Arrowsmith. Sinclair Lewis

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СКАЧАТЬ told Clif nothing about Leora. He resented Clif’s probable scoffing. He thought well of himself for the calmness with which he came into their room. Clif was sitting on the small of his back, shoeless feet upon the study table, reading a Sherlock Holmes story which rested on the powerful volume of Osler’s Medicine which he considered himself to be reading.

      “Clif! Want a drink. Tired. Let’s sneak down to Barney’s and see if we can rustle one.”

      “Thou speakest as one having tongues and who putteth the speed behind the ole rhombencephalon comprising the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata.”

      “Oh, cut out the Cuteness! I’m in a bad temper.”

      “Ah, the laddy has been having a scrap with his chaste lil Madeline! Was she horrid to ickly Martykins? All right. I’ll quit. Come on. Yoicks for the drink.”

      He told three new stories about Professor Robertshaw, all of them scurrilous and most of them untrue, on their way, and he almost coaxed Martin into cheerfulness. “Barney’s” was a poolroom, a tobacco shop and, since Mohalis was dry by local option, an admirable blind-pig. Clif and the hairy-handed Barney greeted each other in a high and worthy manner:

      “The benisons of eventide to you, Barney. May your circulation proceed unchecked and particularly the dorsal carpal branch of the ulnar artery, in which connection, comrade, Prof. Dr. Col. Egbert Arrowsmith and I would fain trifle with another bottle of that renowned strawberry pop.”

      “Gosh, Clif, you cer’nly got a swell line of jaw-music. If I ever need a’ arm amputated when you get to be a doc, I’ll come around and let you talk it off. Strawberry pop, gents?”

      The front room of Barney’s was an impressionistic painting in which a pool-table, piles of cigarettes, chocolate bars, playing cards, and pink sporting papers were jumbled in chaos. The back room was simpler: cases of sweet and thinly flavored soda, a large ice-box, and two small tables with broken chairs. Barney poured, from a bottle plainly marked Ginger Ale, two glasses of powerful and appalling raw whiskey, and Clif and Martin took them to the table in the corner. The effect was swift. Martin’s confused sorrows turned to optimism. He told Clif that he was going to write a book exposing idealism, but what he meant was that he was going to do something clever about his dual engagement. He had it! He would invite Leora and Madeline to lunch together, tell them the truth, and see which of them loved him. He whooped, and had another whiskey; he told Clif that he was a fine fellow, and Barney that he was a public benefactor, and unsteadily he retired to the telephone, which was shut off from public hearing in a closet.

      At the Zenith General Hospital he got the night superintendent, and the night Superintendent was a man frosty and suspicious. “This is no time to be calling up a probationer! Half-past eleven! Who are you, anyway?”

      Martin checked the “I’ll damn’ soon tell you who I am!” which was his natural reaction, and explained that he was speaking for Leora’s invalid grand-aunt, that the poor old lady was very low, and if the night superintendent cared to take upon himself the murder of a blameless gentlewoman—

      When Leora came to the telephone he said quickly, and soberly now, feeling as though he had come from the menace of thronging strangers into the security of her presence:

      “Leora? Sandy. Meet me Grand lobby tomorrow, twelve-thirty. Must! Important! Fix ’t somehow—your aunt’s sick.”

      “All right, dear. G’ night,” was all she said.

      It took him long minutes to get an answer from Madeline’s flat, then Mrs. Fox’s voice sounded, sleepily, quaveringly:

      “Yes, yes?”

      “’S Martin.”

      “Who is it? Who is it? What is it? Are you calling the Fox apartment?”

      “Yes, yes! Mrs. Fox, it’s Martin Arrowsmith speaking.”

      “Oh, oh, my dear! The ’phone woke me out of a sound sleep, and I couldn’t make out what you were saying. I was so frightened. I thought maybe it was a telegram or something. I thought perhaps something had happened to Maddy’s brother. What is it, dear? Oh, I do hope nothing’s happened!”

      Her confidence in him, the affection of this uprooted old woman bewildered in a strange land, overcame him; he lost all his whisky-colored feeling that he was a nimble fellow, and in a melancholy way, with all the weight of life again upon him, he sighed that no, nothing had happened, but he’d forgotten to tell Madeline something—so shor—so sorry call so late—could he speak Mad just minute—

      Then Madeline was bubbling, “Why, Marty dear, what is it? I do hope nothing has happened! Why, dear, you just left here—”

      “Listen, d-dear. Forgot to tell you. There’s a—there’s a great friend of mine in Zenith that I want you to meet—”

      “Who is he?”

      “You’ll see tomorrow. Listen, I want you come in and meet—come meet um at lunch. Going,” with ponderous jocularity, “going to blow you all to a swell feed at the Grand—”

      “Oh, how nice!”

      “—so I want you to meet me at the eleven-forty interurban, at College Square. Can you?”

      Vaguely, “Oh, I’d love to but—I have an eleven o’clock, and I don’t like to cut it, and I promised May Harmon to go shopping with her—she’s looking for some kind of shoes that you can wear with her pink crepe de chine but that you can walk in—and we sort of thought maybe we might lunch at Ye Kollege Karavanserai—and I’d half planned to go to the movies with her or somebody, Mother says that new Alaska film is simply dandy, she saw it tonight, and I thought I might go see it before they take it off, though Heaven knows I ought to come right home and study and not go anywhere at all—”

      “Now listen! It’s important. Don’t you trust me? Will you come or not?”

      “Why, of course I trust you, dear. All right, I’ll try to be there. The eleven-forty?”

      “Yes.”

      “At College Square? Or at Bluthman’s Book Shop?”

      “At College Square!”

      Her gentle “I trust you” and her wambling “I’ll try to” were warring in his ears as he plunged out of the suffocating cell and returned to Clif.

      “What’s the grief?” Clif wondered. “Wife passed away? Or did the Giants win in the ninth? Barney, our wandering-boy-tonight looks like a necropsy. Slip him another strawberry pop, quick. Say, Doctor, I think you better call a physician.”

      “Oh, shut up,” was all Martin had to say, and that without conviction. Before telephoning he had been full of little brightnesses; he had praised Clif’s pool-playing and called Barney “old Cimex lectularius”; but now, while the affectionate Clif worked on him, he sat brooding save when he grumbled (with a return of self-satisfaction), “If you knew all the troubles I have—all the doggone mess a fellow can get into—you’d feel down in the mouth!”

      Clif was alarmed. “Look here, old socks. If you’ve gotten in debt, I’ll raise the cash, somehow. If it’s—Been going a little too far with Madeline?”

      “You make me sick! You’ve got a dirty СКАЧАТЬ