I THE great events of Babbitt's spring were the secret buying of real-estate options in Linton for certain street-traction¹ officials, before the public announcement that the Linton Avenue Car Line would be extended, and a dinner which was, as he rejoiced to his wife, not only “a regular society spread but a real sure-enough highbrow affair, with some of the keenest intellects and the brightest bunch of little women in town.” It was so absorbing an occasion that he almost forgot his desire to run off to Maine with Paul Riesling.
 
Though he had been born in the village of Catawba, Babbitt had risen to that metropolitan² social plane on which hosts have as many as four people at dinner without planning it for more than an evening or two. But a dinner of twelve, with flowers from the florist's and all the cut-glass out, staggered even the Babbitts.
 
For two weeks they studied, debated, and arbitrated the list of guests.
 
Babbitt marveled, “Of course we're up-to-date ourselves, but still, think of us entertaining a famous poet like Chum Frink, a fellow that on nothing but a poem or so every day and just writing a few advertisements pulls down fifteen thousand berries a year!”
 
“Yes, and Howard Littlefield. Do you know, the other evening Eunice told me her papa speaks three languages!” said Mrs. Babbitt.
 
“Huh! That's nothing! So do I—American, baseball, and poker³!”
 
“I don't think it's nice to be funny about a matter like that. Think how wonderful it must be to speak three languages, and so useful and—And with people like that, I don't see why we invite the Orville Joneses.”
 
“Well now, Orville is a mighty⁴ up-and-coming fellow!”
 
“Yes, I know, but—A laundry!”
 
“I'll admit a laundry hasn't got the class of poetry or real estate, but just the same, Orvy is mighty deep. Ever start him spieling about gardening? Say, that fellow can tell you the name of every kind of tree, and some of their Greek and Latin names too! Besides, we owe the Joneses a dinner. Besides, gosh, we got to have some boob for audience, when a bunch of hot-air artists like Frink and Littlefield get going.”
 
“Well, dear—I meant to speak of this—I do think that as host you ought to sit back and listen, and let your guests have a chance to talk once in a while!”
 
“Oh, you do, do you! Sure! I talk all the time! And I'm just a business man—oh sure!—I'm no Ph.D. like Littlefield, and no poet, and I haven't anything to spring! Well, let me tell you, just the other day your darn Chum Frink comes up to me at the club begging to know what I thought about the Springfield school-bond issue. And who told him? I did! You bet your life I told him! Little me! I certainly did! He came up and asked me, and I told him all about it! You bet! And he was darn glad to listen to me and—Duty as a host! I guess I know my duty as a host and let me tell you—”
 
In fact, the Orville Joneses were invited.
 
II
 
On the morning of the dinner, Mrs. Babbitt was restive⁶.
 
“Now, George, I want you to be sure and be home early tonight. Remember, you have to dress.”
 
“Uh-huh. I see by the Advocate that the Presbyterian General Assembly has voted to quit the Interchurch World Movement. That—”
 
“George! Did you hear what I said? You must be home in time to dress to-night.”
 
“Dress? Hell! I'm dressed now! Think I'm going down to the office in my B.V.D.'s?”
 
“I will not have you talking indecently before the children! And you do have to put on your dinner-jacket!”
 
“I guess you mean my Tux. I tell you, of all the doggone nonsensical nuisances that was ever invented—”
 
Three minutes later, after Babbitt had wailed⁷, “Well, I don't know whether I'm going to dress or NOT” in a manner which showed that he was going to dress, the discussion moved on.
 
“Now, George, you mustn't forget to call in at Vecchia's on the way home and get the ice cream. Their delivery-wagon is broken down, and I don't want to trust them to send it by—”
 
“All right! You told me that before breakfast!”
 
“Well, I don't want you to forget. I'll be working my head off all day long, training the girl that's to help with the dinner—”
 
“All nonsense, anyway, hiring an extra girl for the feed. Matilda could perfectly⁸ well—”
 
“—and I have to go out and buy the flowers, and fix them, and set the table, and order the salted almonds, and look at the chickens, and arrange for the children to have their supper upstairs and—And I simply must depend on you to go to Vecchia's for the ice cream.”
 
