Babbit (43 page)

  "Oh. Like dancing?"

  "Naturally. I like dancing and pretty women and good
food better than anything else in the world. Most men do."

  "But gosh, Doane, I thought you fellows wanted to
take all the good eats and everything away from us."

  "No. Not at all. What I'd like to see is the
meetings of the Garment Workers held at the Ritz, with a dance
afterward. Isn't that reasonable?"

  "Yuh, might be good idea, all right. Well - Shame I
haven't seen more of you, recent years. Oh, say, hope you haven't
held it against me, my bucking you as mayor, going on the stump for
Prout. You see, I'm an organization Republican, and I kind of felt
- "

  "There's no reason why you shouldn't fight me. I
have no doubt you're good for the Organization. I remember - in
college you were an unusually liberal, sensitive chap. I can still
recall your saying to me that you were going to be a lawyer, and
take the cases of the poor for nothing, and fight the rich. And I
remember I said I was going to be one of the rich myself, and buy
paintings and live at Newport. I'm sure you inspired us all."

  "Well.... Well.... I've always aimed to be liberal."
Babbitt was enormously shy and proud and self-conscious; he tried
to look like the boy he had been a quarter-century ago, and he
shone upon his old friend Seneca Doane as he rumbled, "Trouble with
a lot of these fellows, even the live wires and some of 'em that
think they're forward-looking, is they aren't broad-minded and
liberal. Now, I always believe in giving the other fellow a chance,
and listening to his ideas."

  "That's fine."

  "Tell you how I figure it: A little opposition is
good for all of us, so a fellow, especially if he's a business man
and engaged in doing the work of the world, ought to be
liberal."

  "Yes - "

  "I always say a fellow ought to have Vision and
Ideals. I guess some of the fellows in my business think I'm pretty
visionary, but I just let 'em think what they want to and go right
on - same as you do.... By golly, this is nice to have a chance to
sit and visit and kind of, you might say, brush up on our
ideals."

  "But of course we visionaries do rather get beaten.
Doesn't it bother you?"

  "Not a bit! Nobody can dictate to me what I
think!"

  "You're the man I want to help me. I want you to
talk to some of the business men and try to make them a little more
liberal in their attitude toward poor Beecher Ingram."

  "Ingram? But, why, he's this nut preacher that got
kicked out of the Congregationalist Church, isn't he, and preaches
free love and sedition?"

  This, Doane explained, was indeed the general
conception of Beecher Ingram, but he himself saw Beecher Ingram as
a priest of the brotherhood of man, of which Babbitt was
notoriously an upholder. So would Babbitt keep his acquaintances
from hounding Ingram and his forlorn little church?

  "You bet! I'll call down any of the boys I hear
getting funny about Ingram," Babbitt said affectionately to his
dear friend Doane.

  Doane warmed up and became reminiscent. He spoke of
student days in Germany, of lobbying for single tax in Washington,
of international labor conferences. He mentioned his friends, Lord
Wycombe, Colonel Wedgwood, Professor Piccoli. Babbitt had always
supposed that Doane associated only with the I. W. W., but now he
nodded gravely, as one who knew Lord Wycombes by the score, and he
got in two references to Sir Gerald Doak. He felt daring and
idealistic and cosmopolitan.

  Suddenly, in his new spiritual grandeur, he was
sorry for Zilla Riesling, and understood her as these ordinary
fellows at the Boosters' Club never could.

  II

  Five hours after he had arrived in Zenith and told
his wife how hot it was in New York, he went to call on Zilla. He
was buzzing with ideas and forgiveness. He'd get Paul released;
he'd do things, vague but highly benevolent things, for Zilla; he'd
be as generous as his friend Seneca Doane.

