Babbit (31 page)

  "Now, I want to propose two stunts: First, divide
the Sunday School into four armies, depending on age. Everybody
gets a military rank in his own army according to how many members
he brings in, and the duffers that lie down on us and don't bring
in any, they remain privates. The pastor and superintendent rank as
generals. And everybody has got to give salutes and all the rest of
that junk, just like a regular army, to make 'em feel it's worth
while to get rank.

  "Then, second: Course the school has its advertising
committee, but, Lord, nobody ever really works good - nobody works
well just for the love of it. The thing to do is to be practical
and up-to-date, and hire a real paid press-agent for the Sunday
School-some newspaper fellow who can give part of his time."

  "Sure, you bet!" said Chum Frink.

  "Think of the nice juicy bits he could get in!"
Babbitt crowed. "Not only the big, salient, vital facts, about how
fast the Sunday School - and the collection - is growing, but a lot
of humorous gossip and kidding: about how some blowhard fell down
on his pledge to get new members, or the good time the Sacred
Trinity class of girls had at their wieniewurst party. And on the
side, if he had time, the press-agent might even boost the lessons
themselves - do a little advertising for all the Sunday Schools in
town, in fact. No use being hoggish toward the rest of 'em,
providing we can keep the bulge on 'em in membership. Frinstance,
he might get the papers to - Course I haven't got a literary
training like Frink here, and I'm just guessing how the pieces
ought to be written, but take frinstance, suppose the week's lesson
is about Jacob; well, the press-agent might get in something that
would have a fine moral, and yet with a trick headline that'd get
folks to read it - say like: 'Jake Fools the Old Man; Makes Getaway
with Girl and Bankroll.' See how I mean? That'd get their interest!
Now, course, Mr. Eathorne, you're conservative, and maybe you feel
these stunts would be undignified, but honestly, I believe they'd
bring home the bacon."

  Eathorne folded his hands on his comfortable little
belly and purred like an aged pussy:

  "May I say, first, that I have been very much
pleased by your analysis of the situation, Mr. Babbitt. As you
surmise, it's necessary in My Position to be conservative, and
perhaps endeavor to maintain a certain standard of dignity. Yet I
think you'll find me somewhat progressive. In our bank, for
example, I hope I may say that we have as modern a method of
publicity and advertising as any in the city. Yes, I fancy you'll
find us oldsters quite cognizant of the shifting spiritual values
of the age. Yes, oh yes. And so, in fact, it pleases me to be able
to say that though personally I might prefer the sterner
Presbyterianism of an earlier era - "

  Babbitt finally gathered that Eathorne was
willing.

  Chum Frink suggested as part-time press-agent one
Kenneth Escott, reporter on the Advocate-Times.

  They parted on a high plane of amity and Christian
helpfulness.

  Babbitt did not drive home, but toward the center of
the city. He wished to be by himself and exult over the beauty of
intimacy with William Washington Eathorne.

  II

  A snow-blanched evening of ringing pavements and
eager lights.

  Great golden lights of trolley-cars sliding along
the packed snow of the roadway. Demure lights of little houses. The
belching glare of a distant foundry, wiping out the sharp-edged
stars. Lights of neighborhood drug stores where friends gossiped,
well pleased, after the day's work.

  The green light of a police-station, and greener
radiance on the snow; the drama of a patrol-wagon - gong beating
like a terrified heart, headlights scorching the crystal-sparkling
street, driver not a chauffeur but a policeman proud in uniform,
another policeman perilously dangling on the step at the back, and
a glimpse of the prisoner. A murderer, a burglar, a coiner cleverly
trapped?

  An enormous graystone church with a rigid spire; dim
light in the Parlors, and cheerful droning of choir-practise. The
quivering green mercury-vapor light of a photo-engraver's loft.
Then the storming lights of down-town; parked cars with ruby
tail-lights; white arched entrances to movie theaters, like frosty
mouths of winter caves; electric signs - serpents and little
dancing men of fire; pink-shaded globes and scarlet jazz music in a
cheap up-stairs dance-hall; lights of Chinese restaurants, lanterns
painted with cherry-blossoms and with pagodas, hung against
lattices of lustrous gold and black. Small dirty lamps in small
stinking lunchrooms. The smart shopping-district, with rich and
quiet light on crystal pendants and furs and suave surfaces of
polished wood in velvet-hung reticent windows. High above the
street, an unexpected square hanging in the darkness, the window of
an office where some one was working late, for a reason unknown and
stimulating. A man meshed in bankruptcy, an ambitious boy, an
oil-man suddenly become rich?

