The Zenith
Athletic Club is not athletic and it isn't exactly a club, but it is Zenith in perfection. It has an active and smoke-misted
billiard room, it is represented by
baseball and
football teams, and in the
pool and the
gymnasium a tenth of the members sporadically try to reduce. But most of its three thousand members use it as a
cafe in which to
lunch, play
cards, tell stories, meet customers, and entertain out-of town uncles at dinner. It is the largest club in the city, and its chief hatred is the
conservative Union Club, which all sound members of the Athletic call "a rotten, snobbish, dull,
expensive old hole--not one Good Mixer in the place--you couldn't hire me to join." Statistics show that no member of the Athletic has ever refused election to the Union, and of those who are elected, sixty-seven per cent. resign from the Athletic and are thereafter heard to say, in the drowsy
sanctity of the Union lounge, "The Athletic would be a pretty good
hotel, if it were more exclusive."
The Athletic Club building is nine stories high, yellow brick with glassy roof-garden above and
portico of huge
limestone columns below. The lobby, with its thick pillars of porous
Caen stone, its pointed vaulting, and a brown glazed-tile floor like well-baked bread-crust, is a combination of
cathedral-
crypt and
rathskellar. The members rush into the lobby as though they were shopping and hadn't much time for it. Thus did Babbitt enter, and
to the group standing by the cigar-counter he hooped, "How's the boys? How's the boys? Well, well, fine day!"
Jovially they whooped back--Vergil Gunch, the
coal-dealer, Sidney Finkelstein, the ladies'-ready-to-wear buyer for Parcher & Stein's department-store, and Professor Joseph K. Pumphrey, owner of the Riteway Business
College and instructor in
Public Speaking, Business
English, Scenario Writing, and Commercial
Law. Though Babbitt admired this savant, and appreciated Sidney Finkelstein as "a mighty smart buyer and a good liberal spender," it was to Vergil Gunch that he turned with enthusiasm. Mr. Gunch was president of the Boosters' Club, a weekly lunch-club, local chapter of a national organization which promoted sound business and friendliness among Regular Fellows. He was also no less an official than Esteemed Leading Knight in the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and it was rumored that at the next election he
would be a candidate for Exalted Ruler. He was a jolly man, given to
oratory and to chumminess with the arts. He called on the famous actors and
vaudeville artists when they came to town, gave them cigars, addressed them by
their first names, and--sometimes--succeeded in bringing them to the Boosters' lunches to give The Boys a Free Entertainment. He was a large man with hair
en brosse, and he knew the latest jokes, but he played poker close to the chest. It was at his party that Babbitt had sucked in the virus of to-day's restlessness.
Gunch shouted, "How's the old
Bolsheviki? How do you feel, the morning after the night before?"
"Oh, boy! Some head! That was a regular party you threw, Verg! Hope you haven't forgotten I took that last cute little jack-pot!" Babbitt bellowed. (He was three feet from Gunch.)
"That's all right now! What I'll hand you next time, Georgie! Say, juh notice in the paper the way the
New York Assembly stood up to the
Reds?"
"You bet I did. That was fine, eh? Nice day to-day."
"Yes, it's one mighty fine spring day, but nights still cold."
"Yeh, you're right they are! Had to have coupla blankets last night, out on the sleeping-porch. Say, Sid," Babbitt turned to Finkelstein, the buyer, "got something wanta ask you about. I went out and bought me an electric
cigar-lighter for the car, this noon, and--"
"Good hunch!" said Finkelstein, while even the learned
Professor Pumphrey, a
bulbous man with a pepper-and-salt cutaway and a pipe-organ voice, commented, "That makes a dandy accessory. Cigar-lighter gives tone to the
dashboard."
"Yep, finally decided I'd buy me one. Got the best on the market, the clerk said it was. Paid
five bucks for it. Just wondering if I got stuck. What do they charge for 'em at the store, Sid?"
Finkelstein asserted that five dollars was not too great a sum, not for a really high-class lighter which was suitably nickeled and provided with connections of the very best quality. "I always say--and believe me, I base it
on a pretty fairly extensive
mercantile experience--the best is the cheapest in the long run. Of course if a fellow wants to be a
Jew about it, he can get cheap junk, but in the long RUN, the cheapest thing is--the best you can get!
