Читать книгу Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis - Страница 41

V

As he grumped across the medical campus next day, he came unexpectedly upon Angus and he was smitten with the guiltiness and embarrassment one has toward a person who has borrowed money and probably will not return it. Mechanically he began to blurt “Hello,” but he checked it in a croak, scowled, and stumbled on.

“Oh, Mart,” Angus called. He was dismayingly even. “Remember speaking to me last evening? It struck me when I was going out that you looked huffy. I was wondering if you thought I’d been rude. I’m sorry if you did. Fact is, I had a rotten headache. Look. I’ve got four tickets for ‘As It Listeth,’ in Zenith, next Friday evening—original New York cast! Like to see it? And I noticed you were with a peach, at the dance. Suppose she might like to go along with us, she and some friend of hers?”

“Why—gosh—I’ll ’phone her—darn’ nice of you to ask us—”

It was not till melancholy dusk, when Leora had accepted and promised to bring with her a probationer-nurse named Nelly Byers, that Martin began to brood:

“Wonder if he did have a headache last night?

“Wonder if somebody gave him the tickets?

“Why didn’t he ask Dad Silva’s daughter to go with us? Does he think Leora is some tart I’ve picked up?

“Sure, he never really quarrels with anybody—wants to keep us all friendly, so we’ll send him surgical patients some day when we’re hick G. P.’s and he’s a Great and Only.

“Why did I crawl down so meekly?

“I don’t care! If Leora enjoys it—Me personally, I don’t care two hoots for all this trotting around—Though of course it isn’t so bad to see pretty women in fine clothes, and be dressed as good as anybody—Oh, I don’t know!”