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Файл:Бэббитт. Книга для чтения на английском языке
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Babbitt
eerily on the rumble seat, he went roaring off to distant
towns.
Usually Eunice and he were merely neighborhood chums,
and quarreled with a wholesome and violent lack of
delicacy; but now and then, after the color and scent of a
dance, they were silent together and a little furtive, and
Babbitt was worried.
Babbitt was an average father. He was affectionate,
bullying, opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like
most parents, he enjoyed the game of waiting till the victim
was clearly wrong, then virtuously pouncing. He justified
himself by croaking, Well, Teds mother spoils him. Got to
be somebody who tells him whats what, and me, Im
elected the goat. Because I try to bring him up to be a real,
decent, human being and not one of these sapheads and
lounge-lizards, of course they all call me a grouch!
Throughout, with the eternal human genius for arriving
by the worst possible routes at surprisingly tolerable
goals, Babbitt loved his son and warmed to his
companionship and would have sacrificed everything for
him if he could have been sure of proper credit.
II
Ted was planning a party for his set in the Senior
Class.
Babbitt meant to be helpful and jolly about it. From his
memory of high-school pleasures back in Catawba he
suggested the nicest games: Going to Boston, and charades
with stew-pans for helmets, and word-games in which you
were an Adjective or a Quality. When he was most
enthusiastic he discovered that they werent paying attention;
they were only tolerating him. As for the party, it was as
fixed and standardized as a Union Club Hop. There was
to be dancing in the living-room, a noble collation in the
dining-room, and in the hall two tables of bridge for what
Ted called the poor old dumb-bells that you cant get to
dance hardly more n half the time.
Every breakfast was monopolized by conferences on
the affair. No one listened to Babbitts bulletins about the
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Sinclair Lewis
February weather or to his throat-clearing comments on
the headlines. He said furiously, If I may be PERMITTED
to interrupt your engrossing private CONVERSATION Juh
hear what I SAID?
Oh, dont be a spoiled baby! Ted and I have just as
much right to talk as you have! flared Mrs Babbitt.
On the night of the party he was permitted to look on,
when he was not helping Matilda with the Vecchia ice
cream and the petits fours. He was deeply disquieted. Eight
years ago, when Verona had given a high-school party, the
children had been featureless gabies. Now they were men
and women of the world, very supercilious men and women;
the boys condescended to Babbitt, they wore eveningclothes, and with hauteur they accepted cigarettes from
silver cases. Babbitt had heard stories of what the Athletic
Club called goings on at young parties; of girls parking
their corsets in the dressing-room, of cuddling and petting,
and a presumable increase in what was known as Immorality.
To-night he believed the stories. These children seemed
bold to him, and cold. The girls wore misty chiffon, coral
velvet, or cloth of gold, and around their dipping bobbed
hair were shining wreaths. He had it, upon urgent and
secret inquiry, that no corsets were known to be parked
upstairs; but certainly these eager bodies were not stiff with
steel. Their stockings were of lustrous silk, their slippers
costly and unnatural, their lips carmined and their eyebrows
penciled. They danced cheek to cheek with the boys, and
Babbitt sickened with apprehension and unconscious envy.
Worst of them all was Eunice Littlefield, and maddest of
all the boys was Ted. Eunice was a flying demon. She slid
the length of the room; her tender shoulders swayed; her
feet were deft as a weavers shuttle; she laughed, and
enticed Babbitt to dance with her.
Then he discovered the annex to the party.
The boys and girls disappeared occasionally, and he
remembered rumors of their drinking together from hippocket flasks. He tiptoed round the house, and in each of
the dozen cars waiting in the street he saw the points of
light from cigarettes, from each of them heard high giggles.
He wanted to denounce them but (standing in the snow,
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Babbitt
peering round the dark corner) he did not dare. He tried to
be tactful. When he had returned to the front hall he
coaxed the boys, Say, if any of you fellows are thirsty,
theres some dandy ginger ale.
Oh! Thanks! they condescended.
He sought his wife, in the pantry, and exploded, Id
like to go in there and throw some of those young pups
out of the house! They talk down to me like I was the
butler! Id like to
I know, she sighed; only everybody says, all the
mothers tell me, unless you stand for them, if you get
angry because they go out to their cars to have a drink,
they wont come to your house any more, and we wouldnt
want Ted left out of things, would we?
He announced that he would be enchanted to have Ted
left out of things, and hurried in to be polite, lest Ted be
left out of things.
