“Yes, maybe—Kind of shame to not
keep in touch with folks like the McKelveys.
We might try inviting them to dinner, some evening.
Oh, thunder, let’s not waste our good time thinking
about ’em! Our little bunch has a lot liver
times than all those plutes. Just compare a real
human like you with these neurotic birds like Lucile
McKelvey—all highbrow talk and dressed
up like a plush horse! You’re a great old
girl, hon.!”
He covered his betrayal of softness with a complaining:
“Say, don’t let Tinka go and eat any more
of that poison nutfudge. For Heaven’s sake,
try to keep her from ruining her digestion. I
tell you, most folks don’t appreciate how important
it is to have a good digestion and regular habits.
Be back ’bout usual time, I guess.”
He kissed her—he didn’t quite kiss
her—he laid unmoving lips against her unflushing
cheek. He hurried out to the garage, muttering:
“Lord, what a family! And now Myra is going
to get pathetic on me because we don’t train
with this millionaire outfit. Oh, Lord, sometimes
I’d like to quit the whole game. And the
office worry and detail just as bad. And I act
cranky and—I don’t mean to, but I
get—So darn tired!”
To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens
of Zenith, his motor car was poetry and tragedy, love
and heroism. The office was his pirate ship but
the car his perilous excursion ashore.
Among the tremendous crises of each day none was more
dramatic than starting the engine. It was slow
on cold mornings; there was the long, anxious whirr
of the starter; and sometimes he had to drip ether
into the cocks of the cylinders, which was so very
interesting that at lunch he would chronicle it drop
by drop, and orally calculate how much each drop had
cost him.
This morning he was darkly prepared to find something
wrong, and he felt belittled when the mixture exploded
sweet and strong, and the car didn’t even brush
the door-jamb, gouged and splintery with many bruisings
by fenders, as he backed out of the garage. He
was confused. He shouted “Morning!”
to Sam Doppelbrau with more cordiality than he had
intended.
Babbitt’s green and white Dutch Colonial house
was one of three in that block on Chatham Road.
To the left of it was the residence of Mr. Samuel
Doppelbrau, secretary of an excellent firm of bathroom-fixture
jobbers. His was a comfortable house with no
architectural manners whatever; a large wooden box
with a squat tower, a broad porch, and glossy paint
yellow as a yolk. Babbitt disapproved of Mr. and
Mrs. Doppelbrau as “Bohemian.” From
their house came midnight music and obscene laughter;
there were neighborhood rumors of bootlegged whisky
and fast motor rides. They furnished Babbitt
with many happy evenings of discussion, during which
he announced firmly, “I’m not strait-laced,
and I don’t mind seeing a fellow throw in a
drink once in a while, but when it comes to deliberately
trying to get away with a lot of hell-raising all the
while like the Doppelbraus do, it’s too rich
for my blood!”
