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

to her definition of Big Men, and when he became hot and vulgar, she turned grande dame, so that he felt like an impertinent servant and was the more vulgar.

He was afraid of her then. He imagined fleeing to Leora, and the two of them, frightened little people, comforting each other and hiding from her in snug corners.

But often enough Joyce was his companion, seeking new amusements as surprises for him, and in their son they had a binding pride. He sat watching little John, rejoicing in his strength.

It was in early winter, after she had royally taken the baby South for a fortnight, that Martin escaped for a week with Terry at Birdies’ Rest.

He found Terry tired and a little surly, after months of working absolutely alone. He had constructed beside the home cabin a shanty for laboratory, and a rough stable for the horses which he used in the preparation of his sera. Terry did not, as once he would have, flare into the details of his research, and not till evening, when they smoked before the rough fireplace of the cabin, loafing in chairs made of barrels cushioned with elk skin, could Martin coax him into confidences.

He had been compelled to give up much of his time to mere housework and the production of the sera which paid his expenses. “If you’d only been with me, I could have accomplished something.” But his quinine derivative research had gone on solidly, and he did not regret leaving McGurk. He had found it impossible to work with monkeys; they were too expensive and too fragile to stand the Vermont winter; but he had contrived a method of using mice infected with pneumococcus and⁠—

“Oh, what’s the use of my telling you this, Slim? You’re not interested, or you’d have been up here at work with me, months ago. You’ve chosen between Joyce and me. All right, but you can’t have both.”

Martin snarled, “I’m very sorry I intruded on you, Wickett,” and slammed out of the cabin. Stumbling through the snow, blundering in darkness against stumps, he knew the agony of his last hour, the hour of failure.

“I’ve lost Terry, now (though I won’t stand his impertinence!). I’ve lost everybody, and I’ve never really had Joyce. I’m completely alone. And I can only half work! I’m through! They’ll never let me get to work again!”

Suddenly, without arguing it out, he knew that he was not going to give up.

He floundered back to the cabin and burst in, crying, “You old grouch, we got to stick together!”

Terry was as much moved as he; neither of them was far from tears; and as they roughly patted each other’s shoulders they growled, “Fine pair of fools, scrapping just because we’re tired!”

“I will come and work with you, somehow!” Martin swore. “I’ll get a six months’ leave from the Institute, and have Joyce stay at some hotel near here, or do something. Gee! Back to real work⁠ ⁠… work!⁠ ⁠… Now tell me: When I come up here, what d’you say we⁠—”

They talked till dawn.

XL I

Dr. and Mrs. Rippleton Holabird had invited only Joyce and Martin to dinner. Holabird was his most charming self. He admired Joyce’s pearls, and when the squabs had been served he turned on Martin with friendly intensity:

“Now will Joyce and you listen to me most particularly? Things are happening, Martin, and I want you⁠—no, Science wants you!⁠—to take your proper part in them. I needn’t, by the way, hint that this is absolutely confidential. Dr. Tubbs and his League of Cultural Agencies are beginning to accomplish marvels, and Colonel Minnigen has been extraordinarily liberal.

“They’ve gone at the League with exactly the sort of thoroughness and taking-it-slow that you and dear old Gottlieb have always insisted on. For four years now they’ve stuck to making plans. I happen to know that Dr. Tubbs and the council of the League have had the most wonderful conferences with college-presidents and editors and clubwomen and labor-leaders (the sound, sensible ones, of course) and efficiency-experts and the more advanced advertising-men and ministers, and all the other leaders of public thought.

“They’ve worked out elaborate charts classifying all intellectual occupations and interests, with the methods and materials and tools, and especially the goals⁠—the aims, the ideals, the moral purposes⁠—that are suited to each of them. Really tremendous! Why, a musician or an engineer, for example, could look at his chart and tell accurately whether he was progressing fast enough, at his age, and if not, just what his trouble was, and the remedy. With this basis, the League is ready to go to work and encourage all brain-workers to affiliate.

“McGurk Institute simply must get in on this coordination, which I regard as one of the greatest advances in thinking that has ever been made. We are at last going to make all the erstwhile chaotic spiritual activities of America really conform to the American ideal; we’re going to make them as practical and supreme as the manufacture of cash-registers! I have certain reasons for supposing I can bring Ross McGurk and Minnigen together, now that the McGurk and Minnigen lumber interests have stopped warring, and if so I shall probably quit the Institute and help Tubbs guide the League of Cultural Agencies. Then we’ll need a new Director of McGurk who will work with us and help bring Science out of the monastery to serve Mankind.”

By this time Martin understood everything about the League except what the League was trying to do.

Holabird went on:

“Now I know, Martin, that you’ve always rather sneered at Practicalness, but I have faith in you! I believe you’ve been too much under the influence of Wickett, and now that he’s gone and you’ve seen more of life and of Joyce’s set and mine, I believe I can coax you to take (oh! without in any way neglecting the severities of your lab work!) a broader view.

“I am authorized to appoint an Assistant Director, and I think I’m safe in