Arrowsmith. Sinclair Lewis
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Arrowsmith?” demanded Bert. “Huh! Well, guess you’re glad to be out here in God’s country!”
“Yes, it’s fine—”
“Trouble with the Eastern states is, they haven’t got the git, or the room to grow. You ought to see a real Dakota harvest! Look here, how come you’re away from school this time of year?”
“Why—”
“I know all about school-terms. I went to business college in Grand Forks. How come you can get away now?”
“I took a little lay-off.”
“Leora says you and her are thinking of getting married.”
“We—”
“Got any cash outside your school-money?”
“I have not!”
“Thought so! How juh expect to support a wife?”
“I suppose I’ll be practicing medicine some day.”
“Some day! Then what’s the use of talking about being engaged till you can support a wife?”
“That,” interrupted Bert’s lady-love, Miss Ada Quist, “that’s just what I said, Ory!” She seemed to speak with her pointed nose as much as with her button of a mouth. “If Bert and I can wait, I guess other people can!”
Mrs. Tozer whimpered, “Don’t be too hard on Mr. Arrowsmith, Bertie. I’m sure he wants to do the right thing.”
“I’m not being hard on anybody! I’m being sensible. If Pa and you would tend to things instead of standing around fussing, I wouldn’t have to butt in. I don’t believe in interfering with anybody else’s doings, or anybody interfering with mine. Live and let live and mind your own business is my motto, and that’s what I said to Alec Ingleblad the other day when I was in there having a shave and he was trying to get funny about our holding so many mortgages, but I’ll be blamed if I’m going to allow a fellow that I don’t know anything about to come snooping around My Sister till I find out something about his prospects!”
Leora crooned, “Bertie, lamb, your tie is climbing your collar again.”
“Yes and you, Ory,” shrieked Bert, “if it wasn’t for me you’d have married Sam Petchek, two years ago!”
Bert further said, with instances and illustrations, that she was light-minded, and as for nursing—Nursing!
She said that Bert was what he was, and tried to explain to Martin the matter of Sam Petchek. (It has never yet been altogether explained.)
Ada Quist said that Leora did not care if she broke her dear parents’ hearts and ruined Bert’s career.
Martin said, “Look here, I—” and never got farther.
Mr. and Mrs. Tozer said they were all to be calm, and of course Bert didn’t mean—But really, it was true; they had to be sensible, and how Mr. Arrowsmith could expect to support a wife—
The conference lasted till nine-thirty, which, as Mr. Tozer pointed out, was everybody’s bedtime, and except for the five-minute discussion as to whether Miss Ada Quist was to stay to supper, and the debate on the saltiness of this last cornbeef, they clave faithfully to the inquiry as to whether Martin and Leora were engaged. All persons interested, which apparently did not include Martin and Leora, decided that they were not. Bert ushered Martin upstairs. He saw to it that the lovers should not have a chance for a good-night kiss; and until Mr. Tozer called down the hall, at seven minutes after ten, “You going to stay up and chew the rag the whole blessed night, Bert?” he made himself agreeable by sitting on Martin’s bed, looking derisively at his shabby baggage, and demanding the details of his parentage, religion, politics, and attitude toward the horrors of card-playing and dancing.
At breakfast they all hoped that Martin would stay one more night in their home—plenty of room.
Bert stated that Martin would come down-town at ten and be shown the bank, creamery, and wheat elevator.
But at ten Martin and Leora were on the eastbound train. They got out at the county seat, Leopolis, a vast city of four thousand population, with a three-story building. At one that afternoon they were married, by the German Lutheran pastor. His study was a bareness surrounding a large, rusty wood-stove, and the witnesses, the pastor’s wife and an old German who had been shoveling walks, sat on the wood-box and looked drowsy. Not till they had caught the afternoon train for Wheatsylvania did Martin and Leora escape from the ghostly apprehension which had hunted them all day. In the fetid train, huddled close, hands locked, innocently free of the alienation which the pomposity of weddings sometimes casts between lovers, they sighed, “Now what are we going to do—what are we going to do?”
At the Wheatsylvania station they were met by the whole family, rampant.
Bert had suspected elopement. He had searched half a dozen towns by long-distance telephone, and got through to the county clerk just after the license had been granted. It did not soften Bert’s mood to have the clerk remark that if Martin and Leora were of age, there was nothing he could do, and he didn’t “care a damn who’s talking—I’m running this Office!”
Bert had come to the station determined to make Martin perfect, even as Bert Tozer was perfect, and to do it right now.
It was a dreadful evening in the Tozer mansion.
Mr. Tozer said, with length, that Martin had undertaken responsibilities.
Mrs. Tozer wept, and said that she hoped Ory had not, for certain reasons, had to be married—
Bert said that if such was the case, he’d kill Martin—
Ada Quist said that Ory could now see what came of pride and boasting about going off to her old Zenith—
Mr. Tozer said that there was one good thing about it, anyway: Ory could see for herself that they couldn’t let her go back to nursing school and get into more difficulties—
Martin from time to time offered remarks to the effect that he was a good young man, a wonderful bacteriologist, and able to take care of his wife; but no one save Leora listened.
Bert further propounded (while his father squeaked, “Now don’t be too hard on the boy,”) that if Martin thought for one single second that he was going to get one red cent out of the Tozers because he’d gone and butted in where nobody’d invited him, he, Bert, wanted to know about it, that was all, he certainly wanted to know about it!
And Leora watched them, turning her little head from one to another. Once she came over to press Martin’s hand. In the roughest of the storm, when Martin was beginning to glare, she drew from a mysterious pocket a box of very bad cigarettes, and lighted one. None of the Tozers had discovered that she smoked. Whatever they thought about her sex morals, her infidelity to United Brethrenism, and her general dementia, they had not suspected that she could commit such an obscenity as smoking. They charged on her, and Martin caught his breath savagely.
During these fulminations Mr. Tozer had somehow made up his mind. He could at times take the lead away from Bert, whom he considered useful but slightly indiscreet, and unable to grasp the “full value of a dollar.” (Mr. Tozer valued it at one dollar and ninety, but the progressive Bert at scarce more than one-fifty.) Mr. Tozer mildly gave orders:
They were to stop “scrapping.” They had no proof that Martin was necessarily a bad match for Ory. They would see. Martin would return to medical school at once, and be a good boy and get through as quickly as he could and begin to earn money. Ory would remain at home and behave herself—and she certainly would never act like a Bad Woman again, and smoke cigarettes. Meantime Martin and she would have no, uh, relations. (Mrs. Tozer looked embarrassed, and the hungrily attentive Ada Quist tried to blush.) They could write to each other once a week, but that was all. They would in no way, uh, act as though they were married till he gave permission.
“Well?” he demanded.
Doubtless