Babbit (21 page)

  They were entering a city. On the outskirts they
passed a steel-mill which flared in scarlet and orange flame that
licked at the cadaverous stacks, at the iron-sheathed walls and
sullen converters.

  "My Lord, look at that - beautiful!" said Paul.

  "You bet it's beautiful, friend. That's the
Shelling-Horton Steel Plant, and they tell me old John Shelling
made a good three million bones out of munitions during the war!"
the man with the velour hat said reverently.

  "I didn't mean - I mean it's lovely the way the
light pulls that picturesque yard, all littered with junk, right
out of the darkness," said Paul.

  They stared at him, while Babbitt crowed, "Paul
there has certainly got one great little eye for picturesque places
and quaint sights and all that stuff. 'D of been an author or
something if he hadn't gone into the roofing line."

  Paul looked annoyed. (Babbitt sometimes wondered if
Paul appreciated his loyal boosting.) The man in the velour hat
grunted, "Well, personally, I think Shelling-Horton keep their
works awful dirty. Bum routing. But I don't suppose there's any law
against calling 'em 'picturesque' if it gets you that way!"

  Paul sulkily returned to his newspaper and the
conversation logically moved on to trains.

  "What time do we get into Pittsburg?" asked
Babbitt.

  "Pittsburg? I think we get in at - no, that was last
year's schedule - wait a minute - let's see - got a time-table
right here."

  "I wonder if we're on time?"

  "Yuh, sure, we must be just about on time."

  "No, we aren't - we were seven minutes late, last
station."

  "Were we? Straight? Why, gosh, I thought we were
right on time."

  "No, we're about seven minutes late."

  "Yuh, that's right; seven minutes late."

  The porter entered - a negro in white jacket with
brass buttons.

  "How late are we, George?" growled the fat man.

  "'Deed, I don't know, sir. I think we're about on
time," said the porter, folding towels and deftly tossing them up
on the rack above the washbowls. The council stared at him gloomily
and when he was gone they wailed:

  "I don't know what's come over these niggers,
nowadays. They never give you a civil answer."

  "That's a fact. They're getting so they don't have a
single bit of respect for you. The old-fashioned coon was a fine
old cuss - he knew his place - but these young dinges don't want to
be porters or cotton-pickers. Oh, no! They got to be lawyers and
professors and Lord knows what all! I tell you, it's becoming a
pretty serious problem. We ought to get together and show the black
man, yes, and the yellow man, his place. Now, I haven't got one
particle of race-prejudice. I'm the first to be glad when a nigger
succeeds - so long as he stays where he belongs and doesn't try to
usurp the rightful authority and business ability of the white
man."

  "That's the i.! And another thing we got to do,"
said the man with the velour hat (whose name was Koplinsky), "is to
keep these damn foreigners out of the country. Thank the Lord,
we're putting a limit on immigration. These Dagoes and Hunkies have
got to learn that this is a white man's country, and they ain't
wanted here. When we've assimilated the foreigners we got here now
and learned 'em the principles of Americanism and turned 'em into
regular folks, why then maybe we'll let in a few more."

  "You bet. That's a fact," they observed, and passed
on to lighter topics. They rapidly reviewed motor-car prices,
tire-mileage, oil-stocks, fishing, and the prospects for the
wheat-crop in Dakota.

  But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time.
He was a veteran traveler and free of illusions. Already he had
asserted that he was "an old he-one." He leaned forward, gathered
in their attention by his expression of sly humor, and grumbled,
"Oh, hell, boys, let's cut out the formality and get down to the
stories!"

  They became very lively and intimate.

  Paul and the boy vanished. The others slid forward
on the long seat, unbuttoned their vests, thrust their feet up on
the chairs, pulled the stately brass cuspidors nearer, and ran the
green window-shade down on its little trolley, to shut them in from
the uncomfortable strangeness of night. After each bark of laughter
they cried, "Say, jever hear the one about - " Babbitt was
expansive and virile. When the train stopped at an important
station, the four men walked up and down the cement platform, under
the vast smoky train-shed roof, like a stormy sky, under the
elevated footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of beef, in the
mystery of an unknown city. They strolled abreast, old friends and
well content. At the long-drawn "Alllll aboarrrrrd" - like a
mountain call at dusk - they hastened back into the
smoking-compartment, and till two of the morning continued the
droll tales, their eyes damp with cigar-smoke and laughter. When
they parted they shook hands, and chuckled, "Well, sir, it's been a
great session. Sorry to bust it up. Mighty glad to met you."

  Babbitt lay awake in the close hot tomb of his
Pullman berth, shaking with remembrance of the fat man's limerick
about the lady who wished to be wild. He raised the shade; he lay
with a puffy arm tucked between his head and the skimpy pillow,
looking out on the sliding silhouettes of trees, and village lamps
like exclamation-points. He was very happy.

