He was proud of being a freeborn independent American of the good old Yankee stock; he was proud of being honest, blunt, ugly, and disagreeable.
His favorite remark was
“How much did you pay for that?”
He regarded Verona’s books, Babbitt’s silver pencil, and flowers on the table as citified extravagances, and said so.
Babbitt would have quarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the baby, whom Babbitt teased and poked fingers at and addressed:
“I think this baby’s a bum, yes, sir, I think this little baby’s a bum, he’s a bum, yes, sir, he’s a bum, that’s what he is, he’s a bum, this baby’s a bum, he’s nothing but an old bum, that’s what he is—a bum!”
All the while Verona and Kenneth Escott held long inquiries into epistemology; Ted was a disgraced rebel; and Tinka, aged eleven, was demanding that she be allowed to go to the movies thrice a week, “like all the girls.”
Babbitt raged,
“I’m sick of it!
Having to carry three generations.
Whole damn bunch lean on me.
Pay half of mother’s income, listen to Henry T., listen to Myra’s worrying, be polite to Mart, and get called an old grouch for trying to help the children.
All of ‘em depending on me and picking on me and not a damn one of ‘em grateful!
No relief, and no credit, and no help from anybody.
And to keep it up for—good Lord, how long?”
He enjoyed being sick in February; he was delighted by their consternation that he, the rock, should give way.
He had eaten a questionable clam.
For two days he was languorous and petted and esteemed.
He was allowed to snarl
“Oh, let me alone!” without reprisals.
He lay on the sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slide along the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale blood red.
The shadow of the draw-rope was dense black, in an enticing ripple on the canvas.
He found pleasure in the curve of it, sighed as the fading light blurred it.
He was conscious of life, and a little sad.
With no Vergil Gunches before whom to set his face in resolute optimism, he beheld, and half admitted that he beheld, his way of life as incredibly mechanical.
Mechanical business—a brisk selling of badly built houses. Mechanical religion—a dry, hard church, shut off from the real life of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat.
Mechanical golf and dinner-parties and bridge and conversation.
Save with Paul Riesling, mechanical friendships—back-slapping and jocular, never daring to essay the test of quietness.
He turned uneasily in bed.
He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweet afternoons which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittle pretentiousness.
He thought of telephoning about leases, of cajoling men he hated, of making business calls and waiting in dirty anterooms—hat on knee, yawning at fly-specked calendars, being polite to office-boys.
“I don’t hardly want to go back to work,” he prayed.
“I’d like to—I don’t know.”
But he was back next day, busy and of doubtful temper.
CHAPTER XIX I
THE Zenith Street Traction Company planned to build car-repair shops in the suburb of Dorchester, but when they came to buy the land they found it held, on options, by the Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company.
The purchasing-agent, the first vice-president, and even the president of the Traction Company protested against the Babbitt price.
They mentioned their duty toward stockholders, they threatened an appeal to the courts, though somehow the appeal to the courts was never carried out and the officials found it wiser to compromise with Babbitt.
Carbon copies of the correspondence are in the company’s files, where they may be viewed by any public commission.
Just after this Babbitt deposited three thousand dollars in the bank, the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company bought a five thousand dollar car, the first vice-president built a home in Devon Woods, and the president was appointed minister to a foreign country.
To obtain the options, to tie up one man’s land without letting his neighbor know, had been an unusual strain on Babbitt.
It was necessary to introduce rumors about planning garages and stores, to pretend that he wasn’t taking any more options, to wait and look as bored as a poker-player at a time when the failure to secure a key-lot threatened his whole plan.
To all this was added a nerve-jabbing quarrel with his secret associates in the deal.
They did not wish Babbitt and Thompson to have any share in the deal except as brokers.
Babbitt rather agreed.
“Ethics of the business-broker ought to strictly represent his principles and not get in on the buying,” he said to Thompson.
“Ethics, rats!
Think I’m going to see that bunch of holy grafters get away with the swag and us not climb in?” snorted old Henry.
“Well, I don’t like to do it.
Kind of double-crossing.”