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.
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, he first
vice-president built a home in Devon Woods, and the
president was appointed minister to a foreign country.
