One afternoon he wandered through snow-rutted streets of which he had never heard, streets of small tenements and two-family houses and marooned cottages. It came to him that he had nothing to do, that there was nothing he wanted to do. He was bleakly lonely in the evening, when he dined by himself at the Regency Hotel. He sat in the lobby afterward, in a plush chair bedecked with the Saxe-Coburg arms, lighting a cigar and looking for someone who would come and play with him and save him from thinking. In the chair next to him (showing the arms of Lithuania) was a half-familiar man, a large red-faced man with pop eyes and a deficient yellow mustache. He seemed kind and insignificant, and as lonely as Babbitt himself. He wore a tweed suit and a reluctant orange tie.
It came to Babbitt with a pyrotechnic crash. The melancholy stranger was Sir Gerald Doak.
Instinctively Babbitt rose, bumbling, “How ’re you, Sir Gerald? ’Member we met in Zenith, at Charley McKelvey’s? Babbitt’s my name—real estate.”
“Oh! How d’ you do.” Sir Gerald shook hands flabbily.
Embarrassed, standing, wondering how he could retreat, Babbitt maundered, “Well, I suppose you been having a great trip since we saw you in Zenith.”
“Quite. British Columbia and California and all over the place,” he said doubtfully, looking at Babbitt lifelessly.
“How did you find business conditions in British Columbia? Or I suppose maybe you didn’t look into ’em. Scenery and sport and so on?”
“Scenery? Oh, capital. But business conditions—You know, Mr. Babbitt, they’re having almost as much unemployment as we are.” Sir Gerald was speaking warmly now.
“So? Business conditions not so doggone good, eh?”
“No, business conditions weren’t at all what I’d hoped to find them.”
“Not good, eh?”
“No, not—not really good.”
“That’s a darn shame. Well—I suppose you’re waiting for somebody to take you out to some big shindig, Sir Gerald.”
“Shindig? Oh. Shindig. No, to tell you the truth, I was wondering what the deuce I could do this evening. Don’t know a soul in Tchicahgo. I wonder if you happen to know whether there’s a good theater in this city?”
“Good? Why say, they’re running grand opera right now! I guess maybe you’d like that.”
“Eh? Eh? Went to the opera once in London. Covent Garden sort of thing. Shocking! No, I was wondering if there was a good cinema-movie.”
Babbitt was sitting down, hitching his chair over, shouting, “Movie? Say, Sir Gerald, I supposed of course you had a raft of dames waiting to lead you out to some soiree—”
“God forbid!”
“—but if you haven’t, what do you say you and me go to a movie? There’s a peach of a film at the Grantham: Bill Hart in a bandit picture.”
“Right-o! Just a moment while I get my coat.”
Swollen with greatness, slightly afraid lest the noble blood of Nottingham change its mind and leave him at any street corner, Babbitt paraded with Sir Gerald Doak to the movie palace and in silent bliss sat beside him, trying not to be too enthusiastic, lest the knight despise his adoration of six-shooters and broncos. At the end Sir Gerald murmured, “Jolly good picture, this. So awfully decent of you to take me. Haven’t enjoyed myself so much for weeks. All these Hostesses—they never let you go to the cinema!”
“The devil you say!” Babbitt’s speech had lost the delicate refinement and all the broad A’s with which he had adorned it, and become hearty and natural. “Well, I’m tickled to death you liked it, Sir Gerald.”
They crawled past the knees of fat women into the aisle; they stood in the lobby waving their arms in the rite of putting on overcoats. Babbitt hinted, “Say, how about a little something to eat? I know a place where we could get a swell rarebit, and we might dig up a little drink—that is, if you ever touch the stuff.”
“Rather! But why don’t you come to my room? I’ve some Scotch—not half bad.”
“Oh, I don’t want to use up all your hootch. It’s darn nice of you, but—You probably want to hit the hay.”
Sir Gerald was transformed. He was beefily yearning. “Oh really, now; I haven’t had a decent evening for so long! Having to go to all these dances. No chance to discuss business and that sort of thing. Do be a good chap and come along. Won’t you?”
“Will I? You bet! I just thought maybe—Say, by golly, it does do a fellow good, don’t it, to sit and visit about business conditions, after he’s been to these balls and masquerades and banquets and all that society stuff. I often feel that way in Zenith. Sure, you bet I’ll come.”
“That’s awfully nice of you.” They beamed along the street. “Look here, old chap, can you tell me, do American cities always keep up this dreadful social pace? All these magnificent parties?”
“Go on now, quit your kidding! Gosh, you with court balls and functions and everything—”
“No, really, old chap! Mother and I—Lady Doak, I should say, we usually play a hand of bezique and go to bed at ten. Bless my soul, I couldn’t keep up your beastly pace! And talking! All your American women, they know so much—culture and that sort of thing. This Mrs. McKelvey—your friend—”
“Yuh, old Lucile. Good kid.”
“—she asked me which of the galleries I liked best in Florence. Or was it in Firenze? Never been in Italy in my life! And primitives. Did I like primitives. Do you know what the deuce a primitive is?”
“Me? I should say not! But I know what a discount for cash is.”
“Rather! So do I, by George! But primitives!”
“Yuh! Primitives!”
They laughed with the sound of a Boosters’ luncheon.
Sir Gerald’s room was, except for his ponderous and durable English bags, very much like the room of George F. Babbitt; and quite in the manner of Babbitt he disclosed a huge