Now you take here just th' other day: I got a new top for my old boat and some
upholstery, and I paid out a hundred and twenty-six fifty, and of course a lot
of fellows would say that was too much--Lord, if the Old Folks--they live in one of these hick towns up-state and they simply can't get onto the way a city
fellow's mind works, and then, of course, they're Jews, and they'd lie right down and die if they knew Sid had anted up a hundred and twenty-six bones. But I don't figure I was stuck, George, not a bit. Machine looks brand new
now--not that it's so darned old, of course; had it less 'n three years, but I give it hard service; never drive less 'n a hundred miles on Sunday and,
uh--Oh, I don't really think you got stuck, George. In the LONG run, the best is, you might say, it's unquestionably the cheapest."
"That's right," said Vergil Gunch. "That's the way I look at it. If a fellow is keyed up to what you might call intensive living, the way you get it here in Zenith--all the hustle and mental activity that's going on with a bunch of live-wires like the Boosters and here in the Z.A.C., why, he's got to save his nerves by having the best."
Babbitt nodded his head at every fifth word in the roaring rhythm; and by the conclusion, in Gunch's renowned humorous vein, he was enchanted:
"Still, at that, George, don't know's you can afford it. I've heard your business has been kind of under the eye of the gov'ment since you stole the tail of Eathorne Park and sold it!"
"Oh, you're a great little
josher, Verg. But when it comes to kidding, how about this report that you stole the black marble steps off the post-office and sold 'em for high-grade coal!" In delight Babbitt patted Gunch's back,
stroked his arm.
"That's all right, but what I want to know is: who's the real-estate shark that bought that coal for his apartment-houses?"
"I guess that'll hold you for a while, George!" said Finkelstein. "I'll tell you, though, boys, what I did hear: George's
missus went into the gents' wear
department at Parcher's to buy him some collars, and before she could give his neck-size the clerk slips her some thirteens. 'How juh know the size?' says Mrs. Babbitt, and the clerk says, 'Men that let their wives buy collars for
'em always wear thirteen, madam.' How's that! That's pretty good, eh? How's that, eh? I guess that'll about fix you, George!"
"I--I--" Babbitt sought for amiable insults in answer. He stopped, stared at the door. Paul Riesling was coming in. Babbitt cried, "See you later, boys," and hastened across the lobby. He was, just then, neither the sulky child of
the sleeping-porch, the domestic
tyrant of the
breakfast table, the crafty money-changer of the Lyte-Purdy conference, nor the blaring Good Fellow, the
Josher and Regular Guy, of the Athletic Club. He was an older brother to Paul Riesling, swift to defend him, admiring him with a proud and credulous love
passing the love of women. Paul and he shook hands solemnly; they smiled as shyly as though they had been parted three years, not three days--and they said:
"How's the old horse-thief?"
"All right, I guess. How're you, you poor
shrimp?"
"I'm first-rate, you second-hand hunk o'
cheese."
Reassured thus of their high fondness, Babbitt grunted, "You're a fine guy, you are! Ten minutes late!" Riesling snapped, "Well, you're lucky to have a
chance to lunch with a
gentleman!" They grinned and went into the
Neronian washroom, where a line of men bent over the bowls inset along a prodigious
slab of marble as in religious
prostration before their own images in the massy mirror. Voices thick, satisfied, authoritative, hurtled along the marble walls, bounded from the ceiling of lavender-bordered milky tiles, while the
lords of the city, the
barons of
insurance and
law and
fertilizers and motor
tires, laid down the law for Zenith; announced that the day was warm-indeed, indisputably of spring; that
wages were too high and the
interest on
mortgages too low; that
Babe Ruth, the eminent player of
baseball, was a noble man; and
that "those two nuts at the Climax
Vaudeville Theater this week certainly are a slick pair of
actors." Babbitt, though ordinarily his voice was the surest
and most
episcopal of all, was silent. In the presence of the slight dark
reticence of Paul Riesling, he was awkward, he desired to be quiet and firm and deft.
The entrance lobby of the Athletic Club was
Gothic, the washroom
Roman Imperial, the lounge
Spanish Mission, and the reading-room in Chinese
Chippendale, but the gem of the club was the dining-room, the masterpiece of
Ferdinand Reitman, Zenith's busiest
architect. It was lofty and half-timbered, with
Tudor leaded
casements, an
oriel, a somewhat musicianless
musicians'-gallery, and tapestries believed to illustrate the granting of
Magna Charta. The open beams had been hand-
adzed at Jake Offutt's car-body works, the hinge; were of hand-wrought iron, the
wainscot studded with
handmade wooden pegs, and at one end of the room was a
heraldic and hooded stone fireplace which the club's advertising-pamphlet asserted to be not only
larger than any of the fireplaces in European
castles but of a
draught incomparably more scientific. It was also much cleaner, as no fire had ever been built in it.
Half of the tables were mammoth slabs which seated twenty or thirty men. Babbitt usually sat at the one near the door, with a group including Gunch, Finkelstein, Professor Pumphrey, Howard Littlefield, his neighbor, T.
Cholmondeley Frink, the poet and advertising-agent, and Orville Jones, whose
laundry was in many ways the best in Zenith. They composed a club within the club, and merrily called themselves "The
Roughnecks." To-day as he passed
their table the Roughnecks greeted him, "Come on, sit in! You 'n' Paul too proud to feed with poor folks? Afraid somebody might stick you for a bottle of Bevo, George? Strikes me you swells are getting awful darn exclusive!"
He thundered, "You bet! We can't afford to have our reps ruined by being seen with you
tightwads!" and guided Paul to one of the small tables beneath the musicians'-gallery. He felt guilty. At the Zenith Athletic Club, privacy was
very bad form. But he wanted Paul to himself.
That morning he had advocated lighter lunches and now he ordered nothing but English
mutton chop,
radishes,
peas, deep-dish
apple pie, a bit of
cheese, and
a pot of
coffee with
cream, adding, as he did invariably, "And uh--Oh, and you might give me an order of French fried
potatoes." When the chop came he
vigorously
peppered it and
salted it. He always peppered and salted his meat, and vigorously, before tasting it.
Paul and he took up the spring-like quality of the spring, the virtues of the electric cigar-lighter, and the action of the New York State Assembly. It was not till Babbitt was thick and
disconsolate with mutton grease that he flung out:
"I wound up a nice little deal with Conrad Lyte this morning that put five hundred good round plunks in my pocket. Pretty nice--pretty nice! And yet--I
don't know what's the matter with me to-day. Maybe it's an attack of spring fever, or staying up too late at Verg Gunch's, or maybe it's just the winter's work piling up, but I've felt kind of down in the mouth all day long. Course I wouldn't beef about it to the fellows at the Roughnecks' Table there, but you--Ever feel that way, Paul? Kind of comes over me: here I've pretty much
done all the things I ought to; supported my family, and got a good house and a
six-cylinder car, and built up a nice little business, and I haven't any vices 'specially, except smoking--and I'm practically cutting that out, by the
way. And I belong to the
church, and play enough
golf to keep in trim, and I only associate with good decent fellows. And yet, even so, I don't know that I'm entirely satisfied!"
It was drawled out, broken by shouts from the neighboring tables, by mechanical love-making to the
waitress, by
stertorous grunts as the coffee filled him with dizziness and indigestion. He was apologetic and doubtful, and
it was Paul, with his thin voice, who pierced the
fog:
"Good Lord, George, you don't suppose it's any
novelty to me to find that we
hustlers, that think we're so all-fired successful, aren't getting much out of it? You look as if you expected me to report you as
seditious! You know what my own life's been."
"I know, old man."
"I ought to have been a
fiddler, and I'm a pedler of tar-roofing! And Zilla--Oh, I don't want to squeal, but you know as well as I do about how inspiring a wife she is.... Typical instance last evening: We went to the
movies. There was a big crowd waiting in the lobby, us at the tail-end. She began to push right through it with her 'Sir, how dare you?' manner--Honestly, sometimes when I look at her and see how she's always so made up and stinking
of
perfume and looking for trouble and kind of always yelping, 'I tell yuh I'm a lady, damn yuh!'--why, I want to kill her! Well, she keeps elbowing through
the crowd, me after her, feeling good and ashamed, till she's almost up to the
velvet rope and ready to be the next let in. But there was a little squirt of
a man there--probably been waiting half an hour--I kind of admired the little
cuss--and he turns on Zilla and says, perfectly polite, 'Madam, why are you trying to push past me?' And she simply--God, I was so ashamed!--she rips out
at him, 'You're no gentleman,' and she drags me into it and hollers, 'Paul, this person insulted me!' and the poor
skate he got ready to fight.
"I made out I hadn't heard them--sure! same as you wouldn't hear a
boiler-
factory!--and I tried to look away--I can tell you exactly how every tile looks in the ceiling of that lobby; there's one with brown spots on it
like the face of the
devil--and all the time the people there--they were packed in like
sardines--they kept making remarks about us, and Zilla went right on talking about the little
chap, and screeching that 'folks like him
oughtn't to be admitted in a place that's SUPPOSED to be for
ladies and
gentlemen,' and 'Paul, will you kindly call the
manager, so I can report this
dirty
rat?' and--Oof! Maybe I wasn't glad when I could sneak inside and hide in the dark!
"After twenty-four years of that kind of thing, you don't expect me to fall down and
foam at the mouth when you hint that this sweet, clean, respectable,
moral life
isn't all it's cracked up to be, do you? I can't even talk about it, except to you, because anybody else would think I was yellow. Maybe I am. Don't care any longer.... Gosh, you've had to stand a lot of whining from me,
first and last, Georgie!"
"Rats, now, Paul, you've never really what you could call whined. Sometimes--I'm always blowing to Myra and the kids about what a
whale of a realtor I am, and yet sometimes I get a sneaking idea I'm not such a
Pierpont
Morgan as I let on to be. But if I ever do help by jollying you along, old Paulski, I guess maybe Saint Pete may let me in after all!"
"Yuh, you're an old
blow-hard, Georgie, you cheerful
cut-throat, but you've certainly kept me going."
"Why don't you divorce Zilla?"
"Why don't I! If I only could! If she'd just give me the chance! You couldn't hire her to divorce me, no, nor desert me. She's too fond of her three squares and a few pounds of nut-center
chocolates in between. If she'd
only be what they call unfaithful to me! George, I don't want to be too much of a stinker; back in
college I'd 've thought a man who could say that ought to be shot at sunrise. But honestly, I'd be tickled to death if she'd really go making love with somebody.
Fat chance! Of course she'll
flirt with anything--you know how she holds hands and laughs--that laugh--that horrible
brassy laugh--the way she yaps, 'You naughty man, you better be careful or my big husband will be after you!'--and the guy looking me over and thinking,
'Why, you cute little thing, you run away now or I'll spank you!' And she'll let him go just far enough so she gets some excitement out of it and then she'll begin to do the injured innocent and have a beautiful time wailing, 'I
didn't think you were that kind of a person.' They talk about these demi-vierges in stories--"
"These WHATS?"
"--but the wise, hard, corseted, old married women like Zilla are worse than any bobbed-haired girl that ever went boldly out into this-here storm of
life--and kept her
umbrella slid up her sleeve! But rats, you know what Zilla is. How she nags--nags--nags. How she wants everything I can buy her, and a lot that I can't, and how absolutely unreasonable she is, and when I get sore
and try to have it out with her she plays the Perfect Lady so well that even I get fooled and get all tangled up in a lot of 'Why did you say's' and 'I didn't mean's.' I'll tell you, Georgie: You know my tastes are pretty fairly
simple--in the matter of
food, at least. Course, as you're always complaining, I do like decent cigars--not those Flor de Cabagos you're smoking--"
"That's all right now! That's a good two-for. By the way, Paul, did I tell you I decided to practically cut out smok--"
"Yes you--At the same time, if I can't get what I like, why, I can do without it. I don't mind sitting down to burnt
steak, with canned
peaches and store
cake for a thrilling little dessert afterwards, but I do draw the line at having to sympathize with Zilla because she's so rotten bad-tempered that the
cook has quit, and she's been so busy sitting in a dirty lace
negligee all afternoon, reading about some brave manly
Western hero, that she hasn't had
time to do any cooking. You're always talking about 'morals'--meaning
monogamy, I suppose. You've been the
rock of ages to me, all right, but you're
essentially a
simp. You--"
"Where d' you get that 'simp,' little man? Let me tell you--"
"Wait, wait now! What's--"
"--talk about morals all you want to, old thing, but believe me, if it hadn't been for you and an occasional evening playing the
violin to Terrill
O'Farrell's '
cello, and three or four darling girls that let me forget this beastly joke they call 'respectable life,' I'd 've killed myself years ago.
"And business! The roofing business! Roofs for
cowsheds! Oh, I don't mean I haven't had a lot of fun out of the Game; out of putting it over on the
labor
unions, and seeing a big check coming in, and the business increasing. But what's the use of it? You know, my business isn't distributing roofing--it's
principally keeping my competitors from distributing roofing. Same with you. All we do is cut each other's throats and make the
public pay for it!"
"Look here now, Paul! You're pretty darn near talking
socialism!"
"Oh yes, of course I don't really exactly mean that--I s'pose. Course--
competition--brings out the best--
survival of the fittest--but--But I
mean: Take all these fellows we know, the kind right here in the club now, that seem to be perfectly content with their home-life and their businesses, and that boost Zenith and the
Chamber of Commerce and holler for a million
population. I bet if you could cut into their heads you'd find that one-third of 'em are sure-enough satisfied with their wives and kids and friends and their offices; and one-third feel kind of restless but won't admit it; and
one-third are miserable and know it. They hate the whole peppy, boosting, go-ahead game, and they're bored by their wives and think their families are fools--at least when they come to forty or forty-five they're bored--and they
hate business, and they'd go--Why do you suppose there's so many 'mysterious' suicides? Why do you suppose so many Substantial Citizens jumped right into the war? Think it was all
patriotism?"
Babbitt snorted, "What do you expect? Think we were sent into the world to have a soft time and--what is it?--'float on flowery beds of ease'? Think Man was just made to be happy?"
"Why not? Though I've never discovered anybody that knew what the
deuce Man really was made for!"
"Well we know--not just in the
Bible alone, but it stands to reason--a man who doesn't buckle down and do his duty, even if it does bore him sometimes, is nothing but a--well, he's simply a weakling.
Mollycoddle, in fact! And what
do you advocate? Come down to cases! If a man is bored by his wife, do you seriously mean he has a right to chuck her and take a sneak, or even kill himself?"
"Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of
boredom. If I did, I'd be the one
philosopher that had the cure
for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we
busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of
eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun."
They drifted into a maze of
speculation. Babbitt was
elephantishly uneasy.
Paul was bold, but not quite sure about what he was being bold. Now and then Babbitt suddenly agreed with Paul in an admission which contradicted all his defense of duty and
Christian patience, and at each admission he had a curious
reckless joy. He said at last:
"Look here, old Paul, you do a lot of talking about kicking things in the face, but you never kick. Why don't you?"
"Nobody does. Habit too strong. But--Georgie, I've been thinking of one mild bat--oh, don't worry, old pillar of monogamy; it's highly proper. It seems to
be settled now, isn't it--though of course Zilla keeps rooting for a nice expensive vacation in
New York and
Atlantic City, with the bright lights and
the bootlegged
cocktails and a bunch of
lounge-lizards to dance with--but the Babbitts and the Rieslings are sure-enough going to Lake Sunasquam, aren't we? Why couldn't you and I make some excuse--say business in New York--and get up
to
Maine four or five days before they do, and just loaf by ourselves and smoke and cuss and be natural?"
"Great! Great idea!" Babbitt admired.
Not for fourteen years had he taken a
holiday without his wife, and neither of them quite believed they could commit this
audacity. Many members of the
Athletic Club did go camping without their wives, but they were officially dedicated to
fishing and
hunting, whereas the sacred and unchangeable
sports of Babbitt and Paul Riesling were
golfing, motoring, and
bridge. For either the fishermen or the golfers to have changed their habits would have been an infraction of their self-imposed discipline which would have shocked all
right-thinking and regularized citizens.
Babbitt blustered, "Why don't we just put our foot down and say, 'We're going on ahead of you, and that's all there is to it!' Nothing criminal in it. Simply say to Zilla--"
"You don't say anything to Zilla simply. Why, Georgie, she's almost as much of a moralist as you are, and if I told her the truth she'd believe we were
going to meet some dames in New York. And even Myra--she never nags you, the way Zilla does, but she'd worry. She'd say, 'Don't you WANT me to go to Maine
with you? I shouldn't dream of going unless you wanted me;' and you'd give in to save her feelings. Oh, the devil! Let's have a shot at
duck-pins."
During the game of duck-pins, a
juvenile form of
bowling, Paul was silent. As
they came down the steps of the club, not more than half an hour after the time at which Babbitt had sternly told Miss McGoun he would be back, Paul sighed, "Look here, old man, oughtn't to talked about Zilla way I did."
"Rats, old man, it lets off steam."
"Oh, I know! After spending all noon sneering at the conventional stuff, I'm
conventional enough to be ashamed of saving my life by busting out with my fool troubles!"
"Old Paul, your nerves are kind of on the bum. I'm going to take you away. I'm going to rig this thing. I'm going to have an important deal in New York
and--and sure, of course!--I'll need you to advise me on the roof of the building! And the ole deal will fall through, and there'll be nothing for us but to go on ahead to Maine. I--Paul, when it comes right down to it, I don't
care whether you bust loose or not. I do like having a rep for being one of the Bunch, but if you ever needed me I'd chuck it and come out for you every time! Not of course but what you're--course I don't mean you'd ever do
anything that would put--that would put a decent position
on the fritz but--See how I mean? I'm kind of a clumsy old
codger, and I need your fine
Eyetalian hand. We--Oh, hell, I can't stand here gassing all day! On the job! S' long! Don't take any wooden money, Paulibus! See you soon! S' long!"
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