Babbit (23 page)

  I

  
I
T was by
accident that Babbitt had his opportunity to address the S. A. R.
E. B.

  The S. A. R. E. B., as its members called it, with
the universal passion for mysterious and important-sounding
initials, was the State Association of Real Estate Boards; the
organization of brokers and operators. It was to hold its annual
convention at Monarch, Zenith's chief rival among the cities of the
state. Babbitt was an official delegate; another was Cecil
Rountree, whom Babbitt admired for his picaresque speculative
building, and hated for his social position, for being present at
the smartest dances on Royal Ridge. Rountree was chairman of the
convention program-committee.

  Babbitt had growled to him, "Makes me tired the way
these doctors and profs and preachers put on lugs about being
'professional men.' A good realtor has to have more knowledge and
finesse than any of 'em."

  "Right you are! I say: Why don't you put that into a
paper, and give it at the S. A. R. E. B.?" suggested Rountree.

  "Well, if it would help you in making up the program
- Tell you: the way I look at it is this: First place, we ought to
insist that folks call us 'realtors' and not 'real-estate men.'
Sounds more like a reg'lar profession. Second place - What is it
distinguishes a profession from a mere trade, business, or
occupation? What is it? Why, it's the public service and the skill,
the trained skill, and the knowledge and, uh, all that, whereas a
fellow that merely goes out for the jack, he never considers
the-public service and trained skill and so on. Now as a
professional - "

  "Rather! That's perfectly bully! Perfectly corking!
Now you write it in a paper," said Rountree, as he rapidly and
firmly moved away.

  II

  However accustomed to the literary labors of
advertisements and correspondence, Babbitt was dismayed on the
evening when he sat down to prepare a paper which would take a
whole ten minutes to read.

  He laid out a new fifteen-cent school exercise-book
on his wife's collapsible sewing-table, set up for the event in the
living-room. The household had been bullied into silence; Verona
and Ted requested to disappear, and Tinka threatened with "If I
hear one sound out of you - if you holler for a glass of water one
single solitary time - You better not, that's all!" Mrs. Babbitt
sat over by the piano, making a nightgown and gazing with respect
while Babbitt wrote in the exercise-book, to the rhythmical
wiggling and squeaking of the sewing-table.

  When he rose, damp and jumpy, and his throat dusty
from cigarettes, she marveled, "I don't see how you can just sit
down and make up things right out of your own head!"

  "Oh, it's the training in constructive imagination
that a fellow gets in modern business life."

  He had written seven pages, whereof the first page
set forth:

  {illustration omitted: consists of several doodles
and "(1) a profession (2) Not just a trade crossed out (3) Skill
& vision (3) Shd be called "realtor" & not just real est
man"}

  The other six pages were rather like the first.

  For a week he went about looking important. Every
morning, as he dressed, he thought aloud: "Jever stop to consider,
Myra, that before a town can have buildings or prosperity or any of
those things, some realtor has got to sell 'em the land? All
civilization starts with him. Jever realize that?" At the Athletic
Club he led unwilling men aside to inquire, "Say, if you had to
read a paper before a big convention, would you start in with the
funny stories or just kind of scatter 'em all through?" He asked
Howard Littlefield for a "set of statistics about real-estate
sales; something good and impressive," and Littlefield provided
something exceedingly good and impressive.

  But it was to T. Cholmondeley Frink that Babbitt
most often turned. He caught Frink at the club every noon, and
demanded, while Frink looked hunted and evasive, "Say, Chum -
you're a shark on this writing stuff - how would you put this
sentence, see here in my manuscript - manuscript now where the
deuce is that? - oh, yes, here. Would you say 'We ought not also to
alone think?' or 'We ought also not to think alone?' or - "

  One evening when his wife was away and he had no one
to impress, Babbitt forgot about Style, Order, and the other
mysteries, and scrawled off what he really thought about the
real-estate business and about himself, and he found the paper
written. When he read it to his wife she yearned, "Why, dear, it's
splendid; beautifully written, and so clear and interesting, and
such splendid ideas! Why, it's just - it's just splendid!"

