Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [164]
It was when anthropophobia set in, when he was made uneasy by people who walked too close to him, that, sagely viewing his list and seeing how many phobias were now checked, he permitted himself to rest.
He fled to the Vermont hills for a four-day tramp — alone, that he might pound on the faster. He went at night, by sleeper, and was able to make the most interesting observations of siderodromophobia.
He lay in a lower berth, the little pillow wadded into a lump. He was annoyed by the waving of his clothes as they trailed from the hanger beside him, at the opening of the green curtains. The window-shade was up six inches; it left a milky blur across which streaked yellow lights, emphatic in the noisy darkness of his little cell. He was shivering with anxiety. Whenever he tried to relax, he was ironed back into apprehension. When the train stopped between stations and from the engine came a questioning, fretful whistle, he was aghast with certainty that something had gone wrong — a bridge was out, a train was ahead of them; perhaps another was coming just behind them, about to smash into them at sixty miles an hour —
He imagined being wrecked, and he suffered more than from the actual occurrence, for he pictured not one wreck but half a dozen, with assorted miseries. . . . The flat wheel just beneath him — surely it shouldn’t pound like that — why hadn’t the confounded man with the hammer detected it at the last big station?— the flat wheel cracking; the car lurching, falling, being dragged on its side. . . . A collision, a crash, the car instantly a crumpled, horrible heap, himself pinned in the telescoped berth, caught between seat and seat. Shrieks, death groans, the creeping flames. . . . The car turning, falling plumping into a river on its side; himself trying to crawl through a window as the water seeped about his body. . . . Himself standing by the wrenched car, deciding whether to keep away and protect his sacred work or go back, rescue people, and be killed.
So real were the visions that he could not endure lying here, waiting. He reached for the berth light, and could not find the button. In agitation he tore a match-box from his coat pocket, scratched a match, snapped on the light. He saw himself, under the sheets, reflected in the polished wooden ceiling of his berth like a corpse in a coffin. Hastily he crawled out, with trousers and coat over his undergarments (he had somehow feared to show so much trust in the train as to put on pajamas), and with bare disgusted feet he paddled up to the smoking compartment. The porter was squatting on a stool, polishing an amazing pile of shoes.
Martin longed for his encouraging companionship, and ventured, “Warm night.”
“Uh-huh,” said the porter.
Martin curled on the chill leather seat of the smoking compartment, profoundly studying a brass wash-bowl. He was conscious that the porter was disapproving, but he had comfort in calculating that the man must make this run thrice a week, tens of thousands of miles yearly, apparently without being killed, and there might be a chance of their lasting till morning.
He smoked till his tongue was raw and till, fortified by the calmness of the porter, he laughed at the imaginary catastrophes. He staggered sleepily to his berth.
Instantly he was tense again, and he lay awake till dawn.
For four days he tramped, swam in cold brooks, slept under trees or in straw stacks, and came back (but by day) with enough reserve