Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (learn to read books txt) 📕

as much over the flowers, the bishop, the relatives with high-pitched voices, and the top hat which Joyce had commanded, as he did over having Rippleton Holabird wring his hand with a look of, “At last, dear boy, you have come out of barbarism and become One of Us.”

Martin had asked Terry to be his best man. Terry had refused, and asserted that only with pain would he come to the wedding at all. The best man was Dr. William Smith, with his beard trimmed for the occasion, and distressing morning clothes and a topper which he had bought in London eleven years before, but both of them were safe in charge of a cousin of Joyce who was guaranteed to have extra handkerchiefs and to recognize the Wedding March. He had understood that Martin was Groton and Harvard, and when he discovered that he was Winnemac and nothing at all, he became suspicious.

In their stateroom on the steamer Joyce murmured, “Dear, you were brave! I didn’t know what a damn fool that cousin of mine was. Kiss me!”

Thenceforth⁠ ⁠… except for a dreadful second when Leora floated between them, eyes closed and hands crossed on her pale cold breast⁠ ⁠… they were happy and in each other found adventurous new ways.

IV

For three months they wandered in Europe.

On the first day Joyce had said, “Let’s have this beastly money thing over. I should think you are the least mercenary of men. I’ve put ten thousand dollars to your credit in London⁠—oh, yes, and fifty thousand in New York⁠—and if you’d like, when you have to do things for me, I’d be glad if you’d draw on it. No! Wait! Can’t you see how easy and decent I want to make it all? You won’t hurt me to save your own self-respect?”

V

They really had, it seemed, to stay with the Principessa del Oltraggio (formerly Miss Lucy Deemy Bessy of Dayton), Madame des Basses Loges (Miss Brown of San Francisco), and the Countess of Marazion (who had been Mrs. Arthur Snaipe of Albany, and several things before that), but Joyce did go with him to see the great laboratories in London, Paris, Copenhagen. She swelled to perceive how Nobel-prize winners received Her Husband, knew of him, desired to be violent with him about phage, and showed him their work of years. Some of them were hasty and graceless, she thought. Her Man was prettier than any of them, and if she would but be patient with him, she could make him master polo and clothes and conversation⁠ ⁠… but of course go on with his science⁠ ⁠… a pity he could not have a knighthood, like one or two of the British scientists they met. But even in America there were honorary degrees⁠ ⁠…

While she discovered and digested Science, Martin discovered Women.

VI

Aware only of Madeline Fox and Orchid Pickerbaugh, who were Nice American Girls, of soon-forgotten ladies of the night, and of Leora, who, in her indolence, her indifference to decoration and good fame, was neither woman nor wife but only her own self, Martin knew nothing whatever about Women. He had expected Leora to wait for him, to obey his wishes, to understand without his saying them all the flattering things he had planned to say. He was spoiled, and Joyce was not timorous about telling him so.

It was not for her to sit beaming and wordless while he and his fellow-researchers arranged the world. With many jolts he perceived that even outside the bedroom he had to consider the fluctuations and variables of his wife, as A Woman, and sometimes as A Rich Woman.

It was confusing to find that where Leora had acidly claimed sex-loyalty but had hummingly not cared in what manner he might say Good Morning, Joyce was indifferent as to how many women he might have fondled (so long as he did not insult her by making love to them in her presence) but did require him to say Good Morning as though he meant it. It was confusing to find how starkly she discriminated between his caresses when he was absorbed in her and his hasty interest when he wanted to go to sleep. She could, she said, kill a man who considered her merely convenient furniture, and she uncomfortably emphasized the “kill.”

She expected him to remember her birthday, her taste in wine, her liking for flowers, and her objection to viewing the process of shaving. She wanted a room to herself; she insisted that he knock before entering; and she demanded that he admire her hats.

When he was so interested in the work at Pasteur Institute that he had a clerk telephone that he would not be able to meet her for dinner, she was tightlipped with rage.

“Oh, you got to expect that,” he reflected, feeling that he was being tactful and patient and penetrating.

It annoyed him, sometimes, that she would never impulsively start off on a walk with him. No matter how brief the jaunt, she must first go to her room for white gloves⁠—placidly stand there drawing them on⁠ ⁠… And in London she made him buy spats⁠ ⁠… and even wear them.

Joyce was not only an Arranger⁠—she was a Loyalist. Like most American cosmopolites she revered the English peerage, adopted all their standards and beliefs⁠—or what she considered their standards and beliefs⁠—and treasured her encounters with them. Three and a half years after the War of 1914⁠–⁠18, she still said that she loathed all Germans, and the one complete quarrel between her and Martin occurred when he desired to see the laboratories in Berlin and Vienna.

But for all their differences it was a romantic pilgrimage. They loved fearlessly; they tramped through the mountains and came back to revel in vast bathrooms and ingenious dinners; they idled before cafés, and save when he fell silent as he remembered how much Leora had wanted to sit before cafés in France, they showed each other all the eagernesses of their minds.

Europe, her