Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [126]
In Nautilus, alone, rarely saying much about herself, Leora had developed an intense mute little life of her own. She belonged to a bridge club, and she went solemnly by herself to the movies, but her ambition was to know France and it engrossed her. It was an old desire, mysterious in source and long held secret, but suddenly she was sighing:
“Sandy, the one thing I want to do, maybe ten years from now, is to see Touraine and Normandy and Carcassonne. Could we, do you think?”
Rarely had Leora asked for anything. He was touched and puzzled as he watched her reading books on Brittany, as he caught her, over a highly simplified French grammar, breathing “J’ay — j’aye — damn it, whatever it is!”
He crowed, “Lee, dear if you want to go to France — Listen! Some day we’ll shoot over there with a couple of knapsacks on our backs, and we’ll see that ole country from end to end!”
Gratefully yet doubtfully: “You know if you got bored, Sandy, you could go see the work at the Pasteur Institute. Oh, I would like to tramp, just once, between high plastered walls, and come to a foolish little cafe and watch the men with funny red sashes and floppy blue pants go by. Really, do you think maybe we could?”
Leora was strangely popular in the Ashford Grove Group, though she possessed nothing of what Martin called their “elegance.” She always had at least one button missing. Mrs. Tredgold, best natured as she was least pious of women, adopted her complete.
Nautilus had always doubted Clara Tredgold. Mrs. Almus Pickerbaugh said that she “took no part in any movement for the betterment of the city.” For years she had seemed content to grow her roses, to make her startling hats, to almond-cream her lovely hands, and listen to her husband’s improper stories — and for years she had been a lonely woman. In Leora she perceived an interested casualness equal to her own. The two women spent afternoons sitting on the sun-porch, reading, doing their nails, smoking cigarettes, saying nothing, trusting each other.
With the other women of the Group Leora was never so intimate as with Clara Tredgold, but they liked her, the more because she was a heretic whose vices, her smoking, her indolence, her relish of competent profanity, disturbed Mrs. Pickerbaugh and Mrs. Irving Watters. The Group rather approved all unconventionalities — except such economic unconventionalities as threatened their easy wealth. Leora had tea, or a cocktail, alone with nervous young Mrs. Monte Mugford, who had been the lightest-footed debutante in Des Moines four years before and who hated now the coming of her second baby; and it was to Leora that Mrs. Schlemihl, though publicly she was rompish and serene with her porker of a husband, burst out, “If that man would only quit pawing me — reaching for me — slobbering on me! I hate it here! I WILL have my winter in New York — alone!”
The childish Martin Arrowsmith, so unworthy of Leora’s old quiet wisdoms, was not content with her acceptance by the Group. When she appeared with a hook unfastened or her hair like a crow’s nest, he worried, and said things about her “sloppiness” which he later regretted.
“Why can’t you take a little time to make yourself attractive? God knows you haven’t anything else to do! Great Jehoshaphat, can’t you even sew on buttons?”
But Clara Tredgold laughed, “Leora, I do think you have the sweetest back, but do you mind if I pin you up before the others come?”
It happened after a party which lasted till two, when Mrs. Schlemihl had worn the new frock from Lucile’s and Jack Brundidge (by day vice-president