  The air was shrewd, the snow was deep in uncleared
alleys, and beyond the city, Babbitt knew, were hillsides of
snow-drift among wintry oaks, and the curving ice-enchanted
river.

  He loved his city with passionate wonder. He lost
the accumulated weariness of business - worry and expansive
oratory; he felt young and potential. He was ambitious. It was not
enough to be a Vergil Gunch, an Orville Jones. No. "They're bully
fellows, simply lovely, but they haven't got any finesse." No. He
was going to be an Eathorne; delicately rigorous, coldly
powerful.

  "That's the stuff. The wallop in the velvet mitt.
Not let anybody get fresh with you. Been getting careless about my
diction. Slang. Colloquial. Cut it out. I was first-rate at
rhetoric in college. Themes on - Anyway, not bad. Had too much of
this hooptedoodle and good-fellow stuff. I - Why couldn't I
organize a bank of my own some day? And Ted succeed me!"

  He drove happily home, and to Mrs. Babbitt he was a
William Washington Eathorne, but she did not notice it.

  III

  Young Kenneth Escott, reporter on the Advocate-Times
was appointed press-agent of the Chatham Road Presbyterian Sunday
School. He gave six hours a week to it. At least he was paid for
giving six hours a week. He had friends on the Press and the
Gazette and he was not (officially) known as a press-agent. He
procured a trickle of insinuating items about neighborliness and
the Bible, about class-suppers, jolly but educational, and the
value of the Prayer-life in attaining financial success.

  The Sunday School adopted Babbitt's system of
military ranks. Quickened by this spiritual refreshment, it had a
boom. It did not become the largest school in Zenith - the Central
Methodist Church kept ahead of it by methods which Dr. Drew scored
as "unfair, undignified, un-American, ungentlemanly, and
unchristian" - but it climbed from fourth place to second, and
there was rejoicing in heaven, or at least in that portion of
heaven included in the parsonage of Dr. Drew, while Babbitt had
much praise and good repute.

  He had received the rank of colonel on the general
staff of the school. He was plumply pleased by salutes on the
street from unknown small boys; his ears were tickled to ruddy
ecstasy by hearing himself called "Colonel;" and if he did not
attend Sunday School merely to be thus exalted, certainly he
thought about it all the way there.

  He was particularly pleasant to the press-agent,
Kenneth Escott; he took him to lunch at the Athletic Club and had
him at the house for dinner.

  Like many of the cocksure young men who forage about
cities in apparent contentment and who express their cynicism in
supercilious slang, Escott was shy and lonely. His shrewd
starveling face broadened with joy at dinner, and he blurted, "Gee
whillikins, Mrs. Babbitt, if you knew how good it is to have home
eats again!"

  Escott and Verona liked each other. All evening they
"talked about ideas." They discovered that they were Radicals.
True, they were sensible about it. They agreed that all communists
were criminals; that this vers libre was tommy-rot; and that while
there ought to be universal disarmament, of course Great Britain
and the United States must, on behalf of oppressed small nations,
keep a navy equal to the tonnage of all the rest of the world. But
they were so revolutionary that they predicted (to Babbitt's
irritation) that there would some day be a Third Party which would
give trouble to the Republicans and Democrats.

  Escott shook hands with Babbitt three times, at
parting.

  Babbitt mentioned his extreme fondness for
Eathorne.

  Within a week three newspapers presented accounts of
Babbitt's sterling labors for religion, and all of them tactfully
mentioned William Washington Eathorne as his collaborator.

  Nothing had brought Babbitt quite so much credit at
the Elks, the Athletic Club, and the Boosters'. His friends had
always congratulated him on his oratory, but in their praise was
doubt, for even in speeches advertising the city there was
something highbrow and degenerate, like writing poetry. But now
Orville Jones shouted across the Athletic dining-room, "Here's the
new director of the First State Bank!" Grover Butterbaugh, the
eminent wholesaler of plumbers' supplies, chuckled, "Wonder you mix
with common folks, after holding Eathorne's hand!" And Emil
Wengert, the jeweler, was at last willing to discuss buying a house
in Dorchester.