“All riiiiiight! Gosh, I'm going to get it!”
 
“All you have to do is to go in and say you want the ice cream that Mrs. Babbitt ordered yesterday by 'phone, and it will be all ready for you.”
 
At ten-thirty she telephoned to him not to forget the ice cream from Vecchia's.
 
He was surprised and blasted then by a thought. He wondered whether Floral Heights dinners were worth the hideous⁹ toil¹⁰ involved. But he repented¹¹ the sacrilege in the excitement of buying the materials for cocktails¹².
 
Now this was the manner of obtaining alcohol under the reign¹⁴ of righteousness and prohibition¹⁵:
 
He drove from the severe rectangular streets of the modern business center into the tangled¹⁶ byways of Old Town—jagged blocks filled with sooty warehouses¹⁷ and lofts¹⁸; on into The Arbor¹⁹, once a pleasant orchard²⁰ but now a morass²¹ of lodging-houses, tenements²², and brothels. Exquisite²³ shivers chilled his spine²⁴ and stomach, and he looked at every policeman with intense innocence²⁵, as one who loved the law, and admired the Force, and longed to stop and play with them. He parked his car a block from Healey Hanson's saloon, worrying, “Well, rats, if anybody did see me, they'd think I was here on business.”
 
He entered a place curiously²⁷ like the saloons of ante-prohibition days, with a long greasy²⁸ bar with sawdust in front and streaky mirror behind, a pine table at which a dirty old man dreamed over a glass of something which resembled whisky, and with two men at the bar, drinking something which resembled beer, and giving that impression of forming a large crowd which two men always give in a saloon. The bartender, a tall pale Swede with a diamond in his lilac scarf, stared at Babbitt as he stalked plumply up to the bar and whispered, “I'd, uh—Friend of Hanson's sent me here. Like to get some gin.”
 
The bartender gazed down on him in the manner of an outraged²⁹ bishop³⁰. “I guess you got the wrong place, my friend. We sell nothing but soft drinks here.” He cleaned the bar with a rag which would itself have done with a little cleaning, and glared across his mechanically moving elbow.
 
The old dreamer at the table petitioned the bartender, “Say, Oscar, listen.”
 
Oscar did not listen.
 
“Aw, say, Oscar, listen, will yuh? Say, lis-sen!”
 
The decayed and drowsy³¹ voice of the loafer, the agreeable stink³² of beer-dregs, threw a spell of inanition over Babbitt. The bartender moved grimly toward the crowd of two men. Babbitt followed him as delicately as a cat, and wheedled³³, “Say, Oscar, I want to speak to Mr. Hanson.”
 
“Whajuh wanta see him for?”
 
“I just want to talk to him. Here's my card.”
 
It was a beautiful card, an engraved³⁴ card, a card in the blackest black and the sharpest red, announcing that Mr. George F. Babbitt was Estates, Insurance, Rents. The bartender held it as though it weighed ten pounds, and read it as though it were a hundred words long. He did not bend from his episcopal dignity, but he growled³⁵, “I'll see if he's around.”
 
From the back room he brought an immensely old young man, a quiet sharp-eyed man, in tan silk shirt, checked vest hanging open, and burning brown trousers—Mr. Healey Hanson. Mr. Hanson said only “Yuh?” but his implacable and contemptuous eyes queried³⁷ Babbitt's soul, and he seemed not at all impressed by the new dark-gray suit for which (as he had admitted to every acquaintance at the Athletic³⁸ Club) Babbitt had paid a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
 
“Glad meet you, Mr. Hanson. Say, uh—I'm George Babbitt of the Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company. I'm a great friend of Jake Offutt's.”
 
“Well, what of it?”
 
“Say, uh, I'm going to have a party, and Jake told me you'd be able to fix me up with a little gin.” In alarm, in obsequiousness³⁹, as Hanson's eyes grew more bored, “You telephone to Jake about me, if you want to.”
 
