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

may be gone some time. I⁠—Martin, you are my oldest friend in New York, you and the good Miriam. Tell me: At first you and Terry t’ought I should not take up the Directorship. Don’t you t’ink I was wise?”

Martin stared, then hastily he lied and said that which was comforting and expected.

“I am glad you t’ink so. You have known so long what I have tried to do. I haf faults, but I t’ink I begin to see a real scientific note coming into the Institute at last, after the popoolarity-chasing of Tubbs and Holabird⁠ ⁠… I wonder how I can discharge Holabird, that pants-presser of science? If only he dit not know Capitola so well⁠—socially, they call it! But anyway⁠—

“There are those that said Max Gottlieb could not do the child job of running an institution. Huh! Buying notebooks! Hiring women that sweep floors! Or no⁠—the floors are swept by women hired by the superintendent of the building, nicht wahr? But anyway⁠—

“I did not make a rage when Terry and you doubted. I am a great fellow for allowing everyone his opinion. But it pleases me⁠—I am very fond of you two boys⁠—the only real sons I have⁠—” Gottlieb laid his withered hand on Martin’s arm. “It pleases me that you see now I am beginning to make a real scientific Institute. Though I have enemies. Martin, you would t’ink I was joking, if I told you the plotting against me⁠—

“Even Yeo. I t’ought he was my friend. I t’ought he was a real biologist. But just today he comes to me and says he cannot get enough sea-urchins for his experiments. As if I could make sea-urchins out of thin air! He said I keep him short of all materials. Me! That have always stood for⁠—I do not care what they pay scientists, but always I have stood, against that fool Silva and all of them, all my enemies⁠—

“You do not know how many enemies I have, Martin! They do not dare show their faces. They smile to me, but they whisper⁠—I will show Holabird⁠—always he plot against me and try to win over Pearl Robbins, but she is a good girl, she knows what I am doing, but⁠—”

He looked perplexed; he peered at Martin as though he did not quite recognize him, and begged:

“Martin, I grow old⁠—not in years⁠—it is a lie I am over seventy⁠—but I have my worries. Do you mind if I give you advice as I have done so often, so many years? Though you are not a schoolboy now in Queen City⁠—no, at Winnemac it was. You are a man and you are a genuine worker. But⁠—

“Be sure you do not let anything, not even your own good kind heart, spoil your experiment at St. Hubert. I do not make funniness about humanitarianism as I used to; sometimes now I t’ink the vulgar and contentious human race may yet have as much grace and good taste as the cats. But if this is to be, there must be knowledge. So many men, Martin, are kind and neighborly; so few have added to knowledge. You have the chance! You may be the man who ends all plague, and maybe old Max Gottlieb will have helped, too, hein, maybe?

“You must not be just a good doctor at St. Hubert. You must pity, oh, so much the generation after generation yet to come that you can refuse to let yourself indulge in pity for the men you will see dying.

“Dying⁠ ⁠… It will be peace.

“Let nothing, neither beautiful pity nor fear of your own death, keep you from making this plague experiment complete. And as my friend⁠—If you do this, something will yet have come out of my Directorship. If but one fine thing could come, to justify me⁠—”

When Martin came sorrowing into his laboratory he found Terry Wickett waiting.

“Say, Slim,” Terry blurted, “just wanted to butt in and suggest, now for St. Gottlieb’s sake keep your phage notes complete and up-to-date, and keep ’em in ink!”

“Terry, it looks to me as if you thought I had a fine chance of not coming back with the notes myself.”

“Aw, what’s biting you!” said Terry feebly.

IV

The epidemic in St. Hubert must have increased, for on the day before the McGurk Commission sailed, Dr. Inchcape Jones declared that the island was quarantined. People might come in, but no one could leave. He did this despite the fretting of the Governor, Sir Robert Fairlamb, and the protests of the hotel-keepers who fed on tourists, the ex-rat-catchers who drove the same, Kellett the Red Leg who sold them tickets, and all the other representatives of sound business in St. Hubert.

V

Besides his ampules of phage and his Luer syringes for injection, Martin made personal preparations for the tropics. He bought, in seventeen minutes, a Palm Beach suit, two new shirts, and, as St. Hubert was a British possession and as he had heard that all Britishers carry canes, a stick which the shopkeeper guaranteed to be as good as genuine malacca.

VI

They started, Martin and Leora and Gustaf Sondelius, on a winter morning, on the six-thousand-ton steamer St. Buryan of the McGurk Line, which carried machinery and flour and codfish and motors to the Lesser Antilles and brought back molasses, cocoa, avocados, Trinidad asphalt. A score of winter tourists made the round trip, but only a score, and there was little handkerchief-waving.

The McGurk Line pier was in South Brooklyn, in a district of brown anonymous houses. The sky was colorless above dirty snow. Sondelius seemed well content. As they drove upon a wharf littered with hides and boxes and disconsolate steerage passengers, he peered out of their crammed taxicab and announced that the bow of the St. Buryan⁠—all they could see of it⁠—reminded him of the Spanish steamer he had taken to the Cape Verde Isles. But to Martin and Leora, who had read of the drama of departure, of stewards darting with masses