Sinclair Lewis - The Collected Works of Sinclair Lewis

“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: “Can't tell you how sorry I am this happened. Needless to say, I'll fire Graff the minute he comes in. And of course your lease stands. But there's one other thing I'd like to do. I'll tell the owner not to pay us the commission but apply it to your rent. No! Straight! I want to. To be frank, this thing shakes me up bad. I suppose I've always been a Practical Business Man. Probably I've told one or two fairy stories in my time, when the occasion called for it — you know: sometimes you have to lay things on thick, to impress boneheads. But this is the first time I've ever had to accuse one of my own employees of anything more dishonest than pinching a few stamps. Honest, it would hurt me if we profited by it. So you'll let me hand you the commission? Good!”

II

He walked through the February city, where trucks flung up a spattering of slush and the sky was dark above dark brick cornices. He came back miserable. He, who respected the law, had broken it by concealing the Federal crime of interception of the mails. But he could not see Graff go to jail and his wife suffer. Worse, he had to discharge Graff and this was a part of office routine which he feared. He liked people so much, he so much wanted them to like him that he could not bear insulting them.

Miss McGoun dashed in to whisper, with the excitement of an approaching scene, “He's here!”

“Mr. Graff? Ask him to come in.”

He tried to make himself heavy and calm in his chair, and to keep his eyes expressionless. Graff stalked in — a man of thirty-five, dapper, eye-glassed, with a foppish mustache.

“Want me?” said Graff.

“Yes. Sit down.”

Graff continued to stand, grunting, “I suppose that old nut Varney has been in to see you. Let me explain about him. He's a regular tightwad, and he sticks out for every cent, and he practically lied to me about his ability to pay the rent — I found that out just after we signed up. And then another fellow comes along with a better offer for the house, and I felt it was my duty to the firm to get rid of Varney, and I was so worried about it I skun up there and got back the lease. Honest, Mr. Babbitt, I didn't intend to pull anything crooked. I just wanted the firm to have all the commis — ”

“Wait now, Stan. This may all be true, but I've been having a lot of complaints about you. Now I don't s'pose you ever mean to do wrong, and I think if you just get a good lesson that'll jog you up a little, you'll turn out a first-class realtor yet. But I don't see how I can keep you on.”

Graff leaned against the filing-cabinet, his hands in his pockets, and laughed. “So I'm fired! Well, old Vision and Ethics, I'm tickled to death! But I don't want you to think you can get away with any holier-than-thou stuff. Sure I've pulled some raw stuff — a little of it — but how could I help it, in this office?”

“Now, by God, young man — ”

“Tut, tut! Keep the naughty temper down, and don't holler, because everybody in the outside office will hear you. They're probably listening right now. Babbitt, old dear, you're crooked in the first place and a damn skinflint in the second. If you paid me a decent salary I wouldn't have to steal pennies off a blind man to keep my wife from starving. Us married just five months, and her the nicest girl living, and you keeping us flat broke all the time, you damned old thief, so you can put money away for your saphead of a son and your wishywashy fool of a daughter! Wait, now! You'll by God take it, or I'll bellow so the whole office will hear it! And crooked — Say, if I told the prosecuting attorney what I know about this last Street Traction option steal, both you and me would go to jail, along with some nice, clean, pious, high-up traction guns!”

“Well, Stan, looks like we were coming down to cases. That deal — There was nothing crooked about it. The only way you can get progress is for the broad-gauged men to get things done; and they got to be rewarded — ”

“Oh, for Pete's sake, don't get virtuous on me! As I gather it, I'm fired. All right. It's a good thing for me. And if I catch you knocking me to any other firm, I'll squeal all I know about you and Henry T. and the dirty little lickspittle deals that you corporals of industry pull off for the bigger and brainier crooks, and you'll get chased out of town. And me — you're right, Babbitt, I've been going crooked, but now I'm going straight, and the first step will be to get a job in some office where the boss doesn't talk about Ideals. Bad luck, old dear, and you can stick your job up the sewer!”

Babbitt sat for a long time, alternately raging, “I'll have him arrested,” and yearning “I wonder — No, I've never done anything that wasn't necessary to keep the Wheels of Progress moving.”

Next day he hired in Graff's place Fritz Weilinger, the salesman of his most injurious rival, the East Side Homes and Development Company, and thus at once annoyed his competitor and acquired an excellent man. Young Fritz was a curly-headed, merry, tennis-playing youngster. He made customers welcome to the office. Babbitt thought of him as a son, and in him had much comfort.

III

An abandoned race-track on the outskirts of Chicago, a plot excellent for factory sites, was to be sold, and Jake Offut asked Babbitt to bid on it for him. The strain of the Street Traction deal and his disappointment in Stanley Graff had so shaken Babbitt that he found it hard to sit at his desk and concentrate. He proposed to his family, “Look here, folks! Do you know who's going to trot up to Chicago for a couple of days — just week-end; won't lose but one day of school — know who's going with that celebrated business-ambassador, George F. Babbitt? Why, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt!”

“Hurray!” Ted shouted, and “Oh, maybe the Babbitt men won't paint that lil ole town red!”

And, once away from the familiar implications of home, they were two men together. Ted was young only in his assumption of oldness, and the only realms, apparently, in which Babbitt had a larger and more grown-up knowledge than Ted's were the details of real estate and the phrases of politics. When the other sages of the Pullman smoking-compartment had left them to themselves, Babbitt's voice did not drop into the playful and otherwise offensive tone in which one addresses children but continued its overwhelming and monotonous rumble, and Ted tried to imitate it in his strident tenor:

“Gee, dad, you certainly did show up that poor boot when he got flip about the League of Nations!”

“Well, the trouble with a lot of these fellows is, they simply don't know what they're talking about. They don't get down to facts.... What do you think of Ken Escott?”

“I'll tell you, dad: it strikes me Ken is a nice lad; no special faults except he smokes too much; but slow, Lord! Why, if we don't give him a shove the poor dumb-bell never will propose! And Rone just as bad. Slow.”

“Yes, I guess you're right. They're slow. They haven't either one of 'em got our pep.”

“That's right. They're slow. I swear, dad, I don't know how Rone got into our family! I'll bet, if the truth were known, you were a bad old egg when you were a kid!”

“Well, I wasn't so slow!”

“I'll bet you weren't! I'll bet you didn't miss many tricks!”

“Well, when I was out with the girls I didn't spend all the time telling 'em about the strike in the knitting industry!”

They roared together, and together lighted cigars.