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

He was flustered when he tried to prepare his notes, and on the morning of the affair he was chill as he remembered the dreadful thing he would do this day, but he was desperate with embarrassment when he came up to the Star of Hope Church.

People were crowding in; mature, responsible people. He quaked, “They’re coming to hear me, and I haven’t got a darn thing to say to ’em!” It made him feel the more ridiculous that they who presumably wished to listen to him should not be aware of him, and that the usher, profusely shaking hands at the Byzantine portal, should bluster, “You’ll find plenty room right up the side aisles, young man.”

“I’m the speaker for the afternoon.”

“Oh, oh, yes, oh, yes, Doctor. Right round to the Bevis Street entrance, if you please, Doctor.”

In the parlors he was unctuously received by the pastor and a committee of three, wearing morning clothes and a manner of Christian intellectuality.

They held his hand in turn, they brought up rustling women to meet him, they stood about him in a polite and twittery circle, and dismayingly they expected him to say something intelligent. Then, suffering, ghastly frightened, dumb, he was led through an arched doorway into the auditorium. Millions of faces were staring at his apologetic insignificance⁠—faces in the curving lines of pews, faces in the low balcony, eyes which followed him and doubted him and noted that his heels were run down.

The agony grew while he was prayed over and sung over.

The pastor and the lay chairman of the Lecture Course opened with suitable devotions. While Martin trembled and tried to look brazenly at the massed people who were looking at him, while he sat nude and exposed and unprotected on the high platform, the pastor made announcement of the Thursday Missionary Supper and the Little Lads’ Marching Club. They sang a brief cheerful hymn or two⁠—Martin wondering whether to sit or stand⁠—and the chairman prayed that “our friend who will address us today may have power to put his Message across.” Through the prayer Martin sat with his forehead in his hand, feeling foolish, and raving, “I guess this is the proper attitude⁠—they’re all gawping at me⁠—gosh, won’t he ever quit?⁠—oh, damn it, now what was that point I was going to make about fumigation?⁠—oh, Lord, he’s winding up and I’ve got to shoot!”

Somehow, he was standing by the reading-desk, holding it for support, and his voice seemed to be going on, producing reasonable words. The blur of faces cleared and he saw individuals. He picked out a keen old man and tried to make him laugh and marvel.

He found Leora, toward the back, nodding to him, reassuring him. He dared to look away from the path of faces directly in front of him. He glanced at the balcony⁠—

The audience perceived a young man who was being earnest about sera and vaccines but, while his voice buzzed on, that churchly young man had noted two silken ankles distinguishing the front row of the balcony, had discovered that they belonged to Orchid Pickerbaugh and that she was flashing down admiration.

At the end Martin had the most enthusiastic applause ever known⁠—all lecturers, after all lectures, are gratified by that kind of applause⁠—and the chairman said the most flattering things ever uttered, and the audience went out with the most remarkable speed ever witnessed, and Martin discovered himself holding Orchid’s hand in the parlors while she warbled, in the most adorable voice ever heard, “Oh, Dr. Arrowsmith, you were just wonderful! Most of these lecturers are old stuffs, but you put it right over! I’m going to do a dash home and tell Dad. He’ll be so tickled!”

Not till then did he find that Leora had made her way to the parlors and was looking at them like a wife.

As they walked home Leora was eloquently silent.

“Well, did you like my spiel?” he said, after a suitable time of indignant waiting.

“Yes, it wasn’t bad. It must have been awfully hard to talk to all those stupid people.”

“Stupid? What d’you mean by ‘stupid’? They got me splendidly. They were fine.”

“Were they? Well anyway, thank Heaven, you won’t have to keep up this silly gassing. Pickerbaugh likes to hear himself talk too well to let you in on it very often.”

“I didn’t mind it. Fact, don’t know but what it’s a good thing to have to express myself publicly now and then. Makes you think more lucidly.”

“As for instance the nice, lovely, lucid politicians!”

“Now you look here, Lee! Of course we know your husband is a mutt, and no good outside the laboratory, but I do think you might pretend to be a little enthusiastic over the first address he’s ever made⁠—the very first he’s ev‑er tackled⁠—when it went off so well.”

“Why, silly, I was enthusiastic. I applauded a lot. I thought you were terribly smart. It’s just⁠—There’s other things I think you can do better. What shall we do tonight; have a cold snack at home or go to the cafeteria?”

Thus was he reduced from hero to husband, and he had all the pleasures of inappreciation.

He thought about his indignities the whole week, but with the coming of winter there was a fever of dully sprightly dinners and safely wild bridge and their first evening at home, their first opportunity for secure and comfortable quarreling, was on Friday. They sat down to what he announced as “getting back to some real reading, like physiology and a little of this fellow Arnold Bennett⁠—nice quiet reading,” but which consisted of catching up on the news notes in the medical journals.

He was restless. He threw down his magazine. He demanded:

“What’re you going to wear at Pickerbaugh’s snow picnic tomorrow?”

“Oh, I haven’t⁠—I’ll find something.”

“Lee, I want to ask you: Why the devil did you say I talked too much at Dr. Strafford’s last evening? I know I’ve got most of the faults going, but I didn’t know talking too much was one of ’em.”

“It hasn’t been, till now.”

“ ‘Till