, spat, and bellowed:

  "We'll tell the world, and the good lady who's
giving the show this afternoon, that the bonniest burg in this
man's state is Galop de Vache. You boys can talk about your zip,
but jus' lemme murmur that old Galop has the largest proportion of
home-owning citizens in the state; and when folks own their homes,
they ain't starting labor-troubles, and they're raising kids
instead of raising hell! Galop de Vache! The town for homey folks!
The town that eats 'em alive oh, Bosco! We'll - tell - the -
world!"

  The guests drove off; the garden shivered into
quiet. But Mrs. Crosby Knowlton sighed as she looked at a marble
seat warm from five hundred summers of Amalfi. On the face of a
winged sphinx which supported it some one had drawn a mustache in
lead-pencil. Crumpled paper napkins were dumped among the
Michaelmas daisies. On the walk, like shredded lovely flesh, were
the petals of the last gallant rose. Cigarette stubs floated in the
goldfish pool, trailing an evil stain as they swelled and
disintegrated, and beneath the marble seat, the fragments carefully
put together, was a smashed teacup.

  VI

  As he rode back to the hotel Babbitt reflected,
"Myra would have enjoyed all this social agony." For himself he
cared less for the garden party than for the motor tours which the
Monarch Chamber of Commerce had arranged. Indefatigably he viewed
water-reservoirs, suburban trolley-stations, and tanneries. He
devoured the statistics which were given to him, and marveled to
his roommate, W. A. Rogers, "Of course this town isn't a patch on
Zenith; it hasn't got our outlook and natural resources; but did
you know - I nev' did till to-day - that they manufactured seven
hundred and sixty-three million feet of lumber last year? What d'
you think of that!"

  He was nervous as the time for reading his paper
approached. When he stood on the low platform before the
convention, he trembled and saw only a purple haze. But he was in
earnest, and when he had finished the formal paper he talked to
them, his hands in his pockets, his spectacled face a flashing
disk, like a plate set up on edge in the lamplight. They shouted
"That's the stuff!" and in the discussion afterward they referred
with impressiveness to "our friend and brother, Mr. George F.
Babbitt." He had in fifteen minutes changed from a minor delegate
to a personage almost as well known as that diplomat of business,
Cecil Rountree. After the meeting, delegates from all over the
state said, "Hower you, Brother Babbitt?" Sixteen complete
strangers called him "George," and three men took him into corners
to confide, "Mighty glad you had the courage to stand up and give
the Profession a real boost. Now I've always maintained - "

  Next morning, with tremendous casualness, Babbitt
asked the girl at the hotel news-stand for the newspapers from
Zenith. There was nothing in the Press, but in the Advocate-Times,
on the third page - He gasped. They had printed his picture and a
half-column account. The heading was "Sensation at Annual
Land-men's Convention. G. F. Babbitt, Prominent Ziptown Realtor,
Keynoter in Fine Address."

  He murmured reverently, "I guess some of the folks
on Floral Heights will sit up and take notice now, and pay a,
little attention to old Georgie!"

  VII

  It was the last meeting. The delegations were
presenting the claims of their several cities to the next year's
convention. Orators were announcing that "Galop de Vache, the
Capital City, the site of Kremer College and of the Upholtz
Knitting Works, is the recognized center of culture and high-class
enterprise;" and that "Hamburg, the Big Little City with the
Logical Location, where every man is open-handed and every woman a
heaven-born hostess, throws wide to you her hospitable gates."

  In the midst of these more diffident invitations,
the golden doors of the ballroom opened with a blatting of
trumpets, and a circus parade rolled in. It was composed of the
Zenith brokers, dressed as cowpunchers, bareback riders, Japanese
jugglers. At the head was big Warren Whitby, in the bearskin and
gold-and-crimson coat of a drum-major. Behind him, as a clown,
beating a bass drum, extraordinarily happy and noisy, was
Babbitt.

  Warren Whitby leaped on the platform, made merry
play with his baton, and observed, "Boyses and girlses, the time
has came to get down to cases. A dyed-in-the-wool Zenithite sure
loves his neighbors, but we've made up our minds to grab this
convention off our neighbor burgs like we've grabbed the
condensed-milk business and the paper-box business and - "

  J. Harry Barmhill, the convention chairman, hinted,
"We're grateful to you, Mr. Uh, but you must give the other boys a
chance to hand in their bids now."

  A fog-horn voice blared, "In Eureka we'll promise
free motor rides through the prettiest country - "

  Running down the aisle, clapping his hands, a lean
bald young man cried, "I'm from Sparta! Our Chamber of Commerce has
wired me they've set aside eight thousand dollars, in real money,
for the entertainment of the convention!"

  A clerical-looking man rose to clamor, "Money talks!
Move we accept the bid from Sparta!"

  It was accepted.

  VIII

  The Committee on Resolutions was reporting. They
said that Whereas Almighty God in his beneficent mercy had seen fit
to remove to a sphere of higher usefulness some thirty-six realtors
of the state the past year, Therefore it was the sentiment of this
convention assembled that they were sorry God had done it, and the
secretary should be, and hereby was, instructed to spread these
resolutions on the minutes, and to console the bereaved families by
sending them each a copy.

  A second resolution authorized the president of the
S.A.R.E.B. to spend fifteen thousand dollars in lobbying for sane
tax measures in the State Legislature. This resolution had a good
deal to say about Menaces to Sound Business and clearing the Wheels
of Progress from ill-advised and shortsighted obstacles.

