Читать книгу Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis - Страница 36

V

His half-hour journey with Madeline into Zenith seemed a visible and oppressing thing, like a tornado cloud. He had not merely to get through each minute as it came; the whole grim thirty minutes were present at the same time. While he was practicing the tactful observation he was going to present two minutes from now, he could still hear the clumsy thing he had said two minutes before. He fought to keep her attention from the “great friend of his” whom they were to meet. With fatuous beaming he described a night at Barney’s; without any success whatever he tried to be funny; and when Madeline lectured him on the evils of liquor and the evils of association with immoral persons, he was for once relieved. But he could not sidetrack her.

“Who is this man we’re going to see? What are you so mysterious about? Oh, Martin, is it a joke? Aren’t we going to meet anybody? Did you just want to run away from Mama for a while and we have a bat at the Grand together? Oh, what fun! I’ve always wanted to lunch at the Grand. Of course I do think it’s too sort of rococo, but still, it is impressive, and—Did I guess it, darling?”

“No, there’s someone—Oh, we’re going to meet somebody, all right!”

“Then why don’t you tell me who he is? Honestly, Mart, you make me impatient.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. It isn’t a Him; it’s a Her.”

“Oh!”

“It’s—You know my work takes me to the hospitals, and some of the nurses at Zenith General have been awfully helpful.” He was panting. His eyes ached. Since the torture of the coming lunch was inevitable, he wondered why he should go on trying to resist his punishment. “Especially there’s one nurse there who’s a wonder. She’s learned so much about the care of the sick, and she puts me onto a lot of good stunts, and she seems like a nice girl—Miss Tozer, her name is—I think her first name is Lee or something like that—and she’s so—her father is one of the big men in North Dakota—awfully rich—big banker—I guess she just took up nursing to do her share in the world’s work.” He had achieved Madeline’s own tone of poetic uplift. “I thought you two might like to know each other. You remember you were saying how few girls there are in Mohalis that really appreciate—appreciate ideals.”

“Ye-es.” Madeline gazed at something far away and, whatever it was, she did not like it. “I shall be ver’ pleased to meet her, of course. Any friend of yours—Oh, Mart! I do hope you don’t flirt; I hope you don’t get too friendly with all these nurses. I don’t know anything about it, of course, but I keep hearing how some of these nurses are regular man-hunters.”

“Well, let me tell you right now, Leora isn’t!”

“No, I’m sure, but—Oh, Martykins, you won’t be silly and let these nurses just amuse themselves with you? I mean, for your own sake. They have such an advantage. Poor Madeline, she wouldn’t be allowed to go hanging around men’s rooms learning—things, and you think you’re so psychological, Mart, but honestly, any smart woman can twist you around her finger.”

“Well, I guess I can take care of myself!”

“Oh, I mean—I don’t mean—But I do hope this Tozer person—I’m sure I shall like her, if you do, but—I am your own true love, aren’t I, always!”

She, the proper, ignored the passengers as she clasped his hand. She sounded so frightened that his anger at her reflections on Leora turned into misery. Incidentally, her thumb was gouging painfully into the back of his hand. He tried to look tender as he protested, “Sure—sure—gosh, honest, Mad, look out. The old duffer across the aisle is staring at us.”

For whatever infidelities he might ever commit he was adequately punished before they had reached the Grand Hotel.

The Grand was, in 1907, the best hotel in Zenith. It was compared by traveling salesmen to the Parker House, the Palmer House, the West Hotel. It has been humbled since by the supercilious modesty of the vast Hotel Thornleigh; dirty now is its tessellated floor and all the wild gilt tarnished, and in its ponderous leather chairs are torn seams and stogie ashes and horse-dealers. But in its day it was the proudest inn between Chicago and Pittsburgh; an oriental palace, the entrance a score of brick Moorish arches, the lobby towering from a black and white marble floor, up past gilt iron balconies, to the green, pink, pearl, and amber skylight seven stories above.

They found Leora in the lobby, tiny on an enormous couch built round a pillar. She stared at Madeline, quiet, waiting. Martin perceived that Leora was unusually sloppy—his own word. It did not matter to him how clumsily her honey-colored hair was tucked under her black hat, a characterless little mushroom of a hat, but he did see and resent the contrast between her shirtwaist, with the third button missing, her checked skirt, her unfortunate bright brown bolero jacket, and Madeline’s sleekness of blue serge. The resentment was not toward Leora. Scanning them together (not haughtily, as the choosing and lofty male, but anxiously) he was more irritated than ever by Madeline. That she should be better dressed was an affront. His affection flew to guard Leora, to wrap and protect her.

And all the while he was bumbling:

“—thought you two girls ought to know each other—Miss Fox, want t’ make you ’quainted with Miss Tozer—little celebration—lucky dog have two Queens of Sheba—”

And to himself, “Oh, hell!”

While they murmured nothing in particular to each other he herded them into the famous dining-room of the Grand. It was full of gilt chandeliers, red plush chairs, heavy silverware, and aged negro retainers with gold and green waistcoats. Round the walls ran select views of Pompeii, Venice, Lake Como, and Versailles.

“Swell room!” chirped Leora.

