Babbitt Part 36

II

He had not told Paul of his plan but he did stop at Akron, between trains, for the one purpose of sending to Zilla a postcard with "Had to come here for the day, ran into Paul." In Zenith he called on her.

If for public appearances Zilla was over-coiffed, over-painted, and resolutely corseted, for private misery she wore a filthy blue dressing-gown and torn stockings thrust into streaky pink satin mules.

Her face was sunken. She seemed to have but half as much hair as Babbitt remembered, and that half was stringy. She sat in a rocker amid a debris of candy-boxes and cheap magazines, and she sounded dolorous when she did not sound derisive. But Babbitt was exceedingly breezy:

"Well, well, Zil, old dear, having a good loaf while hubby's away?

That's the ideal I'll bet a hat Myra never got up till ten, while I was in Chicago. Say, could I borrow your thermos--just dropped in to see if I could borrow your thermos bottle. We're going to have a toboggan party--want to take some coffee mit. Oh, did you get my card from Akron, saying I'd run into Paul?"

"Yes. What was he doing?"

"How do you mean?" He unb.u.t.toned his overcoat, sat tentatively on the arm of a chair.

"You know how I mean!" She slapped the pages of a magazine with an irritable clatter. "I suppose he was trying to make love to some hotel waitress or manicure girl or somebody."

"Hang it, you're always letting on that Paul goes round chasing skirts.

He doesn't, in the first place, and if he did, it would prob'ly be because you keep hinting at him and dinging at him so much. I hadn't meant to, Zilla, but since Paul is away, in Akron--"

"He really is in Akron? I know he has some horrible woman that he writes to in Chicago."

"Didn't I tell you I saw him in Akron? What 're you trying to do? Make me out a liar?"

"No, but I just--I get so worried."

"Now, there you are! That's what gets me! Here you love Paul, and yet you plague him and cuss him out as if you hated him. I simply can't understand why it is that the more some folks love people, the harder they try to make 'em miserable."

"You love Ted and Rone--I suppose--and yet you nag them."

"Oh. Well. That. That's different. Besides, I don't nag 'em. Not what you'd call nagging. But zize saying: Now, here's Paul, the nicest, most sensitive critter on G.o.d's green earth. You ought to be ashamed of yourself the way you pan him. Why, you talk to him like a washerwoman.

I'm surprised you can act so doggone common, Zilla!"

She brooded over her linked fingers. "Oh, I know. I do go and get mean sometimes, and I'm sorry afterwards. But, oh, Georgie, Paul is so aggravating! Honestly, I've tried awfully hard, these last few years, to be nice to him, but just because I used to be spiteful--or I seemed so; I wasn't, really, but I used to speak up and say anything that came into my head--and so he made up his mind that everything was my fault.

Everything can't always be my fault, can it? And now if I get to fussing, he just turns silent, oh, so dreadfully silent, and he won't look at me--he just ignores me. He simply isn't human! And he deliberately keeps it up till I bust out and say a lot of things I don't mean. So silent--Oh, you righteous men! How wicked you are! How rotten wicked!"

They thrashed things over and over for half an hour. At the end, weeping drably, Zilla promised to restrain herself.

Paul returned four days later, and the Babbitts and Rieslings went festively to the movies and had chop suey at a Chinese restaurant.

As they walked to the restaurant through a street of tailor shops and barber shops, the two wives in front, chattering about cooks, Babbitt murmured to Paul, "Zil seems a lot nicer now."

"Yes, she has been, except once or twice. But it's too late now. I just--I'm not going to discuss it, but I'm afraid of her. There's nothing left. I don't ever want to see her. Some day I'm going to break away from her. Somehow."

CHAPTER XXI

THE International Organization of Boosters' Clubs has be come a world-force for optimism, manly pleasantry, and good business. Chapters are to be found now in thirty countries. Nine hundred and twenty of the thousand chapters, however, are in the United States.

None of these is more ardent than the Zenith Boosters' Club.

The second March lunch of the Zenith Boosters was the most important of the year, as it was to be followed by the annual election of officers.

There was agitation abroad. The lunch was held in the ballroom of the O'Hearn House. As each of the four hundred Boosters entered he took from a wall-board a huge celluloid b.u.t.ton announcing his name, his nick name, and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow Booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbitt jovially checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of "h.e.l.lo, Chet!" and "How're you, Shorty!" and "Top o' the mornin', Mac!"

They sat at friendly tables for eight, choosing places by lot. Babbitt was with Albert Boos the merchant tailor, Hector Seybolt of the Little Sweetheart Condensed Milk Company, Emil Wengert the jeweler, Professor Pumphrey of the Riteway Business College, Dr. Walter Gorb.u.t.t, Roy Teegarten the photographer, and Ben Berkey the photo-engraver. One of the merits of the Boosters' Club was that only two persons from each department of business were permitted to join, so that you at once encountered the Ideals of other occupations, and realized the metaphysical oneness of all occupations--plumbing and portrait-painting, medicine and the manufacture of chewing-gum.

