“Oh, I do!”
“And so I have to sacrifice some of the things I might like to tackle, though I do, by golly, play about as good a game of golf as the next fellow!”
“Oh, I’m sure you do....
Are you married?”
“Uh—yes.... And, uh, of course official duties I’m the vice-president of the Boosters’ Club, and I’m running one of the committees of the State Association of Real Estate Boards, and that means a lot of work and responsibility—and practically no gratitude for it.”
“Oh, I know!
Public men never do get proper credit.”
They looked at each other with a high degree of mutual respect, and at the Cavendish Apartments he helped her out in a courtly manner, waved his hand at the house as though he were presenting it to her, and ponderously ordered the elevator boy to “hustle and get the keys.”
She stood close to him in the elevator, and he was stirred but cautious.
It was a pretty flat, of white woodwork and soft blue walls.
Mrs. Judique gushed with pleasure as she agreed to take it, and as they walked down the hall to the elevator she touched his sleeve, caroling,
“Oh, I’m so glad I went to you!
It’s such a privilege to meet a man who really Understands.
Oh! The flats SOME people have showed me!”
He had a sharp instinctive belief that he could put his arm around her, but he rebuked himself and with excessive politeness he saw her to the car, drove her home.
All the way back to his office he raged:
“Glad I had some sense for once.... Curse it, I wish I’d tried.
She’s a darling!
A corker!
A reg’lar charmer! Lovely eyes and darling lips and that trim waist—never get sloppy, like some women....
No, no, no!
She’s a real cultured lady.
One of the brightest little women I’ve met these many moons.
Understands about Public Topics and—But, darn it, why didn’t I try? . . . Tanis!” III
He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that he was turning toward youth, as youth.
The girl who especially disturbed him—though he had never spoken to her—was the last manicure girl on the right in the Pompeian Barber Shop.
She was small, swift, black-haired, smiling.
She was nineteen, perhaps, or twenty.
She wore thin salmon-colored blouses which exhibited her shoulders and her black-ribboned camisoles.
He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim.
As always, he felt disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber Shop.
Then, for the first time, he overthrew his sense of guilt.
“Doggone it, I don’t have to go here if I don’t want to! I don’t own the Reeves Building!
These barbers got nothing on me!
I’ll doggone well get my hair cut where I doggone well want to!
Don’t want to hear anything more about it!
I’m through standing by people—unless I want to.
It doesn’t get you anywhere.
I’m through!”
The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh, largest and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith.
Curving marble steps with a rail of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the barber shop.
The interior was of black and white and crimson tiles, with a sensational ceiling of burnished gold, and a fountain in which a massive nymph forever emptied a scarlet cornucopia.
Forty barbers and nine manicure girls worked desperately, and at the door six colored porters lurked to greet the customers, to care reverently for their hats and collars, to lead them to a place of waiting where, on a carpet like a tropic isle in the stretch of white stone floor, were a dozen leather chairs and a table heaped with magazines.
Babbitt’s porter was an obsequious gray-haired negro who did him an honor highly esteemed in the land of Zenith—greeted him by name.
Yet Babbitt was unhappy. His bright particular manicure girl was engaged.
She was doing the nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him.
Babbitt hated him.
He thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful system of the Pompeian was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted into a chair.
About him was luxury, rich and delicate.
One votary was having a violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo.