Babbitt | Page 8

was in the tower, and decision. It bore its
strength lightly as a tall soldier. As Babbitt stared, the nervousness was
soothed from his face, his slack chin lifted in reverence. All he
articulated was "That's one lovely sight!" but he was inspired by the
rhythm of the city; his love of it renewed. He beheld the tower as a
temple-spire of the religion of business, a faith passionate, exalted,
surpassing common men; and as he clumped down to breakfast he
whistled the ballad "Oh, by gee, by gosh, by jingo" as though it were a
hymn melancholy and noble.

CHAPTER II
RELIEVED of Babbitt's bumbling and the soft grunts with which his
wife expressed the sympathy she was too experienced to feel and much
too experienced not to show, their bedroom settled instantly into
impersonality.
It gave on the sleeping-porch. It served both of them as dressing-room,
and on the coldest nights Babbitt luxuriously gave up the duty of being
manly and retreated to the bed inside, to curl his toes in the warmth and
laugh at the January gale.

The room displayed a modest and pleasant color-scheme, after one of
the best standard designs of the decorator who "did the interiors" for
most of the speculative-builders' houses in Zenith. The walls were gray,
the woodwork white, the rug a serene blue; and very much like
mahogany was the furniture--the bureau with its great clear mirror, Mrs.
Babbitt's dressing-table with toilet-articles of almost solid silver, the
plain twin beds, between them a small table holding a standard electric
bedside lamp, a glass for water, and a standard bedside book with
colored illustrations--what particular book it was cannot be ascertained,
since no one had ever opened it. The mattresses were firm but not hard,
triumphant modern mattresses which had cost a great deal of money;
the hot-water radiator was of exactly the proper scientific surface for
the cubic contents of the room. The windows were large and easily
opened, with the best catches and cords, and Holland roller-shades
guaranteed not to crack. It was a masterpiece among bedrooms, right
out of Cheerful Modern Houses for Medium Incomes. Only it had
nothing to do with the Babbitts, nor with any one else. If people had
ever lived and loved here, read thrillers at midnight and lain in
beautiful indolence on a Sunday morning, there were no signs of it. It
had the air of being a very good room in a very good hotel. One
expected the chambermaid to come in and make it ready for people
who would stay but one night, go without looking back, and never
think of it again.
Every second house in Floral Heights had a bedroom precisely like this.
The Babbitts' house was five years old. It was all as competent and
glossy as this bedroom. It had the best of taste, the best of inexpensive
rugs, a simple and laudable architecture, and the latest conveniences.
Throughout, electricity took the place of candles and slatternly
hearth-fires. Along the bedroom baseboard were three plugs for electric
lamps, concealed by little brass doors. In the halls were plugs for the
vacuum cleaner, and in the living-room plugs for the piano lamp, for
the electric fan. The trim dining-room (with its admirable oak buffet, its
leaded-glass cupboard, its creamy plaster walls, its modest scene of a
salmon expiring upon a pile of oysters) had plugs which supplied the
electric percolator and the electric toaster.

In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt house: It was not
a home.
II
Often of a morning Babbitt came bouncing and jesting in to breakfast.
But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As he pontifically tread the
upper hall he looked into Verona's bedroom and protested, "What's the
use of giving the family a high-class house when they don't appreciate
it and tend to business and get down to brass tacks?"
He marched upon them: Verona, a dumpy brown-haired girl of
twenty-two, just out of Bryn Mawr, given to solici-tudes about duty
and sex and God and the unconquerable bagginess of the gray
sports-suit she was now wearing. Ted--Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt--a
decorative boy of seventeen. Tinka--Katherine--still a baby at ten, with
radiant red hair and a thin skin which hinted of too much candy and too
many ice cream sodas. Babbitt did not show his vague irritation as he
tramped in. He really disliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging
was as meaningless as it was frequent. He shouted at Tinka, "Well,
kittiedoolie!" It was the only pet name in his vocabulary, except the
"dear" and "hon." with which he recognized his wife, and he flung it at
Tinka every morning.
He gulped a cup of coffee in the hope of pacifying his stomach and his
soul. His stomach ceased