But, he resolved, if he found that the boys were
drinking, he would well, hed hand em something that
would surprise em. While he was trying to be agreeable
to large-shouldered young bullies he was earnestly sniffing
at them Twice he caught the reek of prohibition-time
whisky, but then, it was only twice
Dr. Howard Littlefield lumbered in.
He had come, in a mood of solemn parental patronage, to
look on. Ted and Eunice were dancing, moving together like
one body. Littlefield gasped. He called Eunice. There was a
whispered duologue, and Littlefield explained to Babbitt that
Eunices mother had a headache and needed her. She went
off in tears. Babbitt looked after them furiously. That little
devil! Getting Ted into trouble! And Littlefield, the conceited
old gas-bag, acting like it was Ted that was the bad influence!
Later he smelled whisky on Teds breath.
After the civil farewell to the guests, the row was
terrific, a thorough Family Scene, like an avalanche,
devastating and without reticences. Babbitt thundered, Mrs
Babbitt wept, Ted was unconvincingly defiant, and Verona
in confusion as to whose side she was taking.
For several months there was coolness between the
Babbitts and the Littlefields, each family sheltering their
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Sinclair Lewis
lamb from the wolf-cub next door. Babbitt and Littlefield
still spoke in pontifical periods about motors and the
senate, but they kept bleakly away from mention of their
families. Whenever Eunice came to the house she discussed
with pleasant intimacy the fact that she had been forbidden
to come to the house; and Babbitt tried, with no success
whatever, to be fatherly and advisory with her.
III
Gosh all fishhooks! Ted wailed to Eunice, as they
wolfed hot chocolate, lumps of nougat, and an assortment
of glace nuts, in the mosaic splendor of the Royal Drug
Store, it gets me why Dad doesnt just pass out from
being so poky. Every evening he sits there, about halfasleep, and if Rone or I say, Oh, come on, lets do
something, he doesnt even take the trouble to think
about it. He just yawns and says, Naw, this suits me right
here. He doesnt know theres any fun going on anywhere.
I suppose he must do some thinking, same as you and I
do, but gosh, theres no way of telling it. I dont believe
that outside of the office and playing a little bum golf on
Saturday he knows theres anything in the world to do
except just keep sitting there-sitting there every night not
wanting to go anywhere not wanting to do anything
thinking us kids are crazy sitting there Lord!
IV
If he was frightened by Teds slackness, Babbitt was
not sufficiently frightened by Verona. She was too safe.
She lived too much in the neat little airless room of her
mind. Kenneth Escott and she were always under foot.
When they were not at home, conducting their cautiously
radical courtship over sheets of statistics, they were trudging
off to lectures by authors and Hindu philosophers and
Swedish lieutenants.
Gosh, Babbitt wailed to his wife, as they walked
home from the Fogartys bridge-party, it gets me how
Rone and that fellow can be so poky. They sit there
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Babbitt
night after night, whenever he isnt working, and they
dont know theres any fun in the world. All talk and
discussion Lord! Sitting there sitting there night
after night not wanting to do anything thinking Im
crazy because I like to go out and play a fist of cards
sitting there gosh!
Then round the swimmer, bored by struggling through
the perpetual surf of family life, new combers swelled.
V
Babbitts father- and mother-in-law, Mr and Mrs Henry
T. Thompson, rented their old house in the Bellevue
district and moved to the Hotel Hatton, that glorified
boarding-house filled with widows, red-plush furniture,
and the sound of ice-water pitchers. They were lonely
there, and every other Sunday evening the Babbitts had to
dine with them, on fricasseed chicken, discouraged celery,
and cornstarch ice cream, and afterward sit, polite and
restrained, in the hotel lounge, while a young woman
violinist played songs from the German via Broadway.
Then Babbitts own mother came down from Catawba
to spend three weeks.
She was a kind woman and magnificently
uncomprehending. She congratulated the convention-defying
Verona on being a nice, loyal home-body without all
these Ideas that so many girls seem to have nowadays;
and when Ted filled the differential with grease, out of
pure love of mechanics and filthiness, she rejoiced that he
was so handy around the house and helping his father
and all, and not going out with the girls all the time and
trying to pretend he was a society fellow.
