Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis [children's ebooks free online .TXT] 📗

asked for aid, would give Martin power to experiment and Sondelius police authority, the Trustees did not know. The Surgeon General, a chap named Inchcape Jones, had replied to their cables: “No real epidemic not need help.” But McGurk promised that he would pull his numerous wires to have the McGurk Commission (Chairman, Martin Arrowsmith, B.A., M.D.) welcomed by the authorities.

Sondelius still insisted that in this crisis mere experimentation was heartless, yet he listened to Martin’s close-reasoned fury with enthusiasm which this bull-necked eternal child had for anything which sounded new and preferably true. He did not, like Almus Pickerbaugh, regard a difference of scientific opinion as an attack on his character.

He talked of going on his own, independent of Martin and McGurk, but he was won back when the Trustees murmured that though they really did wish the dear man wouldn’t fool with sera, they would provide him with apparatus to kill all the rats he wanted.

Then Sondelius was happy:

“And you watch me! I am the captain-general of rat-killers! I yoost walk into a warehouse and the rats say, ‘There’s that damn old Uncle Gustaf⁠—what’s the use?’ and they turn up their toes and die! I am yoost as glad I have you people behind me, because I am broke⁠—I went and bought some oil stock that don’t look so good now⁠—and I shall need a lot of hydrocyanic acid gas. Oh, those rats! You watch me! Now I go and telegraph I can’t keep a lecture engagement next week⁠—huh! me to lecture to a women’s college, me that can talk rat-language and know seven beautiful deadly kind of traps!”

II

Martin had never known greater peril than swimming a flood as a hospital intern. From waking to midnight he was too busy making phage and receiving unsolicited advice from all the Institute staff to think of the dangers of a plague epidemic, but when he went to bed, when his brain was still revolving with plans, he pictured rather too well the chance of dying, unpleasantly.

When Leora received the idea that he was going off to a death-haunted isle, to a place of strange ways and trees and faces (a place, probably, where they spoke funny languages and didn’t have movies or toothpaste), she took the notion secretively away with her, to look at it and examine it, precisely as she often stole little foods from the table and hid them and meditatively ate them at odd hours of the night, with the pleased expression of a bad child. Martin was glad that she did not add to his qualms by worrying. Then, after three days, she spoke:

“I’m going with you.”

“You are not!”

“Well⁠ ⁠… I am!”

“It’s not safe.”

“Silly! Of course it is. You can shoot your nice old phage into me, and then I’ll be absolutely all right. Oh, I have a husband who cures things, I have! I’m going to blow in a lot of money for thin dresses, though I bet St. Hubert isn’t any hotter than Dakota can be in August.”

“Listen! Lee, darling! Listen! I do think the phage will immunize against the plague⁠—you bet I’ll be mighty well injected with it myself!⁠—but I don’t know, and even if it were practically perfect, there’d always be some people it wouldn’t protect. You simply can’t go, sweet. Now I’m terribly sleepy⁠—”

Leora seized his lapels, as comic fierce as a boxing kitten, but her eyes were not comic, nor her wailing voice; age-old wail of the soldiers’ women:

“Sandy, don’t you know I haven’t any life outside of you? I might’ve had, but honestly, I’ve been glad to let you absorb me. I’m a lazy, useless, ignorant scut, except as maybe I keep you comfortable. If you were off there, and I didn’t know you were all right, or if you died and somebody else cared for your body that I’ve loved so⁠—haven’t I loved it, dear?⁠—I’d go mad. I mean it⁠—can’t you see I mean it⁠—I’d go mad! It’s just⁠—I’m you, and I got to be with you. And I will help you! Make your media and everything. You know how often I’ve helped you. Oh, I’m not much good at McGurk, with all your awful complicated jiggers, but I did help you at Nautilus⁠—I did help you, didn’t I?⁠—and maybe in St. Hubert”⁠—her voice was the voice of women in midnight terror⁠—“maybe you won’t find anybody that can help you even my little bit, and I’ll cook and everything⁠—”

“Darling, don’t make it harder for me. Going to be hard enough in any case⁠—”

“Damn you, Sandy Arrowsmith, don’t you dare use those old stuck-up expressions that husbands have been drooling out to wives forever and ever! I’m not a wife, any more’n you’re a husband. You’re a rotten husband! You neglect me absolutely. The only time you know what I’ve got on is when some doggone button slips⁠—and how they can pull off when a person has gone over ’em and sewed ’em all on again is simply beyond me!⁠—and then you bawl me out. But I don’t care. I’d rather have you than any decent husband⁠ ⁠… Besides. I’m going.”

Gottlieb opposed it, Sondelius roared about it, Martin worried about it, but Leora went, and⁠—his only act of craftiness as Director of the Institute⁠—Gottlieb made her “Secretary and Technical Assistant to the McGurk Plague and Bacteriophage Commission to the Lesser Antilles,” and blandly gave her a salary.

III

The day before the Commission sailed, Martin insisted that Sondelius take his first injection of phage. He refused.

“No, I will not touch it till you get converted to humanity, Martin, and give it to everybody in St. Hubert. And you will! Wait till you see them suffering by the thousand. You have not seen such a thing. Then you will forget science and try to save everybody. You shall not inject me till you will inject all my Negro friends down there too.”

That afternoon Gottlieb called Martin in. He spoke with hesitation:

“You’re off for Blackwater tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hm. You