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

Gottlieb spoke nervously: “I do not approve of patenting serological processes. They should be open to all laboratories. And I am strongly against premature production or even announcement. I think I am right, but I must check my technique, perhaps improve it⁠—be sure. Then, I should think there should be no objection to market production, but in ve‑ry small quantities and in fair competition with others, not under patents, as if this was a dinglebat toy for the Christmas tradings!”

“My dear fellow, I quite sympathize. Personally I should like nothing so much as to spend my whole life in just producing one priceless scientific discovery, without consideration of mere profit. But we have our duty toward the stockholders of the Dawson Hunziker Company to make money for them. Do you realize that they have⁠—and many of them are poor widows and orphans⁠—invested their Little All in our stock, and that we must keep faith? I am helpless; I am but their Humble Servant. And on the other side: I think we’ve treated you rather well, Dr. Gottlieb, and we’ve given you complete freedom. And we intend to go on treating you well! Why, man, you’ll be rich; you’ll be one of us! I don’t like to make any demands, but on this point it’s my duty to insist, and I shall expect you at the earliest possible moment to start manufacturing⁠—”

Gottlieb was sixty-two. The defeat at Winnemac had done something to his courage⁠ ⁠… And he had no contract with Hunziker.

He protested shakily, but as he crawled back to his laboratory it seemed impossible for him to leave this sanctuary and face the murderous brawling world, and quite as impossible to tolerate a cheapened and ineffective imitation of his antitoxin. He began, that hour, a sordid strategy which his old proud self would have called inconceivable; he began to equivocate, to put off announcement and production till he should have “cleared up a few points,” while week on week Hunziker became more threatening. Meantime he prepared for disaster. He moved his family to a smaller house, and gave up every luxury, even smoking.

Among his economies was the reduction of his son’s allowance.

Robert was a square-rigged, swart, tempestuous boy, arrogant where there seemed to be no reason for arrogance, longed for by the anemic, milky sort of girls, yet ever supercilious to them. While his father was alternately proud and amiably sardonic about his own Jewish blood, the boy conveyed to his classmates in college that he was from pure and probably noble German stock. He was welcomed, or half welcomed, in a motoring, poker-playing, country-club set, and he had to have more money. Gottlieb missed twenty dollars from his desk. He who ridiculed conventional honor had the honor, as he had the pride, of a savage old squire. A new misery stained his incessant bitterness at having to deceive Hunziker. He faced Robert with, “My boy, did you take the money from my desk?”

Few youngsters could have faced that jut of his hawk nose, the red-veined rage of his sunken eyes. Robert spluttered, then shouted:

“Yes, I did! And I’ve got to have some more! I’ve got to get some clothes and stuff. It’s your fault. You bring me up to train with a lot of fellows that have all the cash in the world, and then you expect me to dress like a hobo!”

“Stealing⁠—”

“Rats! What’s stealing! You’re always making fun of these preachers that talk about Sin and Truth and Honesty and all those words that’ve been used so much they don’t mean a darn thing and⁠—I don’t care! Daws Hunziker, the old man’s son, he told me his dad said you could be a millionaire, and then you keep us strapped like this, and Mom sick⁠—Let me tell you, back in Mohalis Mom used to slip me a couple of dollars almost every week and⁠—I’m tired of it! If you’re going to keep me in rags, I’m going to cut out college!”

Gottlieb stormed, but there was no force in it. He did not know, all the next fortnight, what his son was going to do, what himself was going to do.

Then, so quietly that not till they had returned from the cemetery did they realize her passing, his wife died, and the next week his oldest daughter ran off with a worthless laughing fellow who lived by gambling.

Gottlieb sat alone. Over and over he read the Book of Job. “Truly the Lord hath smitten me and my house,” he whispered. When Robert came in, mumbling that he would be good, the old man lifted to him a blind face, unhearing. But as he repeated the fables of his fathers it did not occur to him to believe them, or to stoop in fear before their God of Wrath⁠—or to gain ease by permitting Hunziker to defile his discovery.

He arose, in time, and went silently to his laboratory. His experiments were as careful as ever, and his assistants saw no change save that he did not lunch in hall. He walked blocks away, to a vile restaurant at which he could save thirty cents a day.

Out of the dimness which obscured the people about him, Miriam emerged.

She was eighteen, the youngest of his brood, squat, and in no way comely save for her tender mouth. She had always been proud of her father, understanding the mysterious and unreasoning compulsions of his science, but she had been in awe till now, when he walked heavily and spoke rarely. She dropped her piano lessons, discharged the maid, studied the cookbook, and prepared for him the fat crisp dishes that he loved. Her regret was that she had never learned German, for he dropped now and then into the speech of his boyhood.

He eyed her, and at length: “So! One is with me. Could you endure the poverty if I went away⁠—to teach chemistry in a high school!”

“Yes. Of course. Maybe I