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

the new batch of medium, and Gottlieb was an autocrat, sterner with his favorites than with the ruck of students. He snarled, “Arrowsmith, you are a moon-calf! My God, am I to spend my life with Dummkopfe? I cannot be always alone, Martin! Are you going to fail me? Two, three days now you haf not been keen about work.”

Martin went off mumbling, “I love that man!” In his tangled mood he catalogued Madeline’s pretenses, her nagging, her selfishness, her fundamental ignorance. He worked himself up to a state of virtue in which it was agreeably clear to him that he must throw Madeline over, entirely as a rebuke. He went to her in the evening prepared to blaze out at her first complaining, to forgive her finally, but to break their engagement and make life resolutely simple again.

She did not complain.

She ran to him. “Dear, you’re so tired⁠—your eyes look tired. Have you been working frightfully hard? I’ve been so sorry you couldn’t come ’round, this week. Dear, you mustn’t kill yourself. Think of all the years you have ahead to do splendid things in. No, don’t talk. I want you to rest. Mother’s gone to the movies. Sit here. See, I’ll make you so comfy with these pillows. Just lean back⁠—go to sleep if you want to⁠—and I’ll read you The Crock of Gold. You’ll love it.”

He was determined that he would not love it and, as he probably had no sense of humor whatever, it is doubtful whether he appreciated it, but its differentness aroused him. Though Madeline’s voice was shrill and cornfieldish after Leora’s lazy softness, she read so eagerly that he was sick ashamed of his intention to hurt her. He saw that it was she, with her pretenses, who was the child, and the detached and fearless Leora who was mature, mistress of a real world. The reproofs with which he had planned to crush her vanished.

Suddenly she was beside him, begging, “I’ve been so lonely for you, all week!”

So he was a traitor to both women, it was Leora who had intolerably roused him; it was really Leora whom he was caressing now; but it was Madeline who took his hunger to herself, and when she whimpered, “I’m so glad you’re glad to be here,” he could say nothing. He wanted to talk about Leora, to shout about Leora, to exult in her, his woman. He dragged out a few sound but unimpassioned flatteries; he observed that Madeline was a handsome young woman and a sound English scholar; and while she gaped with disappointment at his lukewarmness, he got himself away, at ten. He had finally succeeded very well indeed in feeling like a low dog.

He hastened to Clif Clawson.

He had told Clif nothing about Leora. He resented Clif’s probable scoffing. He thought well of himself for the calmness with which he came into their room. Clif was sitting on the small of his back, shoeless feet upon the study table, reading a Sherlock Holmes story which rested on the powerful volume of Osler’s Medicine which he considered himself to be reading.

“Clif! Want a drink. Tired. Let’s sneak down to Barney’s and see if we can rustle one.”

“Thou speakest as one having tongues and who putteth the speed behind the ole rhombencephalon comprising the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata.”

“Oh, cut out the cuteness! I’m in a bad temper.”

“Ah, the laddie has been having a scrap with his chaste lil Madeline! Was she horrid to ickly Martykins? All right. I’ll quit. Come on. Yoicks for the drink.”

He told three new stories about Professor Robertshaw, all of them scurrilous and most of them untrue, on their way, and he almost coaxed Martin into cheerfulness. “Barney’s” was a poolroom, a tobacco shop and, since Mohalis was dry by local option, an admirable blind-pig. Clif and the hairy-handed Barney greeted each other in a high and worthy manner:

“The benisons of eventide to you, Barney. May your circulation proceed unchecked and particularly the dorsal carpal branch of the ulnar artery, in which connection, comrade, Prof. Dr. Col. Egbert Arrowsmith and I would fain trifle with another bottle of that renowned strawberry pop.”

“Gosh, Clif, you cer’nly got a swell line of jaw-music. If I ever need a’ arm amputated when you get to be a doc, I’ll come around and let you talk it off. Strawberry pop, gents?”

The front room of Barney’s was an impressionistic painting in which a pool-table, piles of cigarettes, chocolate bars, playing cards, and pink sporting papers were jumbled in chaos. The back room was simpler: cases of sweet and thinly flavored soda, a large icebox, and two small tables with broken chairs. Barney poured, from a bottle plainly marked Ginger Ale, two glasses of powerful and appalling raw whiskey, and Clif and Martin took them to the table in the corner. The effect was swift. Martin’s confused sorrows turned to optimism. He told Clif that he was going to write a book exposing idealism, but what he meant was that he was going to do something clever about his dual engagement. He had it! He would invite Leora and Madeline to lunch together, tell them the truth, and see which of them loved him. He whooped, and had another whiskey; he told Clif that he was a fine fellow, and Barney that he was a public benefactor, and unsteadily he retired to the telephone, which was shut off from public hearing in a closet.

At the Zenith General Hospital he got the night superintendent, and the night superintendent was a man frosty and suspicious. “This is no time to be calling up a probationer! Half-past eleven! Who are you, anyway?”

Martin checked the “I’ll damn soon tell you who I am!” which was his natural reaction, and explained that he was speaking for Leora’s invalid grandaunt, that the poor old lady was very low, and if the night superintendent cared to take upon himself the murder of a blameless gentlewoman⁠—

When Leora came to the