  He had not seen Zilla since Paul had shot her, and
he still pictured her as buxom, high-colored, lively, and a little
blowsy. As he drove up to her boarding-house, in a depressing back
street below the wholesale district, he stopped in discomfort. At
an upper window, leaning on her elbow, was a woman with the
features of Zilla, but she was bloodless and aged, like a yellowed
wad of old paper crumpled into wrinkles. Where Zilla had bounced
and jiggled, this woman was dreadfully still.

  He waited half an hour before she came into the
boarding-house parlor. Fifty times he opened the book of
photographs of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, fifty times he
looked at the picture of the Court of Honor.

  He was startled to find Zilla in the room. She wore
a black streaky gown which she had tried to brighten with a girdle
of crimson ribbon. The ribbon had been torn and patiently mended.
He noted this carefully, because he did not wish to look at her
shoulders. One shoulder was lower than the other; one arm she
carried in contorted fashion, as though it were paralyzed; and
behind a high collar of cheap lace there was a gouge in the anemic
neck which had once been shining and softly plump.

  "Yes?" she said.

  "Well, well, old Zilla! By golly, it's good to see
you again!"

  "He can send his messages through a lawyer."

  "Why, rats, Zilla, I didn't come just because of
him. Came as an old friend."

  "You waited long enough!"

  "Well, you know how it is. Figured you wouldn't want
to see a friend of his for quite some time and - Sit down, honey!
Let's be sensible. We've all of us done a bunch of things that we
hadn't ought to, but maybe we can sort of start over again. Honest,
Zilla, I'd like to do something to make you both happy. Know what I
thought to-day? Mind you, Paul doesn't know a thing about this -
doesn't know I was going to come see you. I got to thinking:
Zilla's a fine? big-hearted woman, and she'll understand that, uh,
Paul's had his lesson now. Why wouldn't it be a fine idea if you
asked the governor to pardon him? Believe he would, if it came from
you. No! Wait! Just think how good you'd feel if you were
generous."

  "Yes, I wish to be generous." She was sitting
primly, speaking icily. "For that reason I wish to keep him in
prison, as an example to evil-doers. I've gotten religion, George,
since the terrible thing that man did to me. Sometimes I used to be
unkind, and I wished for worldly pleasures, for dancing and the
theater. But when I was in the hospital the pastor of the
Pentecostal Communion Faith used to come to see me, and he showed
me, right from the prophecies written in the Word of God, that the
Day of Judgment is coming and all the members of the older churches
are going straight to eternal damnation, because they only do
lip-service and swallow the world, the flesh, and the devil - "

  For fifteen wild minutes she talked, pouring out
admonitions to flee the wrath to come, and her face flushed, her
dead voice recaptured something of the shrill energy of the old
Zilla. She wound up with a furious:

  "It's the blessing of God himself that Paul should
be in prison now, and torn and humbled by punishment, so that he
may yet save his soul, and so other wicked men, these horrible
chasers after women and lust, may have an example."

  Babbitt had itched and twisted. As in church he
dared not move during the sermon so now he felt that he must seem
attentive, though her screeching denunciations flew past him like
carrion birds.

  He sought to be calm and brotherly:

  "Yes, I know, Zilla. But gosh, it certainly is the
essence of religion to be charitable, isn't it? Let me tell you how
I figure it: What we need in the world is liberalism, liberality,
if we're going to get anywhere. I've always believed in being
broad-minded and liberal - "

  "You? Liberal?" It was very much the old Zilla.
"Why, George Babbitt, you're about as broad-minded and liberal as a
razor-blade!"

  "Oh, I am, am I! Well, just let me tell you, just -
let me - tell - you, I'm as by golly liberal as you are religious,
anyway! YOU RELIGIOUS!"

  "I am so! Our pastor says I sustain him in the
faith!"

  "I'll bet you do! With Paul's money! But just to
show you how liberal I am, I'm going to send a check for ten bucks
to this Beecher Ingram, because a lot of fellows are saying the
poor cuss preaches sedition and free love, and they're trying to
run him out of town."

