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

“I don’t think I know just how you mean.”

“I mean what is the general effect? The⁠—impression.”

“Well, it’s got lots of wheat and lots of Swedes.”

“But I mean⁠—I suppose you’re all terribly virile and energetic, compared with us Easterners.”

“I don’t⁠—Well, yes, maybe.”

“Have you met lots of people in Zenith?”

“Not so awfully many.”

“Oh, have you met Dr. Birchall, that operates in your hospital? He’s such a nice man, and not just a good surgeon but frightfully talented. He sings wonderfully, and he comes from the most frightfully nice family.”

“No, I don’t think I’ve met him yet,” Leora bleated.

“Oh, you must. And he plays the slickest⁠—the most gorgeous game of tennis. He always goes to all these millionaire parties on Royal Ridge. Frightfully smart.”

Martin now first interrupted. “Smart? Him? He hasn’t got any brains whatever.”

“My dear child, I didn’t mean ‘smart’ in that sense!” He sat alone and helpless while she again turned on Leora and ever more brightly inquired whether Leora knew this son of a corporation lawyer and that famous debutante, this hat-shop and that club. She spoke familiarly of what were known as the Leaders of Zenith Society, the personages who appeared daily in the society columns of the Advocate-Times, the Cowxes and Van Antrims and Dodsworths. Martin was astonished by the familiarity; he remembered that she had once gone to a charity ball in Zenith but he had not known that she was so intimate with the peerage. Certainly Leora had appallingly never heard of these great ones, nor even attended the concerts, the lectures, the recitals at which Madeline apparently spent all her glittering evenings.

Madeline shrugged a little, then, “Well⁠—Of course with the fascinating doctors and everybody that you meet in the hospital, I suppose you’d find lectures frightfully tame. Well⁠—” She dismissed Leora and looked patronizingly at Martin. “Are you planning some more work on the what-is-it with rabbits?”

He was grim. He could do it now, if he got it over quickly. “Madeline! Brought you two together because⁠—Don’t know whether you cotton to each other or not, but I wish you could, because I’ve⁠—I’m not making any excuses for myself. I couldn’t help it. I’m engaged to both of you, and I want to know⁠—”

Madeline had sprung up. She had never looked quite so proud and fine. She stared at them, and walked away, wordless. She came back, she touched Leora’s shoulder, and quietly kissed her. “Dear, I’m sorry for you. You’ve got a job! You poor baby!” She strode away, her shoulders straight.

Hunched, frightened, Martin could not look at Leora.

He felt her hand on his. He looked up. She was smiling, easy, a little mocking. “Sandy, I warn you that I’m never going to give you up. I suppose you’re as bad as She says; I suppose I’m foolish⁠—I’m a hussy. But you’re mine! I warn you it isn’t a bit of use your getting engaged to somebody else again. I’d tear her eyes out! Now don’t think so well of yourself! I guess you’re pretty selfish. But I don’t care. You’re mine!”

He said brokenly many things beautiful in their commonness.

She pondered, “I do feel we’re nearer together than you and Her. Perhaps you like me better because you can bully me⁠—because I tag after you and She never would. And I know your work is more important to you than I am, maybe more important than you are. But I am stupid and ordinary and She isn’t. I simply admire you frightfully (Heaven knows why, but I do), while She has sense enough to make you admire Her and tag after Her.”

“No! I swear it isn’t because I can bully you, Leora⁠—I swear it isn’t⁠—I don’t think it is. Dearest, don’t don’t think she’s brighter than you are. She’s glib but⁠—Oh, let’s stop talking! I’ve found you! My life’s begun!”

The difference between Martin’s relations to Madeline and to Leora was the difference between a rousing duel and a serene comradeship. From their first evening, Leora and he depended on each other’s loyalty and liking, and certain things in his existence were settled forever. Yet his absorption in her was not stagnant. He was always making discoveries about the observations of life which she kept incubating in her secret little head while she made smoke rings with her cigarettes and smiled silently. He longed for the girl Leora; she stirred him, and with gay frank passion she answered him; but to another, sexless Leora he talked more honestly than to Gottlieb or his own worried self, while with her boyish nod or an occasional word she encouraged him to confidence in his evolving ambition and disdains.

Digamma Pi fraternity was giving a dance. It was understood among the anxiously whispering medics that so cosmopolitan was the University of Winnemac becoming that they were expected to wear the symbols of respectability known as “dress-suits.” On the solitary and nervous occasion when Martin had worn evening clothes he had rented them from the Varsity Pantorium, but he must own them, now that he was going to introduce Leora to the world as his pride and flowering. Like two little old people, absorbed in each other and diffidently exploring new, unwelcoming streets of the city where their alienated children live, Martin and Leora edged into the garnished magnificence of Benson, Hanley and Koch’s, the loftiest department store in Zenith. She was intimidated by the luminous cases of mahogany and plate glass, by the opera hats and lustrous mufflers and creamy riding breeches. When he had tried on a dinner suit and come out for her approval, his long brown tie and soft-collared shirt somewhat rustic behind the low evening waistcoat, and when the clerk had gone to fetch collars, she wailed:

“Darn it, Sandy, you’re too grand for me. I just simply can’t get myself to fuss over my clothes, and here you’re going to go and look so spiffy I won’t have a chance with