Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [119]
“Well —” He did sit down, firmly, and tried to make youthful conversation, while Charley produced sentiments suitable, in Charley’s opinion, to the aged Dr. Arrowsmith, and Orchid made little purry interested sounds, an art in which she was very intelligent.
“Been, uh, been seeing many of the baseball games?” said Martin.
“Oh, been getting in all I can,” said Charley. “How’s things going at City Hall? Been nailing a lot of cases of small-pox and winkulus pinkulus and all those fancy diseases?”
“Oh, keep busy,” grunted old Dr. Arrowsmith.
He could think of nothing else. He listened while Charley and Orchid giggled cryptically about things which barred him out and made him feel a hundred years old: references to Mamie and Earl, and a violent “Yeh, that’s all right, but any time you see me dancing with her you just tell me about it, will yuh!” At the corner, Verbena Pickerbaugh was yelping, and observing, “Now you quit!” to persons unknown.
“Hell! It isn’t worth it! I’m going home,” Martin sighed, but at the moment Charley screamed, “Well, ta, ta, be good; gotta toddle along.”
He was left to Orchid and peace and a silence rather embarrassing.
“It’s so nice to be with somebody that has brains and doesn’t always try to flirt, like Charley,” said Orchid.
He considered, “Splendid! She’s going to be just a nice good girl. And I’ve come to my senses. We’ll just have a little chat and I’ll go home.”
She seemed to have moved nearer. She whispered at him, “I was so lonely, especially with that horrid slangy boy, till I heard your step on the walk. I knew it the second I heard it.”
He patted her hand. As his pats were becoming more ardent than might have been expected from the assistant and friend of her father, she withdrew her hand, clasped her knees, and began to chatter.
Always it had been so in the evenings when he had drifted to the porch and found her alone. She was ten times more incalculable than the most complex woman. He managed to feel guilty toward Leora without any of the reputed joys of being guilty.
While she talked he tried to discover whether she had any brains whatever. Apparently she did not have enough to attend a small Midwestern denominational college. Verbena was going to college this autumn, but Orchid, she explained, thought she “ought to stay home and help Mama take care of the chickabiddies.”
“Meaning,” Martin reflected, “that she can’t even pass the Mugford entrance exams!” But his opinion of her intelligence was suddenly enlarged as she whimpered, “Poor little me, prob’ly I’ll always stay here in Nautilus, while you — oh, with your knowledge and your frightfully strong will-power, I know you’re going to conquer the world!”
“Nonsense, I’ll never conquer any world, but I do hope to pull off a few good health measures. Honestly, Orchid honey, do you think I have much will-power?”
The full moon was spacious now behind the maples. The seedy Pickerbaugh domain was enchanted; the tangled grass was a garden of roses, the ragged grape-arbor a shrine to Diana, the old hammock turned to fringed cloth of silver, the bad-tempered and sputtering lawn-sprinkler a fountain, and over all the world was the proper witchery of moonstruck love. The little city, by day as noisy and busy as a pack of children, was stilled and forgotten. Rarely had Martin been inspired to perceive the magic of a perfect hour, so absorbed was he ever in irascible pondering, but now he was caught, and lifted in rapture.
He held Orchid’s quiet hand — and was lonely for Leora.
The belligerent Martin who had carried off Leora had not thought about romance, because in his clumsy way he had been romantic. The Martin who, like a returned warrior scented and enfeebled, yearned toward a girl in the moonlight, now desirously lifted his face to romance and was altogether unromantic.
He felt the duty of making love. He drew her close, but when she sighed, “Oh, please don’t,” there was in him no ruthlessness and no conviction with which to go on. He considered the moonlight again,