  Next day he cornered Chum Frink and crowed, "Well,
old son, I finished it last evening! Just lammed it out! I used to
think you writing-guys must have a hard job making up pieces, but
Lord, it's a cinch. Pretty soft for you fellows; you certainly earn
your money easy! Some day when I get ready to retire, guess I'll
take to writing and show you boys how to do it. I always used to
think I could write better stuff, and more punch and originality,
than all this stuff you see printed, and now I'm doggone sure of
it!"

  He had four copies of the paper typed in black with
a gorgeous red title, had them bound in pale blue manilla, and
affably presented one to old Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the
Advocate-Times, who said yes, indeed yes, he was very glad to have
it, and he certainly would read it all through - as soon as he
could find time.

  Mrs. Babbitt could not go to Monarch. She had a
women's-club meeting. Babbitt said that he was very sorry.

  III

  Besides the five official delegates to the
convention - Babbitt, Rountree, W. A. Rogers, Alvin Thayer, and
Elbert Wing - there were fifty unofficial delegates, most of them
with their wives.

  They met at the Union Station for the midnight train
to Monarch. All of them, save Cecil Rountree, who was such a snob
that he never wore badges, displayed celluloid buttons the size of
dollars and lettered "We zoom for Zenith." The official delegates
were magnificent with silver and magenta ribbons. Martin Lumsen's
little boy Willy carried a tasseled banner inscribed "Zenith the
Zip City - Zeal, Zest and Zowie - 1,000,000 in 1935." As the
delegates arrived, not in taxicabs but in the family automobile
driven by the oldest son or by Cousin Fred, they formed impromptu
processions through the station waiting-room.

  It was a new and enormous waiting-room, with marble
pilasters, and frescoes depicting the exploration of the Chaloosa
River Valley by Pere Emile Fauthoux in 1740. The benches were
shelves of ponderous mahogany; the news-stand a marble kiosk with a
brass grill. Down the echoing spaces of the hall the delegates
paraded after Willy Lumsen's banner, the men waving their cigars,
the women conscious of their new frocks and strings of beads, all
singing to the tune of Auld Lang Syne the official City Song,
written by Chum Frink:

  Good old Zenith, Our kin and kith, Wherever we may
be, Hats in the ring, We blithely sing Of thy Prosperity.

  Warren Whitby, the broker, who had a gift of verse
for banquets and birthdays, had added to Frink's City Song a
special verse for the realtors' convention:

  Oh, here we come, The fellows from Zenith, the Zip
Citee. We wish to state In real estate There's none so live as
we.

  Babbitt was stirred to hysteric patriotism. He
leaped on a bench, shouting to the crowd:

  "What's the matter with Zenith?"

  "She's all right!"

  "What's best ole town in the U. S. A.?"

  "Zeeeeeen-ith!"

  The patient poor people waiting for the midnight
train stared in unenvious wonder - Italian women with shawls, old
weary men with broken shoes, roving road-wise boys in suits which
had been flashy when they were new but which were faded now and
wrinkled.

  Babbitt perceived that as an official delegate he
must be more dignified. With Wing and Rogers he tramped up and down
the cement platform beside the waiting Pullmans. Motor-driven
baggage-trucks and red-capped porters carrying bags sped down the
platform with an agreeable effect of activity. Arc-lights glared
and stammered overhead. The glossy yellow sleeping-cars shone
impressively. Babbitt made his voice to be measured and lordly; he
thrust out his abdomen and rumbled, "We got to see to it that the
convention lets the Legislature understand just where they get off
in this matter of taxing realty transfers." Wing uttered approving
grunts and Babbitt swelled - gloated

  The blind of a Pullman compartment was raised, and
Babbitt looked into an unfamiliar world. The occupant of the
compartment was Lucile McKelvey, the pretty wife of the millionaire
contractor. Possibly, Babbitt thrilled, she was going to Europe! On
the seat beside her was a bunch of orchids and violets, and a
yellow paper-bound book which seemed foreign. While he stared, she
picked up the book, then glanced out of the window as though she
was bored. She must have looked straight at him, and he had met
her, but she gave no sign. She languidly pulled down the blind, and
he stood still, a cold feeling of insignificance in his heart.

