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

up golf. Best opportunity in the world to meet the substantial citizens. I’ve picked up more than one high-class patient there.

“Pickerbaugh is a good active man and a fine booster but he’s got a bad socialistic tendency. These clinics⁠—outrageous⁠—the people that go to them that can afford to pay! Pauperize people. Now this may startle you⁠—oh, you had a lot of crank notions when you were in school, but you aren’t the only one that does some thinking for himself!⁠—sometimes I believe it’d be better for the general health situation if there weren’t any public health departments at all, because they get a lot of people into the habit of going to free clinics instead of to private physicians, and cut down the earnings of the doctors and reduce their number, so there are less of us to keep a watchful eye on sickness.

“I guess by this time you’ve gotten over the funny ideas you used to have about being practical⁠—‘commercialism’ you used to call it. You can see now that you’ve got to support your wife and family, and if you don’t, nobody else is going to.

“Any time you want a straight tip about people here, you just come to me. Pickerbaugh is a crank⁠—he won’t give you the right dope⁠—the people you want to tie up with are the good, solid, conservative, successful businessmen.”

Then Mrs. Watters had her turn. She was meaty with advice, being the daughter of a prosperous person, none other than Mr. S. A. Peaseley, the manufacturer of the Daisy Manure Spreader.

“You haven’t any children?” she sobbed at Leora. “Oh, you must! Irving and I have two, and you don’t know what an interest they are to us, and they keep us so young.”

Martin and Leora looked at each other pitifully.

After dinner, Irving insisted on their recalling the “good times we used to have together at the dear old U.” He took no denial. “You always want to make folks think you’re eccentric, Mart. You pretend you haven’t any college patriotism, but I know better⁠—I know you’re showing off⁠—you admire the old place and our profs just as much as anybody. Maybe I know you better than you do yourself! Come on, now; let’s give a long cheer and sing ‘Winnemac, Mother of Brawny Men.’ ”

And, “Don’t be silly; of course you’re going to sing,” said Mrs. Watters, as she marched to the piano, with which she dealt in a firm manner.

When they had politely labored through the fried chicken and brick ice cream, through the maxims, gurglings and memories, Martin and Leora went forth and spoke in tongues:

“Pickerbaugh must be a saint, if Watters roasts him. I begin to believe he has sense enough to come in when it rains.”

In their common misery they forgot that they had been agitated by a girl named Orchid.

II

Between Pickerbaugh and Irving Watters, Martin was drafted into many of the associations, clubs, lodges, and “causes” with which Nautilus foamed; into the Chamber of Commerce, the Moccasin Ski and Hiking Club, the Elks’ Club, the Odd Fellows, and the Evangeline County Medical society. He resisted, but they said in a high hurt manner, “Why, my boy, if you’re going to be a public official, and if you have the slightest appreciation of their efforts to make you welcome here⁠—”

Leora and he found themselves with so many invitations that they, who had deplored the dullness of Wheatsylvania, complained now that they could have no quiet evenings at home. But they fell into the habit of social ease, of dressing, of going places without nervous anticipation. They modernized their rustic dancing; they learned to play bridge, rather badly, and tennis rather well; and Martin, not by virtue and heroism but merely by habit, got out of the way of resenting the chirp of small talk.

Probably they were never recognized by their hostesses as pirates, but considered a Bright Young Couple who, since they were protégés of Pickerbaugh, must be earnest and forward-looking, and who, since they were patronized by Irving and Mrs. Watters, must be respectable.

Watters took them in hand and kept them there. He had so thick a rind that it was impossible for him to understand that Martin’s frequent refusals of his invitations could conceivably mean that he did not wish to come. He detected traces of heterodoxy in Martin, and with affection, diligence, and an extraordinarily heavy humor he devoted himself to the work of salvation. Frequently he sought to entertain other guests by urging, “Come on now, Mart, let’s hear some of those crazy ideas of yours!”

His friendly zeal was drab compared with that of his wife. Mrs. Watters had been reared by her father and by her husband to believe that she was the final fruit of the ages, and she set herself to correct the barbarism of the Arrowsmiths. She rebuked Martin’s damns, Leora’s smoking, and both their theories of bidding at bridge. But she never nagged. To have nagged would have been to admit that there were persons who did not acknowledge her sovereignty. She merely gave orders, brief, humorous, and introduced by a strident “Now don’t be silly,” and she expected that to settle the matter.

Martin groaned, “Oh, Lord, between Pickerbaugh and Irve, it’s easier to become a respectable member of society than to go on fighting.”

But Watters and Pickerbaugh were not so great a compulsion to respectability as the charms of finding himself listened to in Nautilus as he never had been in Wheatsylvania, and of finding himself admired by Orchid.

III

He had been seeking a precipitation test for the diagnosis of syphilis which should be quicker and simpler than the Wassermann. His slackened fingers and rusty mind were becoming used to the laboratory and to passionate hypotheses when he was dragged away to help Pickerbaugh in securing publicity. He was coaxed into making his first speech: an address on “What the Laboratory Teaches about Epidemics” for the Sunday Afternoon Free Lecture Course of the Star of Hope Universalist