Madeline had looked as though she intended to say the same thing in longer words, but she considered the frescoes all over again and explained, “Well, it’s very large—”

He was ordering, with agony. He had appropriated four dollars for the orgy, strictly including the tip, and his standard of good food was that he must spend every cent of the four dollars. While he wondered what “Puree St. Germain” could be, and the waiter hideously stood watching behind his shoulder, Madeline fell to. She chanted with horrifying politeness:

“Mr. Arrowsmith tells me you are a nurse, Miss—Tozer.”

“Yes, sort of.”

“Do you find it interesting?”

“Well—yes—yes, I think it’s interesting.”

“I suppose it must be wonderful to relieve suffering. Of course my work—I’m taking my Doctor of Philosophy degree in English—” She made it sound as though she were taking her earldom—“it’s rather dry and detached. I have to master the growth of the language and so on and so forth. With your practical training, I suppose you’d find that rather stupid.”

“Yes, it must be—no, it must be very interesting.”

“Do you come from Zenith, Miss—Tozer?”

“No, I come from—Just a little town. Well, hardly a town. . . . North Dakota.”

“Oh! North Dakota!”

“Yes. . . . Way West.”

“Oh, yes. . . . Are you staying East for some time?” It was precisely what a much-resented New York cousin had once said to Madeline.

“Well, I don’t—Yes, I guess I may be here quite some time.”

“Do you, uh, do you find you like it here?”

“Oh, yes, it’s pretty nice. These big cities—So much to see.”

“‘Big’? Well, I suppose it all depends on the point of view, doesn’t it? I always think of New York as big but—Of course—Do you find the contrast to North Dakota interesting?”

“Well, of course it’s different.”

“Tell me what North Dakota’s like. I’ve always wondered about these Western states.” It was Madeline’s second plagiarism of her cousin. “What is the general impression it makes on you?”

“I don’t think I know just how you mean.”

“I mean what is the general effect? The—impression.”

“Well, it’s got lots of wheat and lots of Swedes.”

“But I mean—I suppose you’re all terribly virile and energetic, compared with us Easterners.”

“I don’t—Well, yes, maybe.”

“Have you met lots of people in Zenith?”

“Not so awfully many.”

“Oh, have you met Dr. Birchall, that operates in your hospital? He’s such a nice man, and not just a good surgeon but frightfully talented. He sings won-derfully, and he comes from the most frightfully nice family.”

“No, I don’t think I’ve met him yet,” Leora bleated.

“Oh, you must. And he plays the slickest—the most gorgeous game of tennis. He always goes to all these millionaire parties on Royal Ridge. Frightfully smart.”

Martin now first interrupted. “Smart? Him? He hasn’t got any brains whatever.”

“My dear child, I didn’t mean ‘smart’ in that sense!” He sat alone and helpless while she again turned on Leora and ever more brightly inquired whether Leora knew this son of a corporation lawyer and that famous debutante, this hat-shop and that club. She spoke familiarly of what were known as the Leaders of Zenith Society, the personages who appeared daily in the society columns of the Advocate-Times, the Cowxes and Van Antrims and Dodsworths. Martin was astonished by the familiarity; he remembered that she had once gone to a charity ball in Zenith but he had not known that she was so intimate with the peerage. Certainly Leora had appallingly never heard of these great ones, nor even attended the concerts, the lectures, the recitals at which Madeline apparently spent all her glittering evenings.

Madeline shrugged a little, then, “Well—Of course with the fascinating doctors and everybody that you meet in the hospital, I suppose you’d find lectures frightfully tame. Well—” She dismissed Leora and looked patronizingly at Martin. “Are you planning some more work on the what-is-it with rabbits?”

He was grim. He could do it now, if he got it over quickly. “Madeline! Brought you two together because—Don’t know whether you cotton to each other or not, but I wish you could, because I’ve—I’m not making any excuses for myself. I couldn’t help it. I’m engaged to both of you, and I want to know—”

Madeline had sprung up. She had never looked quite so proud and fine. She stared at them, and walked away, wordless. She came back, she touched Leora’s shoulder, and quietly kissed her. “Dear, I’m sorry for you. You’ve got a job! You poor baby!” She strode away, her shoulders straight.

Hunched, frightened, Martin could not look at Leora.

He felt her hand on his. He looked up. She was smiling, easy, a little mocking. “Sandy, I warn you that I’m never going to give you up. I suppose you’re as bad as She says; I suppose I’m foolish—I’m a hussy. But you’re mine! I warn you it isn’t a bit of use your getting engaged to somebody else again. I’d tear her eyes out! Now don’t think so well of yourself! I guess you’re pretty selfish. But I don’t care. You’re mine!”

He said brokenly many things beautiful in their commonness.

She pondered, “I do feel we’re nearer together than you and Her. Perhaps you like me better because you can bully me—because I tag after you and She never would. And I know your work is more important to you than I am, maybe more important than you are. But I am stupid and ordinary and She isn’t. I simply admire you frightfully (Heaven knows why, but I do), while She has sense enough to make you admire Her and tag after Her.”

“No! I swear it isn’t because I can bully you, Leora—I swear it isn’t—I don’t think it is. Dearest, don’t don’t think she’s brighter than you are. She’s glib but—Oh, let’s stop talking! I’ve found you! My life’s begun!”