Babbit (25 page)

  Afterward Elbert Wing admired, "Gee, you certainly
did have that poor Dago going, W. A. He couldn't make you out at
all!"

  In the Monarch Herald, Babbitt found an
advertisement which he read aloud, to applause and laughter:

  Old Colony Theatre

  Shake the Old Dogs to the WROLLICKING WRENS The
bonniest bevy of beauteous bathing babes in burlesque. Pete Menutti
and his Oh, Gee, Kids.

  This is the straight steer, Benny, the painless
chicklets of the Wrollicking Wrens are the cuddlingest bunch that
ever hit town. Steer the feet, get the card board, and twist the
pupils to the PDQest show ever. You will get 111% on your kale in
this fun-fest. The Calroza Sisters are sure some lookers and will
give you a run for your gelt. Jock Silbersteen is one of the pepper
lads and slips you a dose of real laughter. Shoot the up and down
to Jackson and West for graceful tappers. They run 1-2 under the
wire. Provin and Adams will blow the blues in their laugh skit
"Hootch Mon!" Something doing, boys. Listen to what the Hep Bird
twitters.

  "Sounds like a juicy show to me. Let's all take it
in," said Babbitt.

  But they put off departure as long as they could.
They were safe while they sat here, legs firmly crossed under the
table, but they felt unsteady; they were afraid of navigating the
long and slippery floor of the grillroom under the eyes of the
other guests and the too-attentive waiters.

  When they did venture, tables got in their way, and
they sought to cover embarrassment by heavy jocularity at the
coatroom. As the girl handed out their hats, they smiled at her,
and hoped that she, a cool and expert judge, would feel that they
were gentlemen. They croaked at one another, "Who owns the bum
lid?" and "You take a good one, George; I'll take what's left," and
to the check-girl they stammered, "Better come along, sister! High,
wide, and fancy evening ahead!" All of them tried to tip her,
urging one another, "No! Wait! Here! I got it right here!" Among
them, they gave her three dollars.

  XI

  Flamboyantly smoking cigars they sat in a box at the
burlesque show, their feet up on the rail, while a chorus of twenty
daubed, worried, and inextinguishably respectable grandams swung
their legs in the more elementary chorus-evolutions, and a Jewish
comedian made vicious fun of Jews. In the entr'actes they met other
lone delegates. A dozen of them went in taxicabs out to Bright
Blossom Inn, where the blossoms were made of dusty paper festooned
along a room low and stinking, like a cow-stable no longer wisely
used.

  Here, whisky was served openly, in glasses. Two or
three clerks, who on pay-day longed to be taken for millionaires,
sheepishly danced with telephone-girls and manicure-girls in the
narrow space between the tables. Fantastically whirled the
professionals, a young man in sleek evening-clothes and a slim mad
girl in emerald silk, with amber hair flung up as jaggedly as
flames. Babbitt tried to dance with her. He shuffled along the
floor, too bulky to be guided, his steps unrelated to the rhythm of
the jungle music, and in his staggering he would have fallen, had
she not held him with supple kindly strength. He was blind and deaf
from prohibition-era alcohol; he could not see the tables, the
faces. But he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant
warmth.

  When she had firmly returned him to his group, he
remembered, by a connection quite untraceable, that his mother's
mother had been Scotch, and with head thrown back, eyes closed,
wide mouth indicating ecstasy, he sang, very slowly and richly,
"Loch Lomond."

  But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly
companionship. The man from Sparta said he was a "bum singer," and
for ten minutes Babbitt quarreled with him, in a loud, unsteady,
heroic indignation. They called for drinks till the manager
insisted that the place was closed. All the while Babbitt felt a
hot raw desire for more brutal amusements. When W. A. Rogers
drawled, "What say we go down the line and look over the girls?" he
agreed savagely. Before they went, three of them secretly made
appointments with the professional dancing girl, who agreed "Yes,
yes, sure, darling" to everything they said, and amiably forgot
them.

  As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch,
down streets of small brown wooden cottages of workmen,
characterless as cells, as they rattled across warehouse-districts
which by drunken night seemed vast and perilous, as they were borne
toward the red lights and violent automatic pianos and the stocky
women who simpered, Babbitt was frightened. He wanted to leap from
the taxicab, but all his body was a murky fire, and he groaned,
"Too late to quit now," and knew that he did not want to quit.

  There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on
the way. A broker from Minnemagantic said, "Monarch is a lot
sportier than Zenith. You Zenith tightwads haven't got any joints
like these here." Babbitt raged, "That's a dirty lie! Snothin' you
can't find in Zenith. Believe me, we got more houses and
hootch-parlors an' all kinds o' dives than any burg in the
state."

  He realized they were laughing at him; he desired to
fight; and forgot it in such musty unsatisfying experiments as he
had not known since college.

  In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his
desire for rebellion was partly satisfied. He had retrograded to a
shamefaced contentment. He was irritable. He did not smile when W.
A. Rogers complained, "Ow, what a head! I certainly do feel like
the wrath of God this morning. Say! I know what was the trouble!
Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze last night."

  Babbitt's excursion was never known to his family,
nor to any one in Zenith save Rogers and Wing. It was not
officially recognized even by himself. If it had any consequences,
they have not been discovered.

