Babbitt lay abed at his hotel, imagining the Zenith
Athletic Club asking him, “What kind of a time
d’you have in Chicago?” and his answering,
“Oh, fair; ran around with Sir Gerald Doak a
lot;” picturing himself meeting Lucile McKelvey
and admonishing her, “You’re all right,
Mrs. Mac, when you aren’t trying to pull this
highbrow pose. It’s just as Gerald Doak
says to me in Chicago—oh, yes, Jerry’s
an old friend of mine—the wife and I are
thinking of running over to England to stay with Jerry
in his castle, next year—and he said to
me, ’Georgie, old bean, I like Lucile first-rate,
but you and me, George, we got to make her get over
this highty-tighty hooptediddle way she’s got.”
But that evening a thing happened which wrecked his
pride.
At the Regency Hotel cigar-counter he fell to talking
with a salesman of pianos, and they dined together.
Babbitt was filled with friendliness and well-being.
He enjoyed the gorgeousness of the dining-room:
the chandeliers, the looped brocade curtains, the
portraits of French kings against panels of gilded
oak. He enjoyed the crowd: pretty women,
good solid fellows who were “liberal spenders.”
He gasped. He stared, and turned away, and stared
again. Three tables off, with a doubtful sort
of woman, a woman at once coy and withered, was Paul
Riesling, and Paul was supposed to be in Akron, selling
tar-roofing. The woman was tapping his hand, mooning
at him and giggling. Babbitt felt that he had
encountered something involved and harmful. Paul
was talking with the rapt eagerness of a man who is
telling his troubles. He was concentrated on the
woman’s faded eyes. Once he held her hand
and once, blind to the other guests, he puckered his
lips as though he was pretending to kiss her.
Babbitt had so strong an impulse to go to Paul that
he could feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving,
but he felt, desperately, that he must be diplomatic,
and not till he saw Paul paying the check did he bluster
to the piano-salesman, “By golly-friend of mine
over there—’scuse me second—just
say hello to him.”
He touched Paul’s shoulder, and cried, “Well,
when did you hit town?”
Paul glared up at him, face hardening. “Oh,
hello, George. Thought you’d gone back
to Zenith.” He did not introduce his companion.
Babbitt peeped at her. She was a flabbily pretty,
weakly flirtatious woman of forty-two or three, in
an atrocious flowery hat. Her rouging was thorough
but unskilful.
“Where you staying, Paulibus?”
The woman turned, yawned, examined her nails.
She seemed accustomed to not being introduced.
Paul grumbled, “Campbell Inn, on the South Side.”
“Alone?” It sounded insinuating.
“Yes! Unfortunately!” Furiously Paul
turned toward the woman, smiling with a fondness sickening
to Babbitt. “May! Want to introduce
you. Mrs. Arnold, this is my old-acquaintance,
George Babbitt.”
