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

the value of disinfectants. When Pickerbaugh predicted for Nautilus, in fifteen years, a health department thrice as large, with many full-time clinic and school physicians and possibly Martin as director (Pickerbaugh himself having gone off to mysterious and interesting activities in a Larger Field), Martin merely croaked, “Yes, that’d be⁠—be fine,” while to himself he was explaining, “Damn that girl, I wish she wouldn’t shake herself at me.”

At half-past eight he had pictured his escape as life’s highest ecstasy; at twelve he took leave with nervous hesitation.

They walked to the hotel. Free from the sight of Orchid, brisk in the coolness, he forgot the chit and pawed again the problem of his work in Nautilus.

“Lord, I don’t know whether I can do it. To work under that gasbag, with his fool pieces about boozers⁠—”

“They weren’t so bad,” protested Leora.

“Bad? Why, he’s probably the worst poet that ever lived, and he certainly knows less about epidemiology than I thought any one man could ever learn, all by himself. But when it comes to this⁠—what was it Clif Clawson used to call it?⁠—by the way, wonder what’s ever become of Clif; haven’t heard from him for a couple o’ years⁠—when it comes to this ‘overpowering Christian Domesticity’⁠—Oh, let’s hunt for a blind-pig and sit around with the nice restful burglars.”

She insisted, “I thought his poems were kind of cute.”

“Cute! What a word!”

“It’s no worse than the cuss-words you’re always using! But the cornet yowling by that awful oldest daughter⁠—Ugh!”

“Well, now she played darn well!”

“Martin, the cornet is the kind of instrument my brother would play. And you so superior about the doctor’s poetry and my saying ‘cute’! You’re just as much a backwoods hick as I am, and maybe more so!”

“Why, gee, Leora, I never knew you to get sore about nothing before! And can’t you understand how important⁠—You see, a man like Pickerbaugh makes all public health work simply ridiculous by his circusing and his ignorance. If he said that fresh air was a good thing, instead of making me open my windows it’d make me or any other reasonable person close ’em. And to use the word ‘science’ in those flop-eared limericks or whatever you call ’em⁠—it’s sacrilege!”

“Well, if you want to know, Martin Arrowsmith, I’ll have no more of these high jinks with that Orchid girl! Practically hugging her when you came downstairs, and then mooning at her all evening! I don’t mind your cursing and being cranky and even getting drunk, in a reasonable sort of way, but ever since the lunch when you told me and that Fox woman, ‘I hope you girls won’t mind, but I just happen to remember that I’m engaged to both of you’⁠—You’re mine, and I won’t have any trespassers. I’m a cavewoman, and you’d better learn it, and as for that Orchid, with her simper and her stroking your arm and her great big absurd feet⁠—Orchid! She’s no orchid! She’s a bachelor’s button!”

“But, honest, I don’t even remember which of the eight she was.”

“Huh! Then you’ve been making love to all of ’em, that’s why. Drat her! Well, I’m not going to go on scrapping about it. I just wanted to warn you, that’s all.”

At the hotel, after giving up the attempt to find a short, jovial, convincing way of promising that he would never flirt with Orchid, he stammered, “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay down and walk a little more. I’ve got to figure this health department business out.”

He sat in the Sims House office⁠—singularly dismal it was, after midnight, and singularly smelly.

“That fool Pickerbaugh! I wish I’d told him right out that we know hardly anything about the epidemiology of tuberculosis, for instance.

“Just the same, she’s a darling child. Orchid! She’s like an orchid⁠—no, she’s too healthy. Be a great kid to go hunting with. Sweet. And she acted as if I were her own age, not an old doctor. I’ll be good, oh, I’ll be good, but⁠—I’d like to kiss her once, good! She likes me. Those darling lips, like⁠—like rosebuds!

“Poor Leora. I nev’ was so astonished in my life. Jealous. Well, she’s got a right to be! No woman ever stood by a man like⁠—Lee, sweet, can’t you see, idiot, if I skipped round the corner with seventeen billion Orchids, it’d be you I loved, and never anybody but you!

“I can’t go round singing Healthette Octette Pantalette stuff. Even if it did instruct people, which it don’t. Be almost better to let ’em die than have to live and listen to⁠—

“Leora said I was a ‘backwoods hick.’ Let me tell you, young woman, as it happens I am a Bachelor of Arts, and you may recall the kind of books the ‘backwoods hick’ was reading to you last winter, and even Henry James and everybody and⁠—Oh, she’s right. I am. I do know how to make pipets and agar, but⁠—And yet some day I want to travel like Sondelius⁠—

“Sondelius! God! If it were he I was working for, instead of Pickerbaugh, I’d slave for him⁠—

“Or does he pull the bunk, too?

“Now that’s just what I mean. That kind of phrase. ‘Pull the bunk’! Horrible!

“Hell! I’ll use any kind of phrase I want to! I’m not one of your social climbers like Angus. The way Sondelius cusses, for instance, and yet he’s used to all those highbrows⁠—

“And I’ll be so busy here in Nautilus that I won’t even be able to go on reading. Still⁠—I don’t suppose they read much, but there must be quite a few of these rich men here that know about nice houses. Clothes. Theaters. That stuff.

“Rats!”

He wandered to an all-night lunch-wagon, where he gloomily drank coffee. Beside him, seated at the long shelf which served as table, beneath the noble red-glass window with a portrait of George Washington, was a policeman who, as he gnawed a hamburger sandwich, demanded:

“Say, ain’t you this new doctor that’s come to assist Pickerbaugh? Seen you at City Hall.”

“Yes. Say, uh, say, how does the