Hanson answered by jerking his head to indicate the entrance to the back room, and strolled away. Babbitt melodramatically crept into an apartment containing four round tables, eleven chairs, a brewery⁴⁰ calendar, and a smell. He waited. Thrice he saw Healey Hanson saunter through, humming, hands in pockets, ignoring him.
 
By this time Babbitt had modified his valiant⁴¹ morning vow⁴², “I won't pay one cent over seven dollars a quart” to “I might pay ten.” On Hanson's next weary entrance he besought⁴³ “Could you fix that up?” Hanson scowled⁴⁴, and grated, “Just a minute—Pete's sake—just a min-ute!” In growing meekness⁴⁵ Babbitt went on waiting till Hanson casually⁴⁶ reappeared with a quart of gin—what is euphemistically known as a quart—in his disdainful long white hands.
 
“Twelve bucks,” he snapped.
 
“Say, uh, but say, cap'n, Jake thought you'd be able to fix me up for eight or nine a bottle.”
 
“Nup. Twelve. This is the real stuff, smuggled⁴⁷ from Canada. This is none o' your neutral spirits with a drop of juniper extract,” the honest merchant said virtuously⁴⁸. “Twelve bones—if you want it. Course y' understand I'm just doing this anyway as a friend of Jake's.”
 
“Sure! Sure! I understand!” Babbitt gratefully held out twelve dollars. He felt honored by contact with greatness as Hanson yawned, stuffed the bills, uncounted, into his radiant vest, and swaggered away.
 
He had a number of titillations out of concealing⁴⁹ the gin-bottle under his coat and out of hiding it in his desk. All afternoon he snorted and chuckled⁵⁰ and gurgled over his ability to “give the Boys a real shot in the arm to-night.” He was, in fact, so exhilarated that he was within a block of his house before he remembered that there was a certain matter, mentioned by his wife, of fetching ice cream from Vecchia's. He explained, “Well, darn it—” and drove back.
 
Vecchia was not a caterer⁵¹, he was The Caterer of Zenith. Most coming-out parties were held in the white and gold ballroom⁵² of the Maison Vecchia; at all nice teas the guests recognized the five kinds of Vecchia sandwiches and the seven kinds of Vecchia cakes; and all really smart dinners ended, as on a resolving chord, in Vecchia Neapolitan ice cream in one of the three reliable molds—the melon mold, the round mold like a layer cake, and the long brick.
 
Vecchia's shop had pale blue woodwork, tracery of plaster roses, attendants in frilled aprons⁵³, and glass shelves of “kisses” with all the refinement⁵⁴ that inheres in whites of eggs. Babbitt felt heavy and thick amid this professional daintiness, and as he waited for the ice cream he decided⁵⁵, with hot prickles at the back of his neck, that a girl customer was giggling⁵⁶ at him. He went home in a touchy⁵⁷ temper. The first thing he heard was his wife's agitated⁵⁸:
 
“George! DID you remember to go to Vecchia's and get the ice cream?”
 
“Say! Look here! Do I ever forget to do things?”
 
“Yes! Often!”
 
“Well now, it's darn seldom I do, and it certainly makes me tired, after going into a pink-tea joint⁵⁹ like Vecchia's and having to stand around looking at a lot of half-naked young girls, all rouged⁶⁰ up like they were sixty and eating a lot of stuff that simply ruins their stomachs—”
 
“Oh, it's too bad about you! I've noticed how you hate to look at pretty girls!”
 
With a jar Babbitt realized that his wife was too busy to be impressed by that moral indignation with which males rule the world, and he went humbly⁶¹ up-stairs to dress. He had an impression of a glorified⁶² dining-room, of cut-glass, candles, polished wood, lace, silver, roses. With the awed⁶³ swelling⁶⁵ of the heart suitable to so grave a business as giving a dinner, he slew⁶⁶ the temptation to wear his plaited dress-shirt for a fourth time, took out an entirely⁶⁷ fresh one, tightened⁶⁸ his black bow, and rubbed his patent-leather pumps with a handkerchief. He glanced with pleasure at his garnet and silver studs. He smoothed and patted his ankles, transformed by silk socks from the sturdy shanks of George Babbitt to the elegant limbs of what is called a Clubman. He stood before the pier-glass, viewing his trim dinner-coat, his beautiful triple-braided trousers; and murmured in lyric⁶⁹ beatitude, “By golly, I don't look so bad. I certainly don't look like Catawba. If the hicks back home could see me in this rig, they'd have a fit!”
 
