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

anything but an associate member. Are you going on with me, or are you going to be one of the Holy Wren’s pets⁠—hero-scientist?”

“I’m with you, Terry, you old grouch.” Martin dropped the cynicism which had always seemed proper between him and Terry. “I haven’t got anybody else. Leora and Gustaf are gone and now maybe Gottlieb. You and I have got to stick together!”

“It’s a go!”

They shook hands, they coughed gruffly, and talked of straw hats.

V

When Martin entered the Institute, his colleagues galloped up to shake hands and to exclaim, and if their praise was flustering, there is no time at which one can stomach so much of it as at homecoming.

Sir Robert Fairlamb had written to the Institute a letter glorifying him. The letter arrived on the same boat with Martin, and next day Holabird gave it out to the press.

The reporters, who had been only a little interested at his landing, came around for interviews, and while Martin was sulky and jerky Holabird took them in hand, so that the papers were able to announce that America, which was always rescuing the world from something or other, had gone and done it again. It was spread in the prints that Dr. Martin Arrowsmith was not only a powerful witch-doctor and possibly something of a laboratory-hand, but also a ferocious rat-killer, village-burner, Special Board addresser, and snatcher from death. There was at the time, in certain places, a doubt as to how benevolent the United States had been to its Little Brothers⁠—Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua⁠—and the editors and politicians were grateful to Martin for this proof of their sacrifice and tender watchfulness.

He had letters from the Public Health service; from an enterprising Midwestern college which desired to make him a Doctor of Civil Law; from medical schools and societies which begged him to address them. Editorials on his work appeared in the medical journals and the newspapers; and Congressman Almus Pickerbaugh telegraphed him from Washington in what the Congressman may conceivably have regarded as verse: “They got to go some to get ahead of fellows that come from old Nautilus.” And he was again invited to dinner at the McGurks’, not by Capitola but by Ross McGurk, whose name had never had such a whitewashing.

He refused all invitations to speak, and the urgent organizations which had invited him responded with meekness that they understood how intimidatingly busy Dr. Arrowsmith was, and if he ever could find the time, they would be most highly honored⁠—

Rippleton Holabird was elected full Director now, in succession to Gottlieb, and he sought to use Martin as the prize exhibit of the Institute. He brought all the visiting dignitaries, all the foreign Men of Measured Merriment, in to see him, and they looked pleased and tried to think up questions. Then Martin was made head of the new Department of Microbiology at twice his old salary.

He never did learn what was the difference between microbiology and bacteriology. But none of his glorification could he resist. He was still too dazed⁠—he was more dazed when he had seen Max Gottlieb.

VI

The morning after his return he had telephoned to Gottlieb’s flat, had spoken to Miriam and received permission to call in the late afternoon.

All the way uptown he could hear Gottlieb saying, “You were my son! I gave you eferyt’ing I knew of truth and honor, and you haf betrayed me. Get out of my sight!”

Miriam met him in the hall, fretting, “I don’t know if I should have let you come at all, Doctor.”

“Why? Isn’t he well enough to see people?”

“It isn’t that. He doesn’t really seem ill, except that he’s feeble, but he doesn’t know anyone. The doctors say it’s senile dementia. His memory is gone. And he’s just suddenly forgotten all his English. He can only speak German, and I can’t speak it, hardly at all. If I’d only studied it, instead of music! But perhaps it may do him good to have you here. He was always so fond of you. You don’t know how he talked of you and the splendid experiment you’ve been doing in St. Hubert.”

“Well, I⁠—” He could find nothing to say.

Miriam led him into a room whose walls were dark with books. Gottlieb was sunk in a worn chair, his thin hand lax on the arm.

“Doctor, it’s Arrowsmith, just got back!” Martin mumbled.

The old man looked as though he half understood; he peered at him, then shook his head and whimpered, “Versteh nicht.” His arrogant eyes were clouded with ungovernable slow tears.

Martin understood that never could he be punished now and cleansed. Gottlieb had sunk into his darkness still trusting him.

VII

Martin closed his flat⁠—their flat⁠—with a cold swift fury, lest he yield to his misery in finding among Leora’s possessions a thousand fragments which brought her back: the frock she had bought for Capitola McGurk’s dinner, a petrified chocolate she had hidden away to munch illegally by night, a memorandum, “Get almonds for Sandy.” He took a grimly impersonal room in a hotel, and sunk himself in work. There was nothing for him but work and the harsh friendship of Terry Wickett.

His first task was to check the statistics of his St. Swithin treatments and the new figures still coming in from Stokes. Some of them were shaky, some suggested that the value of phage certainly had been confirmed, but there was nothing final. He took his figures to Raymond Pearl the biometrician, who thought less of them than did Martin himself.

He had already made a report of his work to the Director and the Trustees of the Institute, with no conclusion except “the results await statistical analysis and should have this before they are published.” But Holabird had run wild, the newspapers had reported wonders, and in on Martin poured demands that he send out phage; inquiries as to whether he did not have a phage for tuberculosis, for syphilis; offers that he take charge of this