  The Committee on Committees reported, and with
startled awe Babbitt learned that he had been appointed a member of
the Committee on Torrens Titles.

  He rejoiced, "I said it was going to be a great
year! Georgie, old son, you got big things ahead of you! You're a
natural-born orator and a good mixer and - Zowie!"

  IX

  There was no formal entertainment provided for the
last evening. Babbitt had planned to go home, but that afternoon
the Jered Sassburgers of Pioneer suggested that Babbitt and W. A.
Rogers have tea with them at the Catalpa Inn.

  Teas were not unknown to Babbitt - his wife and he
earnestly attended them at least twice a year - but they were
sufficiently exotic to make him feel important. He sat at a
glass-covered table in the Art Room of the Inn, with its painted
rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and waitresses being
artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce sandwiches, and
was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as smooth and
large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met two days
before, so they were calling each other "Georgie" and "Sassy."

  Sassburger said prayerfully, "Say, boys, before you
go, seeing this is the last chance, I've GOT IT, up in my room, and
Miriam here is the best little mixelogist in the Stati Unidos like
us Italians say."

  With wide flowing gestures, Babbitt and Rogers
followed the Sassburgers to their room. Mrs. Sassburger shrieked,
"Oh, how terrible!" when she saw that she had left a chemise of
sheer lavender crepe on the bed. She tucked it into a bag, while
Babbitt giggled, "Don't mind us; we're a couple o' little
divvils!"

  Sassburger telephoned for ice, and the bell-boy who
brought it said, prosaically and unprompted, "Highball glasses or
cocktail?" Miriam Sassburger mixed the cocktails in one of those
dismal, nakedly white water-pitchers which exist only in hotels.
When they had finished the first round she proved by intoning
"Think you boys could stand another - you got a dividend coming"
that, though she was but a woman, she knew the complete and perfect
rite of cocktail-drinking.

  Outside, Babbitt hinted to Rogers, "Say, W. A., old
rooster, it comes over me that I could stand it if we didn't go
back to the lovin' wives, this handsome ABEND, but just kind of
stayed in Monarch and threw a party, heh?"

  "George, you speak with the tongue of wisdom and
sagashiteriferousness. El Wing's wife has gone on to Pittsburg.
Let's see if we can't gather him in."

  At half-past seven they sat in their room, with
Elbert Wing and two up-state delegates. Their coats were off, their
vests open, their faces red, their voices emphatic. They were
finishing a bottle of corrosive bootlegged whisky and imploring the
bell-boy, "Say, son, can you get us some more of this embalming
fluid?" They were smoking large cigars and dropping ashes and stubs
on the carpet. With windy guffaws they were telling stories. They
were, in fact, males in a happy state of nature.

  Babbitt sighed, "I don't know how it strikes you
hellions, but personally I like this busting loose for a change,
and kicking over a couple of mountains and climbing up on the North
Pole and waving the aurora borealis around."

  The man from Sparta, a grave, intense youngster,
babbled, "Say! I guess I'm as good a husband as the run of the
mill, but God, I do get so tired of going home every evening, and
nothing to see but the movies. That's why I go out and drill with
the National Guard. I guess I got the nicest little wife in my
burg, but - Say! Know what I wanted to do as a kid? Know what I
wanted to do? Wanted to be a big chemist. Tha's what I wanted to
do. But Dad chased me out on the road selling kitchenware, and here
I'm settled down - settled for LIFE - not a chance! Oh, who the
devil started this funeral talk? How 'bout 'nother lil drink? 'And
a-noth-er drink wouldn' do 's 'ny harmmmmmmm.' "

  "Yea. Cut the sob-stuff," said W. A. Rogers
genially. "You boys know I'm the village songster? Come on nowsing
up:

  Said the old Obadiah to the young Obadiah, 'I am
dry, Obadiah, I am dry.' Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah,
'So am I, Obadiah, so am I.'"

  X

  They had dinner in the Moorish Grillroom of the
Hotel Sedgwick. Somewhere, somehow, they seemed to have gathered in
two other comrades: a manufacturer of fly-paper and a dentist. They
all drank whisky from tea-cups, and they were humorous, and never
listened to one another, except when W. A. Rogers "kidded" the
Italian waiter.

  "Say, Gooseppy," he said innocently, "I want a
couple o' fried elephants' ears."

  "Sorry, sir, we haven't any."

  "Huh? No elephants' ears? What do you know about
that!" Rogers turned to Babbitt. "Pedro says the elephants' ears
are all out!"

  "Well, I'll be switched!" said the man from Sparta,
with difficulty hiding his laughter.

  "Well, in that case, Carlo, just bring me a hunk o'
steak and a couple o' bushels o' French fried potatoes and some
peas," Rogers went on. "I suppose back in dear old sunny It' the
Eyetalians get their fresh garden peas out of the can."

  "No, sir, we have very nice peas in Italy."

  "Is that a fact! Georgie, do you hear that? They get
their fresh garden peas out of the garden, in Italy! By golly, you
live and learn, don't you, Antonio, you certainly do live and
learn, if you live long enough and keep your strength. All right,
Garibaldi, just shoot me in that steak, with about two
printers'-reams of French fried spuds on the promenade deck,
comprehenez-vous, Michelovitch Angeloni?"