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

easy about it when I’m caught by a big experiment, any more than you could be regular and easy and polite when you were gestating the baby.”

“I know but⁠—Darling, you get so nervous when you’re working like this. Heavens, I don’t care how much you offend people by missing engagements⁠—well, after all, I wish you wouldn’t, but I do know it may be unavoidable. But when you make yourself so drawn and trembly, are you gaining time in the long run? It’s just for your own sake. Oh, I have it! Wait! You’ll see what a scientist I am! No, I won’t explain⁠—not yet!”

Joyce had wealth and energy. A week later, flushed, slim, gallant, joyous, she said to him after dinner, “I’ve got a surprise for you!”

She led him to the unoccupied rooms over the garage, behind their house. In that week, using a score of workmen from the most immaculate and elaborate scientific supply-house in the country, she had created for him the best bacteriological laboratory he had ever seen⁠—white-tile floor and enameled brick walls, icebox and incubator, glassware and stains and microscope, a perfect constant-temperature bath⁠—and a technician, trained in Lister and Rockefeller, who had his bedroom behind the laboratory and who announced his readiness to serve Dr. Arrowsmith day or night.

“There!” sang Joyce. “Now when you simply must work evenings, you won’t have to go clear down to Liberty Street. You can duplicate your cultures or whatever you call ’em. If you’re bored at dinner⁠—all right! You can slip out here afterward and work as late as ever you want. Is⁠—Sweet, is it all right? Have I done it right? I tried so hard⁠—I got the best men I could⁠—”

While his lips were against hers he brooded, “To have done this for me! And to be so humble!⁠ ⁠… And now, curse it, I’ll never be able to get away by myself!”

She so joyfully demanded his finding some fault that, to give her the novel pleasure of being meek, he suggested that the centrifuge was inadequate.

“You wait, my man!” she crowed.

Two evenings after, when they had returned from the opera, she led him to the cement-floored garage beneath his new laboratory, and in a corner, ready to be set up, was a secondhand but adequate centrifuge, a most adequate centrifuge, the masterpiece of the great firm of Berkeley-Saunders⁠—in fact none other than Gladys, whose dismissal from McGurk for her sluttish ways had stirred Martin and Terry to go out and get bountifully drunk.

It was less easy for him, this time, to be grateful, but he worked at it.

IV

Through both the economico-literary and the Rolls-Royce section of Joyce’s set the rumor panted that there was a new diversion in an exhausted world⁠—going out to Martin’s laboratory and watching him work, and being ever so silent and reverent, except perhaps when Joyce murmured, “Isn’t he adorable the way he teaches his darling bacteria to say ‘Pretty Polly’!” or when Latham Ireland convulsed them by arguing that scientists had no sense of humor, or Sammy de Lembre burst out in his marvelous burlesque of jazz:

Oh, Mistah Back‑sil‑lil‑us, don’t you gri‑in at me;
You mi‑cro‑bi‑o‑log‑ic cuss, I’m o‑on-to thee.
When Mr. Dr. Arrowsmith’s done looked at de clues,
You’ll sit in jail a‑singin’ dem Bac‑ter‑i‑uh Blues.

Joyce’s cousin from Georgia sparkled, “Mart is so cute with all those lil vases of his. But Ah can always get him so mad by tellin’ him the trouble with him is, he don’t go to church often enough!”

While Martin sought to concentrate.

They flocked from the house to his laboratory only once a week, which was certainly not enough to disturb a resolute man⁠—merely enough to keep him constantly waiting for them.

When he sedately tried to explain this and that to Joyce, she said, “Did we bother you this evening? But they do admire you so.”

He remarked, “Well,” and went to bed.

V

R. A. Hopburn, the eminent patent-lawyer, as he drove away from the Arrowsmith-Lanyon mansion grunted at his wife:

“I don’t mind a host throwing the port at you, if he thinks you’re a chump, but I do mind his being bored at your daring to express any opinion whatever⁠ ⁠… Didn’t he look silly, out in his idiotic laboratory!⁠ ⁠… How the deuce do you suppose Joyce ever came to marry him?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“I can only think of one reason. Of course she may⁠—”

“Now please don’t be filthy!”

“Well, anyway⁠—She who might have picked any number of well-bred, agreeable, intelligent chaps⁠—and I mean intelligent, because this Arrowsmith person may know all about germs, but he doesn’t know a symphony from a savory⁠ ⁠… I don’t think I’m too fussy, but I don’t quite see why we should go to a house where the host apparently enjoys flatly contradicting you⁠ ⁠… Poor devil, I’m really sorry for him; probably he doesn’t even know when he’s being rude.”

“No. Perhaps. What hurts is to think of old Roger⁠—so gay, so strong, real Skull and Bones⁠—and to have this abrupt Outsider from the tall grass sitting in his chair, failing to appreciate his Pol Roger⁠—What Joyce ever saw in him! Though he does have nice eyes and such funny strong hands⁠—”

VI

Joyce’s busyness was on his nerves. Why she was so busy it was hard to ascertain; she had an excellent housekeeper, a noble butler, and two nurses for the baby. But she often said that she was never allowed to attain her one ambition: to sit and read.

Terry had once called her The Arranger, and though Martin resented it, when he heard the telephone bell he groaned, “Oh, Lord, there’s The Arranger⁠—wants me to come to tea with some high-minded hen.”

When he sought to explain that he must be free from entanglements, she suggested, “Are you such a weak, irresolute, little man that the only way you can keep concentrated is by running away? Are you afraid of the big men who can do big work, and still stop and play?”

He was likely to turn abusive, particularly as