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

sorry if you left the Institute, which gives you a solid position, for a hole-and-corner existence. Dear, I have been fairly nice, haven’t I? I really do like you, you know! I don’t want you to desert me, and you would if you went off to this horrid Vermont place.”

“Couldn’t we get a little house near there, and spend part of the year?”

“Pos‑sibly. But we ought to wait till this beastly job of bearing a Dear Little One is over, then think about it.”

Martin did not resign from the Institute, and Joyce did not think about taking a house near Birdies’ Rest to the extent of doing it.

XXXIX I

With Terry Wickett gone, Martin returned to phage. He made a false start and did the worst work of his life. He had lost his fierce serenity. He was too conscious of the ordeal of a professional social life, and he could never understand that esoteric phenomenon, the dinner-party⁠—the painful entertainment of people whom one neither likes nor finds interesting.

So long as he had had a refuge in talking to Terry, he had not been too irritated by well-dressed nonentities, and for a time he had enjoyed the dramatic game of making Nice People accept him. Now he was disturbed by reason.

Clif Clawson showed him how tangled his life had grown.

When he had first come to New York, Martin had looked for Clif, whose boisterousness had been his comfort among Angus Duers and Irving Watterses in medical school. Clif was not to be found, neither at the motor agency for which he had once worked nor elsewhere on Automobile Row. For fourteen years Martin had not seen him.

Then to his laboratory at McGurk was brought a black-and-red card:

Clifford L. Clawson

(Clif)

Top Notch Guaranteed Oil Investments

Higham Block

Butte

“Clif! Good old Clif! The best friend a man ever had! That time he lent me the money to get to Leora! Old Clif! By golly I need somebody like him, with Terry out of it and all these tea-hounds around me!” exulted Martin.

He dashed out and stopped abruptly, staring at a man who was, not softly, remarking to the girl reception-clerk:

“Well, sister, you scientific birds certainly do lay on the agony! Never struck a sweller layout than you got here, except in crook investment-offices⁠—and I’ve never seen a nicer cutie than you anywhere. How ’bout lil dinner one of these beauteous evenings? I expect I’ll parley-vous with thou full often now⁠—I’m a great friend of Doc Arrowsmith. Fact I’m a doc myself⁠—honest⁠—real sawbones⁠—went to medic school and everything. Ah! Here’s the boy!”

Martin had not allowed for the changes of fourteen years. He was dismayed.

Clif Clawson, at forty, was gross. His face was sweaty, and puffy with pale flesh; his voice was raw; he fancied checked Norfolk jackets, tight across his swollen shoulders and his beefy hips.

He bellowed, while he belabored Martin’s back:

“Well, well, well, well, well, well! Old Mart! Why, you old son of a gun! Why, you old son of a gun! Why, you damn old chicken-thief! Say you skinny little runt, I’m a son of a gun if you look one day older’n when I saw you last in Zenith!”

Martin was aware of the bright leering of the once-humble reception-clerk. He said, “Well, gosh, it certainly is good to see you,” and hastened to get Clif into the privacy of his office.

“You look fine,” he lied, when they were safe. “What you been doing with yourself? Leora and I did our best to look you up, when we first came to New York. Uh⁠—Do you know about, uh, about her?”

“Yuh, I read about her passing away. Fierce luck. And about your swell work in the West Indies⁠—where was it? I guess you’re a great man now⁠—famous plague-chaser and all that stuff, and world-renowned skee-entist. I don’t suppose you remember your old friends now.”

“Oh, don’t be a chump! It’s⁠—it’s⁠—it’s fine to see you.”

“Well, I’m glad to observe you haven’t got the capitus enlargatus, Mart. Golly, I says to meself says I, if I blew in and old Mart high-hatted me, I’d just about come nigh unto letting him hear the straight truth, after all the compliments he’s been getting from the sassiety dames. I’m glad you’ve kept your head. I thought about writing you from Butte⁠—been selling some bum oil-stock there and kind of got out quick to save the inspectors the trouble of looking over my books. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘I’ll just sit down and write the whey-faced runt a letter, and make him feel good by telling him how tickled I am over his nice work.’ But you know how it is⁠—time kind of slips by. Well, this is excellentus! We’ll have a chance to see a whole lot of each other now. I’m going in with a fellow on an investment stunt here in New York. Great pickings, old kid! I’ll take you out and show you how to order a real feed, one of these days. Well, tell me what you been doing since you got back from the West Indies. I suppose you’re laying your plans to try and get in as the boss or president or whatever they call it of this gecelebrated Institute.”

“No⁠—I, uh, well, I shouldn’t much care to be Director. I prefer sticking to my lab. I⁠—Perhaps you’d like to hear about my work on phage.”

Rejoicing to discover something of which he could talk, Martin sketched his experiments.

Clif spanked his forehead with a spongy hand and shouted:

“Wait! Say, I’ve got an idea⁠—and you can come right in on it. As I apperceive it, the dear old Gen. Public is just beginning to hear about this bac⁠—what is it?⁠—bacteriophage junk. Look here! Remember that old scoundrel Benoni Carr, that I introduced as a great pharmacologist at the medical banquet? Had din-din with him last eventide. He’s running a sanitarium out on Long Island⁠—slick idea, too⁠—practically he’s a bootlegger; gets a lot of high-rollers out there and let’s ’em