CHAPTER V

Our Mr. Wrenn

by Sinclair Lewis

CHAPTER V, OUR MR. WRENN by Sinclair Lewis

BABBITT'S preparations for leaving the office to its feeble self during the
hour and a half of his lunch-period were somewhat less elaborate than the
plans for a general European war.

He fretted to Miss McGoun, "What time you going to lunch? Well, make sure
Miss Bannigan is in then. Explain to her that if Wiedenfeldt calls up, she's
to tell him I'm already having the title traced. And oh, b' the way, remind me
to-morrow to have Penniman trace it. Now if anybody comes in looking for a
cheap house, remember we got to shove that Bangor Road place off onto
somebody. If you need me, I'll be at the Athletic Club.
And--uh--And--uh--I'll be back by two."

He dusted the cigar-ashes off his vest. He placed a difficult unanswered
letter on the pile of unfinished work, that he might not fail to attend to it
that afternoon. (For three noons, now, he had placed the same letter on the
unfinished pile.) He scrawled on a sheet of yellow backing-paper the
memorandum: "See abt apt h drs," which gave him an agreeable feeling of having
already seen about the apartment-house doors.

He discovered that he was smoking another cigar. He threw it away, protesting,
"Darn it, I thought you'd quit this darn smoking!" He courageously returned
the cigar-box to the correspondence-file, locked it up, hid the key in a more
difficult place, and raged, "Ought to take care of myself. And need more
exercise--walk to the club, every single noon--just what I'll do--every
noon-cut out this motoring all the time."

The resolution made him feel exemplary. Immediately after it he decided that
this noon it was too late to walk.

It took but little more time to start his car and edge it into the traffic
than it would have taken to walk the three and a half blocks to the club.


II

As he drove he glanced with the fondness of familiarity at the buildings.

A stranger suddenly dropped into the business-center of Zenith could not have
told whether he was in a city of Oregon or Georgia, Ohio or Maine, Oklahoma or
Manitoba. But to Babbitt every inch was individual and stirring. As always he
noted that the California Building across the way was three stories lower,
therefore three stories less beautiful, than his own Reeves Building. As
always when he passed the Parthenon Shoe Shine Parlor, a one-story hut which
beside the granite and red-brick ponderousness of the old California Building
resembled a bath-house under a cliff, he commented, "Gosh, ought to get my
shoes shined this afternoon. Keep forgetting it." At the Simplex Office
Furniture Shop, the National Cash Register Agency, he yearned for a
dictaphone, for a typewriter which would add and multiply, as a poet yearns
for quartos or a physician for radium.

At the Nobby Men's Wear Shop he took his left hand off the steering-wheel to
touch his scarf, and thought well of himself as one who bought expensive ties
"and could pay cash for 'em, too, by golly;" and at the United Cigar Store,
with its crimson and gold alertness, he reflected, "Wonder if I need some
cigars--idiot--plumb forgot--going t' cut down my fool smoking." He looked at
his bank, the Miners' and Drovers' National, and considered how clever and
solid he was to bank with so marbled an establishment. His high moment came in
the clash of traffic when he was halted at the corner beneath the lofty Second
National Tower. His car was banked with four others in a line of steel
restless as cavalry, while the cross town traffic, limousines and enormous
moving-vans and insistent motor-cycles, poured by; on the farther corner,
pneumatic riveters rang on the sun-plated skeleton of a new building; and out
of this tornado flashed the inspiration of a familiar face, and a fellow
Booster shouted, "H' are you, George!" Babbitt waved in neighborly affection,
and slid on with the traffic as the policeman lifted his hand. He noted how
quickly his car picked up. He felt superior and powerful, like a shuttle of
polished steel darting in a vast machine.

As always he ignored the next two blocks, decayed blocks not yet reclaimed
from the grime and shabbiness of the Zenith of 1885. While he was passing the
five-and-ten-cent store, the Dakota Lodging House, Concordia Hall with its
lodge-rooms and the offices of fortune-tellers and chiropractors, he thought
of how much money he made, and he boasted a little and worried a little and
did old familiar sums:

"Four hundred fifty plunks this morning from the Lyte deal. But taxes due.
Let's see: I ought to pull out eight thousand net this year, and save fifteen
hundred of that--no, not if I put up garage and--Let's see: six hundred and
forty clear last month, and twelve times six-forty makes--makes--let see: six
times twelve is seventy-two hundred and--Oh rats, anyway, I'll make eight
thousand--gee now, that's not so bad; mighty few fellows pulling down eight
thousand dollars a year--eight thousand good hard iron dollars--bet there
isn't more than five per cent. of the people in the whole United States that
make more than Uncle George does, by golly! Right up at the top of the heap!
But--Way expenses are--Family wasting gasoline, and always dressed like
millionaires, and sending that eighty a month to Mother--And all these
stenographers and salesmen gouging me for every cent they can get--"

The effect of his scientific budget-planning was that he felt at once
triumphantly wealthy and perilously poor, and in the midst of these
dissertations he stopped his car, rushed into a small news-and-miscellany
shop, and bought the electric cigar-lighter which he had coveted for a week.
He dodged his conscience by being jerky and noisy, and by shouting at the
clerk, "Guess this will prett' near pay for itself in matches, eh?"

It was a pretty thing, a nickeled cylinder with an almost silvery socket, to
be attached to the dashboard of his car. It was not only, as the placard on
the counter observed, "a dandy little refinement, lending the last touch of
class to a gentleman's auto," but a priceless time-saver. By freeing him from
halting the car to light a match, it would in a month or two easily save ten
minutes.

As he drove on he glanced at it. "Pretty nice. Always wanted one," he said
wistfully. "The one thing a smoker needs, too."

Then he remembered that he had given up smoking.

"Darn it!" he mourned. "Oh well, I suppose I'll hit a cigar once in a while.
And--Be a great convenience for other folks. Might make just the difference in
getting chummy with some fellow that would put over a sale. And--Certainly
looks nice there. Certainly is a mighty clever little jigger. Gives the last
touch of refinement and class. I--By golly, I guess I can afford it if I want
to! Not going to be the only member of this family that never has a single
doggone luxury!"

Thus, laden with treasure, after three and a half blocks of romantic
adventure, he drove up to the club.


III

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 whooped, "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--"

"--love to look earnest and inform the world that it's the 'duty of
responsible business men to be strictly moral, as an example to the
community.' In fact you're so earnest about morality, old Georgie, that I
hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath. All right, you
can--"

"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!"