He moved majestically⁷⁰ down to mix the cocktails. As he chipped ice, as he squeezed oranges, as he collected vast stores of bottles, glasses, and spoons at the sink in the pantry, he felt as authoritative⁷¹ as the bartender at Healey Hanson's saloon. True, Mrs. Babbitt said he was under foot, and Matilda and the maid hired for the evening brushed by him, elbowed him, shrieked⁷² “Pleasopn door,” as they tottered⁷³ through with trays, but in this high moment he ignored them.
 
Besides the new bottle of gin, his cellar consisted of one half-bottle of Bourbon whisky, a quarter of a bottle of Italian vermouth, and approximately one hundred drops of orange bitters. He did not possess a cocktail¹³-shaker. A shaker was proof of dissipation, the symbol of a Drinker, and Babbitt disliked being known as a Drinker even more than he liked a Drink. He mixed by pouring from an ancient gravy-boat into a handleless pitcher⁷⁴; he poured with a noble dignity, holding his alembics high beneath the powerful Mazda globe, his face hot, his shirt-front a glaring white, the copper⁷⁵ sink a scoured⁷⁶ red-gold.
 
He tasted the sacred essence. “Now, by golly, if that isn't pretty near one fine old cocktail! Kind of a Bronx, and yet like a Manhattan. Ummmmmm! Hey, Myra, want a little nip before the folks come?”
 
Bustling⁷⁷ into the dining-room, moving each glass a quarter of an inch, rushing back with resolution implacable on her face her gray and silver-lace party frock protected by a denim⁷⁸ towel, Mrs. Babbitt glared at him, and rebuked⁷⁹ him, “Certainly not!”
 
“Well,” in a loose, jocose⁸⁰ manner, “I think the old man will!”
 
The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating⁸¹ desires—to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty⁸². He sought to regain⁸³ his lost dignity by announcing to Matilda:
 
“I'm going to stick this pitcher of cocktails in the refrigerator. Be sure you don't upset any of 'em.”
 
“Yeh.”
 
“Well, be sure now. Don't go putting anything on this top shelf.”
 
“Yeh.”
 
“Well, be—” He was dizzy. His voice was thin and distant. “Whee!” With enormous impressiveness he commanded, “Well, be sure now,” and minced⁸⁴ into the safety of the living-room. He wondered whether he could persuade “as slow a bunch as Myra and the Littlefields to go some place aft' dinner and raise Cain and maybe dig up smore booze.” He perceived that he had gifts of profligacy⁸⁵ which had been neglected.
 
By the time the guests had come, including the inevitable⁸⁶ late couple for whom the others waited with painful amiability⁸⁷, a great gray emptiness had replaced the purple swirling⁸⁸ in Babbitt's head, and he had to force the tumultuous greetings suitable to a host on Floral Heights.
 
The guests were Howard Littlefield, the doctor of philosophy who furnished publicity⁸⁹ and comforting economics to the Street Traction Company; Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer, equally powerful in the Elks⁹⁰ and in the Boosters' Club; Eddie Swanson the agent for the Javelin⁹¹ Motor Car, who lived across the street; and Orville Jones, owner of the Lily White Laundry, which justly announced itself “the biggest, busiest, bulliest cleanerie shoppe in Zenith.” But, naturally, the most distinguished⁹² of all was T. Cholmondeley Frink, who was not only the author of “Poemulations,” which, syndicated daily in sixty-seven leading newspapers, gave him one of the largest audiences of any poet in the world, but also an optimistic lecturer an............