Free Babbit by Sinclair Lewis Page B

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