When she had firmly returned him to his group, he
remembered, by a connection quite untraceable, that
his mother’s mother had been Scotch, and with
head thrown back, eyes closed, wide mouth indicating
ecstasy, he sang, very slowly and richly, “Loch
Lomond.”
But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly
companionship. The man from Sparta said he was
a “bum singer,” and for ten minutes Babbitt
quarreled with him, in a loud, unsteady, heroic indignation.
They called for drinks till the manager insisted that
the place was closed. All the while Babbitt felt
a hot raw desire for more brutal amusements. When
W. A. Rogers drawled, “What say we go down the
line and look over the girls?” he agreed savagely.
Before they went, three of them secretly made appointments
with the professional dancing girl, who agreed “Yes,
yes, sure, darling” to everything they said,
and amiably forgot them.
As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch,
down streets of small brown wooden cottages of workmen,
characterless as cells, as they rattled across warehouse-districts
which by drunken night seemed vast and perilous, as
they were borne toward the red lights and violent
automatic pianos and the stocky women who simpered,
Babbitt was frightened. He wanted to leap from
the taxicab, but all his body was a murky fire, and
he groaned, “Too late to quit now,” and
knew that he did not want to quit.
There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on
the way. A broker from Minnemagantic said, “Monarch
is a lot sportier than Zenith. You Zenith tightwads
haven’t got any joints like these here.”
Babbitt raged, “That’s a dirty lie!
Snothin’ you can’t find in Zenith.
Believe me, we got more houses and hootch-parlors
an’ all kinds o’ dives than any burg in
the state.”
He realized they were laughing at him; he desired
to fight; and forgot it in such musty unsatisfying
experiments as he had not known since college.
In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his desire
for rebellion was partly satisfied. He had retrograded
to a shamefaced contentment. He was irritable.
He did not smile when W. A. Rogers complained, “Ow,
what a head! I certainly do feel like the wrath
of God this morning. Say! I know what was
the trouble! Somebody went and put alcohol in
my booze last night.”
Babbitt’s excursion was never known to his family,
nor to any one in Zenith save Rogers and Wing.
It was not officially recognized even by himself.
If it had any consequences, they have not been discovered.
This autumn a Mr. W. G. Harding, of Marion, Ohio,
was appointed President of the United States, but
Zenith was less interested in the national campaign
than in the local election. Seneca Doane, though
he was a lawyer and a graduate of the State University,
was candidate for mayor of Zenith on an alarming labor
ticket. To oppose him the Democrats and Republicans
united on Lucas Prout, a mattress-manufacturer with
a perfect record for sanity. Mr. Prout was supported
by the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, all the decent
newspapers, and George F. Babbitt.
