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

studs you ever laid eyes on. Well, it’s been a great pleezhure to meet Mart’s Missus, and we will now close with singing ‘Till We Meet Again’ or ‘Au Reservoir.’ ”

When Martin came home, Joyce faced him with, “Sweet, I can’t do it! The man must be mad. Really, dear, you just take care of him and let me go to bed. Besides: you two won’t want me⁠—you’ll want to talk over old times, and I’d only interfere. And with baby coming in two months now, I ought to go to bed early.”

“Oh, Joy, Clif’d be awfully offended, and he’s always been so decent to me and⁠—And you’ve often asked me about my cub days. Don’t you want,” plaintively, “to hear about ’em?”

“Very well, dear. I’ll try to be a little sunbeam to him, but I warn you I shan’t be a success.”

They worked themselves up to a belief that Clif would be raucous, would drink too much, and slap Joyce on the back. But when he appeared for dinner he was agonizingly polite and flowery⁠—till he became slightly drunk. When Martin said “damn,” Clif reproved him with, “Of course I’m only a hick, but I don’t think a lady like the Princess here would like you to cuss.”

And, “Well, I never expected a rube like young Mart to marry the real bon-ton article.”

And, “Oh, maybe it didn’t cost something to furnish this dining-room, oh, not a-tall!”

And, “Champagne, heh? Well, you’re certainly doing poor old Clif proud. Your Majesty, just tell your High Dingbat to tell his valay to tell my secretary the address of your bootlegger, will you?”

In his cups, though he severely retained his moral and elegant vocabulary, Clif chronicled the jest of selling oil-wells unprovided with oil and of escaping before the law closed in; the cleverness of joining churches for the purpose of selling stock to the members; and the edifying experience of assisting Dr. Benoni Carr to capture a rich and senile widow for his sanitarium by promising to provide medical consultation from the spirit-world.

Joyce was silent through it all, and so superbly polite that everyone was wretched.

Martin struggled to make a liaison between them, and he had no elevating remarks about the strangeness of a man’s boasting of his own crookedness, but he was coldly furious when Clif blundered:

“You said old Gottlieb was sort of down on his luck now.”

“Yes, he’s not very well.”

“Poor old coot. But I guess you’ve realized by now how foolish you were when you used to fall for him like seven and a half brick. Honestly, Lady Arrowsmith, this kid used to think Pa Gottlieb was the cat’s pajamas⁠—begging your pardon for the slanguageness.”

“What do you mean?” said Martin.

“Oh, I’m onto Gottlieb! Of course you know as well as I do that he always was a self-advertiser, getting himself talked about by confidin’ to the whole ops terrara what a strict scientist he was, and putting on a lot of dog and emitting these wise cracks about philosophy and what fierce guys the regular docs were. But what’s worse than⁠—Out in San Diego I ran onto a fellow that used to be an instructor in botany in Winnemac, and he told me that with all this antibody stuff of his, Gottlieb never gave any credit to⁠—well, he was some Russian that did most of it before and Pa Gottlieb stole all his stuff.”

That in this charge against Gottlieb there was a hint of truth, that he knew the great god to have been at times ungenerous, merely increased the rage which was clenching Martin’s fist in his lap.

Three years before, he would have thrown something, but he was an adaptable person. He had yielded to Joyce’s training in being quietly instead of noisily disagreeable; and his only comment was “No, I think you’re wrong, Clif. Gottlieb has carried the antibody work way beyond all the others.”

Before the coffee and liqueurs had come into the drawing-room, Joyce begged, at her prettiest, “Mr. Clawson, do you mind awfully if I slip up to bed? I’m so frightfully glad to have had the opportunity of meeting one of my husband’s oldest friends, but I’m not feeling very well, and I do think I’d be wise to have some rest.”

“Madam the Princess, I noticed you were looking peeked.”

“Oh! Well⁠—Good night!”

Martin and Clif settled in large chairs in the drawing-room, and tried to play at being old friends happy in meeting. They did not look at each other.

After Clif had cursed a little and told three sound smutty stories, to show that he had not been spoiled and that he had been elegant only to delight Joyce, he flung:

“Huh! So that is that, as the Englishers remark. Well, I could see your Old Lady didn’t cotton to me. She was just as chummy as an iceberg. But gosh, I don’t mind. She’s going to have a kid, and of course women, all of ’em, get cranky when they’re that way. But⁠—”

He hiccuped, looked sage, and bolted his fifth cognac.

“But what I never could figure out⁠—Mind you, I’m not criticizing the Old Lady. She’s as swell as they make ’em. But what I can’t understand is how after living with Leora, who was the real thing, you can stand a hoity-toity skirt like Joycey!”

Then Martin broke.

The misery of not being able to work, these months since Terry had gone, had gnawed at him.

“Look here, Clif. I won’t have you discuss my wife. I’m sorry she doesn’t please you, but I’m afraid that in this particular matter⁠—”

Clif had risen, not too steadily, though his voice and his eyes were resolute.

“All right. I figured out you were going to high-hat me. Of course I haven’t got a rich wife to slip me money. I’m just a plain old hobo. I don’t belong in a place like this. Not smooth enough to be a butler. You are. All right. I wish you luck. And meanwhile you can go plumb to hell, my young friend!”

Martin did not pursue him into the hall.

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