  "And they're right! They ought to run him out of
town! Why, he preaches - if you can call it preaching - in a
theater, in the House of Satan! You don't know what it is to find
God, to find peace, to behold the snares that the devil spreads out
for our feet. Oh, I'm so glad to see the mysterious purposes of God
in having Paul harm me and stop my wickedness - and Paul's getting
his, good and plenty, for the cruel things he did to me, and I hope
he DIES in prison!"

  Babbitt was up, hat in hand, growling, "Well, if
that's what you call being at peace, for heaven's sake just warn me
before you go to war, will you?"

  III

  Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer.
More than mountains or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its
character, imperturbable, cynical, holding behind apparent changes
its essential purpose. Though Babbitt had deserted his family and
dwelt with Joe Paradise in the wilderness, though he had become a
liberal, though he had been quite sure, on the night before he
reached Zenith, that neither he nor the city would be the same
again, ten days after his return he could not believe that he had
ever been away. Nor was it at all evident to his acquaintances that
there was a new George F. Babbitt, save that he was more irritable
under the incessant chaffing at the Athletic Club, and once, when
Vergil Gunch observed that Seneca Doane ought to be hanged, Babbitt
snorted, "Oh, rats, he's not so bad."

  At home he grunted "Eh?" across the newspaper to his
commentatory wife, and was delighted by Tinka's new red tam
o'shanter, and announced, "No class to that corrugated iron garage.
Have to build me a nice frame one."

  Verona and Kenneth Escott appeared really to be
engaged. In his newspaper Escott had conducted a pure-food crusade
against commission-houses. As a result he had been given an
excellent job in a commission-house, and he was making a salary on
which he could marry, and denouncing irresponsible reporters who
wrote stories criticizing commission-houses without knowing what
they were talking about.

  This September Ted had entered the State University
as a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. The university
was at Mohalis only fifteen miles from Zenith, and Ted often came
down for the week-end. Babbitt was worried. Ted was "going in for"
everything but books. He had tried to "make" the football team as a
light half-back, he was looking forward to the basket-ball season,
he was on the committee for the Freshman Hop, and (as a Zenithite,
an aristocrat among the yokels) he was being "rushed" by two
fraternities. But of his studies Babbitt could learn nothing save a
mumbled, "Oh, gosh, these old stiffs of teachers just give you a
lot of junk about literature and economics."

  One week-end Ted proposed, "Say, Dad, why can't I
transfer over from the College to the School of Engineering and
take mechanical engineering? You always holler that I never study,
but honest, I would study there."

  "No, the Engineering School hasn't got the standing
the College has," fretted Babbitt.

  "I'd like to know how it hasn't! The Engineers can
play on any of the teams!"

  There was much explanation of the "dollars-and-cents
value of being known as a college man when you go into the law,"
and a truly oratorical account of the lawyer's life. Before he was
through with it, Babbitt had Ted a United States Senator.

  Among the great lawyers whom he mentioned was Secena
Doane.

  "But, gee whiz," Ted marveled, "I thought you always
said this Doane was a reg'lar nut!"

  "That's no way to speak of a great man! Doane's
always been a good friend of mine - fact I helped him in college -
I started him out and you might say inspired him. Just because he's
sympathetic with the aims of Labor, a lot of chumps that lack
liberality and broad-mindedness think he's a crank, but let me tell
you there's mighty few of 'em that rake in the fees he does, and
he's a friend of some of the strongest; most conservative men in
the world - like Lord Wycombe, this, uh, this big English nobleman
that's so well known. And you now, which would you rather do: be in
with a lot of greasy mechanics and laboring-men, or chum up to a
real fellow like Lord Wycombe, and get invited to his house for
parties?"

  "Well - gosh," sighed Ted.

  The next week-end he came in joyously with, "Say,
Dad, why couldn't I take mining engineering instead of the academic
course? You talk about standing - maybe there isn't much in
mechanical engineering, but the Miners, gee, they got seven out of
eleven in the new elections to Nu Tau Tau!"