  IV

  When the Sunday School campaign was finished,
Babbitt suggested to Kenneth Escott, "Say, how about doing a little
boosting for Doc Drew personally?"

  Escott grinned. "You trust the doc to do a little
boosting for himself, Mr. Babbitt! There's hardly a week goes by
without his ringing up the paper to say if we'll chase a reporter
up to his Study, he'll let us in on the story about the swell
sermon he's going to preach on the wickedness of short skirts, or
the authorship of the Pentateuch. Don't you worry about him.
There's just one better publicity-grabber in town, and that's this
Dora Gibson Tucker that runs the Child Welfare and the
Americanization League, and the only reason she's got Drew beaten
is because she has got SOME brains!"

  "Well, now Kenneth, I don't think you ought to talk
that way about the doctor. A preacher has to watch his interests,
hasn't he? You remember that in the Bible about - about being
diligent in the Lord's business, or something?"

  "All right, I'll get something in if you want me to,
Mr. Babbitt, but I'll have to wait till the managing editor is out
of town, and then blackjack the city editor."

  Thus it came to pass that in the Sunday
Advocate-Times, under a picture of Dr. Drew at his earnestest, with
eyes alert, jaw as granite, and rustic lock flamboyant, appeared an
inscription - a wood-pulp tablet conferring twenty-four hours'
immortality:

  The Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew, M.A., pastor of the
beautiful Chatham Road Presbyterian Church in lovely Floral
Heights, is a wizard soul-winner. He holds the local record for
conversions. During his shepherdhood an average of almost a hundred
sin-weary persons per year have declared their resolve to lead a
new life and have found a harbor of refuge and peace.

  Everything zips at the Chatham Road Church. The
subsidiary organizations are keyed to the top-notch of efficiency.
Dr. Drew is especially keen on good congregational singing. Bright
cheerful hymns are used at every meeting, and the special Sing
Services attract lovers of music and professionals from all parts
of the city.

  On the popular lecture platform as well as in the
pulpit Dr. Drew is a renowned word-painter, and during the course
of the year he receives literally scores of invitations to speak at
varied functions both here and elsewhere.

  V

  Babbitt let Dr. Drew know that he was responsible
for this tribute. Dr. Drew called him "brother," and shook his hand
a great many times.

  During the meetings of the Advisory Committee,
Babbitt had hinted that he would be charmed to invite Eathorne to
dinner, but Eathorne had murmured, "So nice of you - old man, now -
almost never go out." Surely Eathorne would not refuse his own
pastor. Babbitt said boyishly to Drew:

  "Say, doctor, now we've put this thing over, strikes
me it's up to the dominie to blow the three of us to a dinner!"

  "Bully! You bet! Delighted!" cried Dr. Drew, in his
manliest way. (Some one had once told him that he talked like the
late President Roosevelt.)

  "And, uh, say, doctor, be sure and get Mr. Eathorne
to come. Insist on it. It's, uh - I think he sticks around home too
much for his own health."

  Eathorne came.

  It was a friendly dinner. Babbitt spoke gracefully
of the stabilizing and educational value of bankers to the
community. They were, he said, the pastors of the fold of commerce.
For the first time Eathorne departed from the topic of Sunday
Schools, and asked Babbitt about the progress of his business.
Babbitt answered modestly, almost filially.

  A few months later, when he had a chance to take
part in the Street Traction Company's terminal deal, Babbitt did
not care to go to his own bank for a loan. It was rather a quiet
sort of deal and, if it had come out, the Public might not have
understood. He went to his friend Mr. Eathorne; he was welcomed,
and received the loan as a private venture; and they both profited
in their pleasant new association.

  After that, Babbitt went to church regularly, except
on spring Sunday mornings which were obviously meant for motoring.
He announced to Ted, "I tell you, boy, there's no stronger bulwark
of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better
place to make friends who'll help you to gain your rightful place
in the community than in your own church-home!"