  I

  
T
HEY had four
hours in New York between trains. The one thing Babbitt wished to
see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his last
visit. He stared up at it, muttering, "Twenty-two hundred rooms and
twenty-two hundred baths! That's got everything in the world beat.
Lord, their turnover must be - well, suppose price of rooms is four
to eight dollars a day, and I suppose maybe some ten and - four
times twenty-two hundred-say six times twenty-two hundred - well,
anyway, with restaurants and everything, say summers between eight
and fifteen thousand a day. Every day! I never thought I'd see a
thing like that! Some town! Of course the average fellow in Zenith
has got more Individual Initiative than the fourflushers here, but
I got to hand it to New York. Yes, sir, town, you're all right -
some ways. Well, old Paulski, I guess we've seen everything that's
worth while. How'll we kill the rest of the time? Movie?"

  But Paul desired to see a liner. "Always wanted to
go to Europe - and, by thunder, I will, too, some day before I past
out," he sighed.

  From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at
the stern of the Aquitania and her stacks and wireless antenna
lifted above the dock-house which shut her in.

  "By golly," Babbitt droned, "wouldn't be so bad to
go over to the Old Country and take a squint at all these ruins,
and the place where Shakespeare was born. And think of being able
to order a drink whenever you wanted one! Just range up to a bar
and holler out loud, 'Gimme a cocktail, and darn the police!' Not
bad at all. What juh like to see, over there, Paulibus?"

  Paul did not answer. Babbitt turned. Paul was
standing with clenched fists, head drooping, staring at the liner
as in terror. His thin body, seen against the summer-glaring planks
of the wharf, was childishly meager.

  Again, "What would you hit for on the other side,
Paul?"

  Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Paul
whispered, "Oh, my God!" While Babbitt watched him anxiously he
snapped, "Come on, let's get out of this," and hastened down the
wharf, not looking back.

  "That's funny," considered Babbitt. "The boy didn't
care for seeing the ocean boats after all. I thought he'd be
interested in 'em."

  II

  Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about
locomotive horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine
mountain-ridge and from the summit he looked down the shining way
among the pines; though he remarked, "Well, by golly!" when he
discovered that the station at Katadumcook, the end of the line,
was an aged freight-car; Babbitt's moment of impassioned release
came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake Sunasquam, awaiting the
launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down the lake; between
the logs and the shore, the water was transparent, thin-looking,
flashing with minnows. A guide in black felt hat with trout-flies
in the band, and flannel shirt of a peculiarly daring blue, sat on
a log and whittled and was silent. A dog, a good country dog, black
and woolly gray, a dog rich in leisure and in meditation, scratched
and grunted and slept. The thick sunlight was lavish on the bright
water, on the rim of gold-green balsam boughs, the silver birches
and tropic ferns, and across the lake it burned on the sturdy
shoulders of the mountains. Over everything was a holy peace.

  Silent, they loafed on the edge of the wharf,
swinging their legs above the water. The immense tenderness of the
place sank into Babbitt, and he murmured, "I'd just like to sit
here - the rest of my life - and whittle - and sit. And never hear
a typewriter. Or Stan Graff fussing in the 'phone. Or Rone and Ted
scrapping. Just sit. Gosh!"

  He patted Paul's shoulder. "How does it strike you,
old snoozer?"

  "Oh, it's darn good, Georgie. There's something sort
of eternal about it."

  For once, Babbitt understood him.

  III

  Their launch rounded the bend; at the head of the
lake, under a mountain slope, they saw the little central
dining-shack of their hotel and the crescent of squat log cottages
which served as bedrooms. They landed, and endured the critical
examination of the habitues who had been at the hotel for a whole
week. In their cottage, with its high stone fireplace, they
hastened, as Babbitt expressed it, to "get into some regular
he-togs." They came out; Paul in an old gray suit and soft white
shirt; Babbitt in khaki shirt and vast and flapping khaki trousers.
It was excessively new khaki; his rimless spectacles belonged to a
city office; and his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a
discordant noise in the place. But with infinite satisfaction he
slapped his legs and crowed, "Say, this is getting back home,
eh?"

  They stood on the wharf before the hotel. He winked
at Paul and drew from his back pocket a plug of chewing-tobacco, a
vulgarism forbidden in the Babbitt home. He took a chew, beaming
and wagging his head as he tugged at it. "Um! Um! Maybe I haven't
been hungry for a wad of eating-tobacco! Have some?"

  They looked at each other in a grin of
understanding. Paul took the plug, gnawed at it. They stood quiet,
their jaws working. They solemnly spat, one after the other, into
the placid water. They stretched voluptuously, with lifted arms and
arched backs. From beyond the mountains came the shuffling sound of
a far-off train. A trout leaped, and fell back in a silver circle.
They sighed together.

  IV

  They had a week before their families came. Each
evening they planned to get up early and fish before breakfast.
Each morning they lay abed till the breakfast-bell, pleasantly
conscious that there were no efficient wives to rouse them. The
mornings were cold; the fire was kindly as they dressed.

  Paul was distressingly clean, but Babbitt reveled in
a good sound dirtiness, in not having to shave till his spirit was
moved to it. He treasured every grease spot and fish-scale on his
new khaki trousers.

  All morning they fished unenergetically, or tramped
the dim and aqueous-lighted trails among rank ferns and moss
sprinkled with crimson bells. They slept all afternoon, and till
midnight played stud-poker with the guides. Poker was a serious
business to the guides. They did not gossip; they shuffled the
thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity menacing to the "sports;"
and Joe Paradise, king of guides, was sarcastic to loiterers who
halted the game even to scratch.