  But on the train his pride was restored by meeting
delegates from Sparta, Pioneer, and other smaller cities of the
state, who listened respectfully when, as a magnifico from the
metropolis of Zenith, he explained politics and the value of a Good
Sound Business Administration. They fell joyfully into shop-talk,
the purest and most rapturous form of conversation:

  "How'd this fellow Rountree make out with this big
apartment-hotel he was going to put up? Whadde do? Get out bonds to
finance it?" asked a Sparta broker.

  "Well, I'll tell you," said Babbitt. "Now if I'd
been handling it - "

  "So," Elbert Wing was droning, "I hired this
shop-window for a week, and put up a big sign, 'Toy Town for Tiny
Tots,' and stuck in a lot of doll houses and some dinky little
trees, and then down at the bottom, 'Baby Likes This Dollydale, but
Papa and Mama Will Prefer Our Beautiful Bungalows,' and you know,
that certainly got folks talking, and first week we sold - "

  The trucks sang "lickety-lick, lickety-lick" as the
train ran through the factory district. Furnaces spurted flame, and
power-hammers were clanging. Red lights, green lights, furious
white lights rushed past, and Babbitt was important again, and
eager.

  IV

  He did a voluptuous thing: he had his clothes
pressed on the train. In the morning, half an hour before they
reached Monarch, the porter came to his berth and whispered,
"There's a drawing-room vacant, sir. I put your suit in there." In
tan autumn overcoat over his pajamas, Babbitt slipped down the
green-curtain-lined aisle to the glory of his first private
compartment. The porter indicated that he knew Babbitt was used to
a man-servant; he held the ends of Babbitt's trousers, that the
beautifully sponged garment might not be soiled, filled the bowl in
the private washroom, and waited with a towel.

  To have a private washroom was luxurious. However
enlivening a Pullman smoking-compartment was by night, even to
Babbitt it was depressing in the morning, when it was jammed with
fat men in woolen undershirts, every hook filled with wrinkled
cottony shirts, the leather seat piled with dingy toilet-kits, and
the air nauseating with the smell of soap and toothpaste. Babbitt
did not ordinarily think much of privacy, but now he reveled in it,
reveled in his valet, and purred with pleasure as he gave the man a
tip of a dollar and a half.

  He rather hoped that he was being noticed as, in his
newly pressed clothes, with the adoring porter carrying his
suit-case, he disembarked at Monarch.

  He was to share a room at the Hotel Sedgwick with W.
A. Rogers, that shrewd, rustic-looking Zenith dealer in farm-lands.
Together they had a noble breakfast, with waffles, and coffee not
in exiguous cups but in large pots. Babbitt grew expansive, and
told Rogers about the art of writing; he gave a bellboy a quarter
to fetch a morning newspaper from the lobby, and sent to Tinka a
post-card: "Papa wishes you were here to bat round with him."

  V

  The meetings of the convention were held in the
ballroom of the Allen House. In an anteroom was the office of the
chairman of the executive committee. He was the busiest man in the
convention; he was so busy that he got nothing done whatever. He
sat at a marquetry table, in a room littered with crumpled paper
and, all day long, town-boosters and lobbyists and orators who
wished to lead debates came and whispered to him, whereupon he
looked vague, and said rapidly, "Yes, yes, that's a fine idea;
we'll do that," and instantly forgot all about it, lighted a cigar
and forgot that too, while the telephone rang mercilessly and about
him men kept beseeching, "Say, Mr. Chairman - say, Mr. Chairman!"
without penetrating his exhausted hearing.