Babbitt loved his mother, and sometimes he rather
liked her, but he was annoyed by her Christian Patience,
and he was reduced to pulpiness when she discoursed
about a quite mythical hero called Your Father:
You wont remember it, Georgie, you were such a little
fellow at the time my, I remember just how you looked
that day, with your goldy brown curls and your lace collar,
you always were such a dainty child, and kind of puny
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Sinclair Lewis
and sickly, and you loved pretty things so much and the
red tassels on your little bootees and all and Your Father
was taking us to church and a man stopped us and said
Major so many of the neighbors used to call Your
Father Major; of course he was only a private in The War
but everybody knew that was because of the jealousy of
his captain and he ought to have been a high-ranking
officer, he had that natural ability to command that so
very, very few men have and this man came out into the
road and held up his hand and stopped the buggy and
said, Major, he said, theres a lot of the folks around here
that have decided to support Colonel Scanell for congress,
and we want you to join us. Meeting people the way you
do in the store, you could help us a lot.
Well, Your Father just looked at him and said, I
certainly shall do nothing of the sort. I dont like his
politics, he said. Well, the man Captain Smith they used
to call him, and heaven only knows why, because he
hadnt the shadow or vestige of a right to be called
Captain or any other title this Captain Smith said, Well
make it hot for you if you dont stick by your friends,
Major. Well, you know how Your Father was, and this
Smith knew it too; he knew what a Real Man he was, and
he knew Your Father knew the political situation from A
to Z, and he ought to have seen that here was one man
he couldnt impose on, but he went on trying to and
hinting and trying till Your Father spoke up and said to
him, Captain Smith, he said, I have a reputation around
these parts for being one who is amply qualified to mind
his own business and let other folks mind theirs! and with
that he drove on and left the fellow standing there in the
road like a bump on a log!
Babbitt was most exasperated when she revealed his
boyhood to the children. He had, it seemed, been fond of
barley-sugar; had worn the loveliest little pink bow in his
curls and corrupted his own name to Goo-goo. He
heard (though he did not officially hear) Ted admonishing
Tinka, Come on now, kid; stick the lovely pink bow in
your curls and beat it down to breakfast, or Goo-goo will
jaw your head off.
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Babbitt
Babbitts half-brother, Martin, with his wife and youngest
baby, came down from Catawba for two days. Martin
bred cattle and ran the dusty general-store. He was
proud of being a freeborn independent American of the
good old Yankee stock; he was proud of being honest,
blunt, ugly, and disagreeable. His favorite remark was
How much did you pay for that? He regarded Veronas
books, Babbitts silver pencil, and flowers on the table
as citified extravagances, and said so. Babbitt would
have quarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the
baby, whom Babbitt teased and poked fingers at and
addressed:
I think this babys a bum, yes, sir, I think this little
babys a bum, hes a bum, yes, sir, hes a bum, thats what
he is, hes a bum, this babys a bum, hes nothing but an
old bum, thats what he is a bum!
All the while Verona and Kenneth Escott held long
inquiries into epistemology; Ted was a disgraced rebel;
and Tinka, aged eleven, was demanding that she be
allowed to go to the movies thrice a week, like all the
girls.
Babbitt raged, Im sick of it! Having to carry three
generations. Whole damn bunch lean on me. Pay half of
mothers income, listen to Henry T., listen to Myras worrying,
be polite to Mart, and get called an old grouch for trying
to help the children. All of em depending on me and
picking on me and not a damn one of em grateful! No
relief, and no credit, and no help from anybody. And to
keep it up for good Lord, how long?
He enjoyed being sick in February; he was delighted by
their consternation that he, the rock, should give way.
He had eaten a questionable clam. For two days he
was languorous and petted and esteemed. He was allowed
to snarl Oh, let me alone! without reprisals. He lay on
the sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slide
along the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale
blood red. The shadow of the draw-rope was dense
black, in an enticing ripple on the canvas. He found
pleasure in the curve of it, sighed as the fading light
blurred it. He was conscious of life, and a little sad.
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Sinclair Lewis
With no Vergil Gunches before whom to set his face in
resolute optimism, he beheld, and half admitted that he
beheld, his way of life as incredibly mechanical.
Mechanical business a brisk selling of badly built
houses. Mechanical religion a dry, hard church, shut
off from the real life of the streets, inhumanly respectable
as a top-hat. Mechanical golf and dinner-parties and
bridge and conversation. Save with Paul Riesling,
mechanical friendships back-slapping and jocular, never
daring to essay the test of quietness.
He turned uneasily in bed.