Babbitt's table was particularly happy to-day, because Professor Pumphrey had just had a birthday, and was therefore open to teasing.

"Let's pump Pump about how old he is!" said Emil Wengert.

"No, let's paddle him with a dancing-pump!" said Ben Berkey.

But it was Babbitt who had the applause, with "Don't talk about pumps to that guy! The only pump he knows is a bottle! Honest, they tell me he's starting a cla.s.s in home-brewing at the ole college!"

At each place was the Boosters' Club booklet, listing the members.

Though the object of the club was good-fellows.h.i.+p, yet they never lost sight of the importance of doing a little more business. After each name was the member's occupation. There were scores of advertis.e.m.e.nts in the booklet, and on one page the admonition: "There's no rule that you have to trade with your Fellow Boosters, but get wise, boy--what's the use of letting all this good money get outside of our happy fambly?" And at each place, to-day, there was a present; a card printed in artistic red and black:

SERVICE AND BOOSTERISM

Service finds its finest opportunity and development only in its broadest and deepest application and the consideration of its perpetual action upon reaction. I believe the highest type of Service, like the most progressive tenets of ethics, senses unceasingly and is motived by active adherence and loyalty to that which is the essential principle of Boosterism--Good Citizens.h.i.+p in all its factors and aspects.

DAD PETERSEN.

Compliments of Dadbury Petersen Advertising Corp.

"Ads, not Fads, at Dad's"

The Boosters all read Mr. Peterson's aphorism and said they understood it perfectly.

The meeting opened with the regular weekly "stunts." Retiring President Vergil Gunch was in the chair, his stiff hair like a hedge, his voice like a brazen gong of festival. Members who had brought guests introduced them publicly. "This tall red-headed piece of misinformation is the sporting editor of the Press," said Willis Ijams; and H. H.

Hazen, the druggist, chanted, "Boys, when you're on a long motor tour and finally get to a romantic spot or scene and draw up and remark to the wife, 'This is certainly a romantic place,' it sends a glow right up and down your vertebrae. Well, my guest to-day is from such a place, Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in the beautiful Southland, with memories of good old General Robert E. Lee and of that brave soul, John Brown who, like every good Booster, goes marching on--"

There were two especially distinguished guests: the leading man of the "Bird of Paradise" company, playing this week at the Dodsworth Theater, and the mayor of Zenith, the Hon. Lucas Prout.

Vergil Gunch thundered, "When we manage to grab this celebrated Thespian off his lovely aggregation of beautiful actresses--and I got to admit I b.u.t.ted right into his dressing-room and told him how the Boosters appreciated the high-cla.s.s artistic performance he's giving us--and don't forget that the treasurer of the Dodsworth is a Booster and will appreciate our patronage--and when on top of that we yank Hizzonor out of his multifarious duties at City Hall, then I feel we've done ourselves proud, and Mr. Prout will now say a few words about the problems and duties--"

By rising vote the Boosters decided which was the handsomest and which the ugliest guest, and to each of them was given a bunch of carnations, donated, President Gunch noted, by Brother Booster H. G. Yeager, the Jennifer Avenue florist.

Each week, in rotation, four Boosters were privileged to obtain the pleasures of generosity and of publicity by donating goods or services to four fellow-members, chosen by lot. There was laughter, this week, when it was announced that one of the contributors was Barnabas Joy, the undertaker. Everybody whispered, "I can think of a coupla good guys to be buried if his donation is a free funeral!"

Through all these diversions the Boosters were lunching on chicken croquettes, peas, fried potatoes, coffee, apple pie, and American cheese. Gunch did not lump the speeches. Presently he called on the visiting secretary of the Zenith Rotary Club, a rival organization.

The secretary had the distinction of possessing State Motor Car License Number 5.

The Rotary secretary laughingly admitted that wherever he drove in the state so low a number created a sensation, and "though it was pretty nice to have the honor, yet traffic cops remembered it only too darn well, and sometimes he didn't know but what he'd almost as soon have just plain B56,876 or something like that. Only let any doggone Booster try to get Number 5 away from a live Rotarian next year, and watch the fur fly! And if they'd permit him, he'd wind up by calling for a cheer for the Boosters and Rotarians and the Kiwanis all together!"

Babbitt sighed to Professor Pumphrey, "Be pretty nice to have as low a number as that! Everybody 'd say, 'He must be an important guy!' Wonder how he got it? I'll bet he wined and dined the superintendent of the Motor License Bureau to a fare-you-well!"

Then Chum Frink addressed them: