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CHAPTER XI
I THEY had four hours in New York between
trains.
The one thing Babbitt wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built
since his last visit. He stared up at it, muttering, "Twenty-two
hundred rooms and twenty-two hundred baths!
That's got everything in the world beat.
Lord, their turnover must be--well, suppose price of rooms is four to eight dollars a
day, and I suppose maybe some ten and--four times twenty-two hundred-say six times
twenty-two hundred--well, anyway, with
restaurants and everything, say summers between eight and fifteen thousand a day.
Every day! I never thought I'd see a thing like that!
Some town!
Of course the average fellow in Zenith has got more Individual Initiative than the
fourflushers here, but I got to hand it to New York.
Yes, sir, town, you're all right--some ways.
Well, old Paulski, I guess we've seen everything that's worth while.
How'll we kill the rest of the time?
Movie?" But Paul desired to see a liner.
"Always wanted to go to Europe--and, by thunder, I will, too, some day before I
past out," he sighed.
From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at the stern of the Aquitania and
her stacks and wireless antenna lifted above the dock-house which shut her in.
"By golly," Babbitt droned, "wouldn't be so bad to go over to the Old Country and take
a squint at all these ruins, and the place where Shakespeare was born.
And think of being able to order a drink whenever you wanted one!
Just range up to a bar and holler out loud, 'Gimme a cocktail, and darn the police!'
Not bad at all.
What juh like to see, over there, Paulibus?"
Paul did not answer. Babbitt turned.
Paul was standing with clenched fists, head drooping, staring at the liner as in
terror.
His thin body, seen against the summer- glaring planks of the wharf, was childishly
meager. Again, "What would you hit for on the other
side, Paul?"
Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Paul whispered, "Oh, my God!"
While Babbitt watched him anxiously he snapped, "Come on, let's get out of this,"
and hastened down the wharf, not looking back.
"That's funny," considered Babbitt.
"The boy didn't care for seeing the ocean boats after all.
I thought he'd be interested in 'em."
II
Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about locomotive horse-power,
as their train climbed the Maine mountain- ridge and from the summit he looked down
the shining way among the pines; though he
remarked, "Well, by golly!" when he discovered that the station at Katadumcook,
the end of the line, was an aged freight- car; Babbitt's moment of impassioned
release came when they sat on a tiny wharf
on Lake Sunasquam, awaiting the launch from the hotel.
A raft had floated down the lake; between the logs and the shore, the water was
transparent, thin-looking, flashing with minnows.
A guide in black felt hat with trout-flies in the band, and flannel shirt of a
peculiarly daring blue, sat on a log and whittled and was silent.
A dog, a good country dog, black and woolly gray, a dog rich in leisure and in
meditation, scratched and grunted and slept.
The thick sunlight was lavish on the bright water, on the rim of gold-green balsam
boughs, the silver birches and tropic ferns, and across the lake it burned on the
sturdy shoulders of the mountains.
Over everything was a holy peace. Silent, they loafed on the edge of the
wharf, swinging their legs above the water.
The immense tenderness of the place sank into Babbitt, and he murmured, "I'd just
like to sit here--the rest of my life--and whittle--and sit.
And never hear a typewriter.
Or Stan Graff fussing in the 'phone. Or Rone and Ted scrapping.
Just sit. Gosh!"
He patted Paul's shoulder.
"How does it strike you, old snoozer?" "Oh, it's darn good, Georgie.
There's something sort of eternal about it."
For once, Babbitt understood him.
III
Their launch rounded the bend; at the head of the lake, under a mountain slope, they
saw the little central dining-shack of their hotel and the crescent of squat log
cottages which served as bedrooms.
They landed, and endured the critical examination of the habitues who had been at
the hotel for a whole week.
In their cottage, with its high stone fireplace, they hastened, as Babbitt
expressed it, to "get into some regular he- togs."
They came out; Paul in an old gray suit and soft white shirt; Babbitt in khaki shirt
and vast and flapping khaki trousers.
It was excessively new khaki; his rimless spectacles belonged to a city office; and
his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a discordant noise in the place.
But with infinite satisfaction he slapped his legs and crowed, "Say, this is getting
back home, eh?" They stood on the wharf before the hotel.
He winked at Paul and drew from his back pocket a plug of chewing-tobacco, a
vulgarism forbidden in the Babbitt home. He took a chew, beaming and wagging his
head as he tugged at it.
"Um! Um! Maybe I haven't been hungry for a *** of eating-tobacco!
Have some?" They looked at each other in a grin of
understanding.
Paul took the plug, gnawed at it. They stood quiet, their jaws working.
They solemnly spat, one after the other, into the placid water.
They stretched voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs.
From beyond the mountains came the shuffling sound of a far-off train.
A trout leaped, and fell back in a silver circle.
They sighed together.
IV They had a week before their families came.
Each evening they planned to get up early and fish before breakfast.
Each morning they lay abed till the breakfast-bell, pleasantly conscious that
there were no efficient wives to rouse them.
The mornings were cold; the fire was kindly as they dressed.
Paul was distressingly clean, but Babbitt reveled in a good sound dirtiness, in not
having to shave till his spirit was moved to it.
He treasured every grease spot and fish- scale on his new khaki trousers.
All morning they fished unenergetically, or tramped the dim and aqueous-lighted trails
among rank ferns and moss sprinkled with crimson bells.
They slept all afternoon, and till midnight played stud-poker with the guides.
Poker was a serious business to the guides.
They did not gossip; they shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity
menacing to the "sports;" and Joe Paradise, king of guides, was sarcastic to loiterers
who halted the game even to scratch.
At midnight, as Paul and he blundered to their cottage over the pungent wet grass,
and pine-roots confusing in the darkness, Babbitt rejoiced that he did not have to
explain to his wife where he had been all evening.
They did not talk much. The nervous loquacity and opinionation of
the Zenith Athletic Club dropped from them.
But when they did talk they slipped into the naive intimacy of college days.
Once they drew their canoe up to the bank of Sunasquam Water, a stream walled in by
the dense green of the hardhack.
The sun roared on the green jungle but in the shade was sleepy peace, and the water
was golden and rippling. Babbitt drew his hand through the cool
flood, and mused:
"We never thought we'd come to Maine together!"
"No. We've never done anything the way we thought we would.
I expected to live in Germany with my granddad's people, and study the fiddle."
"That's so. And remember how I wanted to be a lawyer
and go into politics?
I still think I might have made a go of it.
I've kind of got the gift of the gab-- anyway, I can think on my feet, and make
some kind of a spiel on most anything, and of course that's the thing you need in
politics.
By golly, Ted's going to law-school, even if I didn't!
Well--I guess it's worked out all right. Myra's been a fine wife.
And Zilla means well, Paulibus."
"Yes. Up here, I figure out all sorts of plans to keep her amused.
I kind of feel life is going to be different, now that we're getting a good
rest and can go back and start over again."
"I hope so, old boy." Shyly: "Say, gosh, it's been awful nice to
sit around and loaf and gamble and act regular, with you along, you old horse-
thief!"
"Well, you know what it means to me, Georgie.
Saved my life."
The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove they were good
rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Babbitt whistling while Paul hummed, they
paddled back to the hotel.
V
Though it was Paul who had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the
protecting big brother, Paul became clear- eyed and merry, while Babbitt sank into
irritability.
He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness.
At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and for him sought amusements; by the
end of the week Paul was nurse, and Babbitt accepted favors with the condescension one
always shows a patient nurse.
The day before their families arrived, the women guests at the hotel bubbled, "Oh,
isn't it nice!
You must be so excited;" and the proprieties compelled Babbitt and Paul to
look excited. But they went to bed early and grumpy.
When Myra appeared she said at once, "Now, we want you boys to go on playing around
just as if we weren't here."
The first evening, he stayed out for poker with the guides, and she said in placid
merriment, "My! You're a regular bad one!"
The second evening, she groaned sleepily, "Good heavens, are you going to be out
every single night?" The third evening, he didn't play poker.
He was tired now in every cell.
"Funny! Vacation doesn't seem to have done me a bit
of good," he lamented.
"Paul's frisky as a colt, but I swear, I'm crankier and nervouser than when I came up
here." He had three weeks of Maine.
At the end of the second week he began to feel calm, and interested in life.
He planned an expedition to climb Sachem Mountain, and wanted to camp overnight at
Box Car Pond.
He was curiously weak, yet cheerful, as though he had cleansed his veins of
poisonous energy and was filling them with wholesome blood.
He ceased to be irritated by Ted's infatuation with a waitress (his seventh
tragic affair this year); he played catch with Ted, and with pride taught him to cast
a fly in the pine-shadowed silence of Skowtuit Pond.
At the end he sighed, "Hang it, I'm just beginning to enjoy my vacation.
But, well, I feel a lot better.
And it's going to be one great year! Maybe the Real Estate Board will elect me
president, instead of some fuzzy old- fashioned faker like Chan Mott."
On the way home, whenever he went into the smoking-compartment he felt guilty at
deserting his wife and angry at being expected to feel guilty, but each time he
triumphed, "Oh, this is going to be a great year, a great old year!"