  
T
HIS autumn a Mr.
W. G. Harding, of Marion, Ohio, was appointed President of the
United States, but Zenith was less interested in the national
campaign than in the local election. Seneca Doane, though he was a
lawyer and a graduate of the State University, was candidate for
mayor of Zenith on an alarming labor ticket. To oppose him the
Democrats and Republicans united on Lucas Prout, a
mattress-manufacturer with a perfect record for sanity. Mr. Prout
was supported by the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, all the decent
newspapers, and George F. Babbitt.

  Babbitt was precinct-leader on Floral Heights, but
his district was safe and he longed for stouter battling. His
convention paper had given him the beginning of a reputation for
oratory, so the Republican-Democratic Central Committee sent him to
the Seventh Ward and South Zenith, to address small audiences of
workmen and clerks, and wives uneasy with their new votes. He
acquired a fame enduring for weeks. Now and then a reporter was
present at one of his meetings, and the headlines (though they were
not very large) indicated that George F. Babbitt had addressed
Cheering Throng, and Distinguished Man of Affairs had pointed out
the Fallacies of Doane. Once, in the rotogravure section of the
Sunday Advocate-Times, there was a photograph of Babbitt and a
dozen other business men, with the caption "Leaders of Zenith
Finance and Commerce Who Back Prout."

  He deserved his glory. He was an excellent
campaigner. He had faith; he was certain that if Lincoln were
alive, he would be electioneering for Mr. W. G. Harding - unless he
came to Zenith and electioneered for Lucas Prout. He did not
confuse audiences by silly subtleties; Prout represented honest
industry, Seneca Doane represented whining laziness, and you could
take your choice. With his broad shoulders and vigorous voice, he
was obviously a Good Fellow; and, rarest of all, he really liked
people. He almost liked common workmen. He wanted them to be well
paid, and able to afford high rents - though, naturally, they must
not interfere with the reasonable profits of stockholders. Thus
nobly endowed, and keyed high by the discovery that he was a
natural orator, he was popular with audiences, and he raged through
the campaign, renowned not only in the Seventh and Eighth Wards but
even in parts of the Sixteenth.

  II

  Crowded in his car, they came driving up to
Turnverein Hall, South Zenith - Babbitt, his wife, Verona, Ted, and
Paul and Zilla Riesling. The hall was over a delicatessen shop, in
a street banging with trolleys and smelling of onions and gasoline
and fried fish. A new appreciation of Babbitt filled all of them,
including Babbitt.

  "Don't know how you keep it up, talking to three
bunches in one evening. Wish I had your strength," said Paul; and
Ted exclaimed to Verona, "The old man certainly does know how to
kid these roughnecks along!"

  Men in black sateen shirts, their faces new-washed
but with a hint of grime under their eyes, were loitering on the
broad stairs up to the hall. Babbitt's party politely edged through
them and into the whitewashed room, at the front of which was a
dais with a red-plush throne and a pine altar painted watery blue,
as used nightly by the Grand Masters and Supreme Potentates of
innumerable lodges. The hall was full. As Babbitt pushed through
the fringe standing at the back, he heard the precious tribute,
"That's him!" The chairman bustled down the center aisle with an
impressive, "The speaker? All ready, sir! Uh - let's see - what was
the name, sir?"

  Then Babbitt slid into a sea of eloquence:

  "Ladies and gentlemen of the Sixteenth Ward, there
is one who cannot be with us here to-night, a man than whom there
is no more stalwart Trojan in all the political arena - I refer to
our leader, the Honorable Lucas Prout, standard-bearer of the city
and county of Zenith. Since he is not here, I trust that you will
bear with me if, as a friend and neighbor, as one who is proud to
share with you the common blessing of being a resident of the great
city of Zenith, I tell you in all candor, honesty, and sincerity
how the issues of this critical campaign appear to one plain man of
business - to one who, brought up to the blessings of poverty and
of manual labor, has, even when Fate condemned him to sit at a
desk, yet never forgotten how it feels, by heck, to be up at
five-thirty and at the factory with the ole dinner-pail in his
hardened mitt when the whistle blew at seven, unless the owner
sneaked in ten minutes on us and blew it early! (Laughter.) To come
down to the basic and fundamental issues of this campaign, the
great error, insincerely promulgated by Seneca Doane - "

  There were workmen who jeered - young cynical
workmen, for the most part foreigners, Jews, Swedes, Irishmen,
Italians - but the older men, the patient, bleached, stooped
carpenters and mechanics, cheered him; and when he worked up to his
anecdote of Lincoln their eyes were wet.

  Modestly, busily, he hurried out of the hall on
delicious applause, and sped off to his third audience of the
evening. "Ted, you better drive," he said. "Kind of all in after
that spiel. Well, Paul, how'd it go? Did I get 'em?"

  "Bully! Corking! You had a lot of pep."

  Mrs. Babbitt worshiped, "Oh, it was fine! So clear
and interesting, and such nice ideas. When I hear you orating I
realize I don't appreciate how profoundly you think and what a
splendid brain and vocabulary you have. Just - splendid." But
Verona was irritating. "Dad," she worried, "how do you know that
public ownership of utilities and so on and so forth will always be
a failure?"

  Mrs. Babbitt reproved, "Rone, I should think you
could see and realize that when your father's all worn out with
orating, it's no time to expect him to explain these complicated
subjects. I'm sure when he's rested he'll be glad to explain it to
you. Now let's all be quiet and give Papa a chance to get ready for
his next speech. Just think! Right now they're gathering in
Maccabee Temple, and WAITING for us!"