He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the
long sweet afternoons which were meant for summery
meadows, lost in such brittle pretentiousness. He thought
of telephoning about leases, of cajoling men he hated, of
making business calls and waiting in dirty anterooms hat
on knee, yawning at fly-specked calendars, being polite to
office-boys.
I dont hardly want to go back to work, he prayed.
Id like to I dont know.
But he was back next day, busy and of doubtful
temper.
I
The Zenith Street Traction Company planned to build
car-repair shops in the suburb of Dorchester, but when
they came to buy the land they found it held, on options,
by the Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company. The purchasingagent, the first vice-president, and even the president of
the Traction Company protested against the Babbitt price.
They mentioned their duty toward stockholders, they
threatened an appeal to the courts, though somehow the
appeal to the courts was never carried out and the officials
found it wiser to compromise with Babbitt. Carbon copies
of the correspondence are in the companys files, where
they may be viewed by any public commission.
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Babbitt
Just after this Babbitt deposited three thousand dollars
in the bank, the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction
Company bought a five thousand dollar car, he first vicepresident built a home in Devon Woods, and the president
was appointed minister to a foreign country.
To obtain the options, to tie up one mans land
without letting his neighbor know, had been an unusual
strain on Babbitt. It was necessary to introduce rumors
about planning garages and stores, to pretend that he
wasnt taking any more options, to wait and look as
bored as a poker-player at a time when the failure to
secure a key-lot threatened his whole plan. To all this
was added a nerve-jabbing quarrel with his secret associates
in the deal. They did not wish Babbitt and Thompson to
have any share in the deal except as brokers. Babbitt
rather agreed. Ethics of the business-broker ought to
strictly represent his principles and not get in on the
buying, he said to Thompson.
Ethics, rats! Think Im going to see that bunch of holy
grafters get away with the swag and us not climb in?
snorted old Henry.
Well, I dont like to do it. Kind of double-crossing.
It aint. Its triple-crossing. Its the public that gets
double-crossed. Well, now weve been ethical and got it
out of our systems, the question is where we can raise a
loan to handle some of the property for ourselves, on the
Q.T. We cant go to our bank for it. Might come out.
I could see old Eathorne. Hes close as the tomb.
Thats the stuff.
Eathorne was glad, he said, to invest in character, to
make Babbitt the loan and see to it that the loan did not
appear on the books of the bank. Thus certain of the
options which Babbitt and Thompson obtained were on
parcels of real estate which they themselves owned, though
the property did not appear in their names.
In the midst of closing this splendid deal, which stimulated
business and public confidence by giving an example of
increased real-estate activity, Babbitt was overwhelmed to
find that he had a dishonest person working for him.
The dishonest one was Stanley Graff, the outside salesman.
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Sinclair Lewis
For some time Babbitt had been worried about Graff. He
did not keep his word to tenants. In order to rent a house
he would promise repairs which the owner had not authorized.
It was suspected that he juggled inventories of furnished
houses so that when the tenant left he had to pay for
articles which had never been in the house and the price of
which Graff put into his pocket. Babbitt had not been able
to prove these suspicions, and though he had rather planned
to discharge Graff he had never quite found time for it.
Now into Babbitts private room charged a red-faced
man, panting, Look here! Ive come to raise particular
merry hell, and unless you have that fellow pinched, I
will! Whats Calm down, oman. Whats trouble?
Trouble! Huh! Heres the trouble
Sit down and take it easy! They can hear you all over
the building!
This fellow Graff you got working for you, he leases
me a house. I was in yesterday and signs the lease, all
O.K., and he was to get the owners signature and mail me
the lease last night. Well, and he did. This morning I
comes down to breakfast and the girl says a fellow had
come to the house right after the early delivery and told
her he wanted an envelope that had been mailed by
mistake, big long envelope with Babbitt-Thompson in the
corner of it. Sure enough, there it was, so she lets him
have it. And she describes the fellow to me, and it was
this Graff. So I phones to him and he, the poor fool, he
admits it! He says after my lease was all signed he got a
better offer from another fellow and he wanted my lease
back. Now what you going to do about it?
Your name is ?
William Varney W. K. Varney.
Oh, yes. That was the Garrison house. Babbitt sounded
the buzzer. When Miss McGoun came in, he demanded,
Graff gone out?
Yes, sir.
Will you look through his desk and see if there is a
lease made out to Mr Varney on the Garrison house? To
Varney: Cant tell you how sorry I am this happened.
Needless to say, Ill fire Graff the minute he comes in. And
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