Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [167]
Gottlieb was worried:
“I knew Tubbs was up to something idealistic and nasty when he came purring to me, but I did not t’ink he would try to turn you into a megaphone all so soon in one day! I will gird up my loins and go oud to battle with the forces of publicity!”
He was defeated.
“I have let you alone, Dr. Gottlieb,” said Tubbs, “but, hang it, I am the Director! And I must say that, perhaps owing to my signal stupidity, I fail to see the horrors of enabling Arrowsmith to cure thousands of suffering persons and to become a man of weight and esteem!”
Gottlieb took it to Ross McGurk.
“Max, I love you like a brother, but Tubbs is the Director, and if he feels he needs this Arrowsmith (Is he the thin young fellow I see around your lab?) then I have no right to stop him. I’ve got to back him up the same as I would the master of one of our ships,” said McGurk.
Not till the Board of Trustees, which consisted of McGurk himself, the president of the University of Wilmington, and three professors of science in various universities, should meet and give approval, would Martin be a department-head. Meantime Tubbs demanded:
“Now, Martin, you must hasten and publish your results. Get right to it. In fact you should have done it before this. Throw your material together as rapidly as possible and send a note in to the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, to be published in their next proceedings.”
“But I’m not ready to publish! I want to have every loophole plugged up before I announce anything whatever!”
“Nonsense! That attitude is old-fashioned. This is no longer an age of parochialism but of competition, in art and science just as much as in commerce — co-operation with your own group, but with those outside it, competition to the death! Plug up the holes thoroughly, later, but we can’t have somebody else stealing a march on us. Remember you have your name to make. The way to make it is by working with me — toward the greatest good for the greatest number.”
As Martin began his paper, thinking of resigning but giving it up because Tubbs seemed to him at least better than the Pickerbaughs, he had a vision of a world of little scientists, each busy in a roofless cell. Perched on a cloud, watching them, was the divine Tubbs, a glory of whiskers, ready to blast any of the little men who stopped being earnest and wasted time on speculation about anything which he had not assigned to them. Back of their welter of coops, unseen by the tutelary Tubbs, the lean giant figure of Gottlieb stood sardonic on a stormy horizon.
Literary expression was not easy to Martin. He delayed with his paper, while Tubbs became irritable and whipped him on. The experiments had ceased; there were misery and pen-scratching and much tearing of manuscript paper in Martin’s particular roofless cell.
For once he had no refuge in Leora. She cried:
“Why not? Ten thousand a year would be awfully nice, Sandy. Gee! We’ve always been so poor, and you do like nice flats and things. And to boss your own department — And you could consult Dr. Gottlieb just the same. He’s a department-head, isn’t he, and yet he keeps independent of Dr. Tubbs. Oh, I’m for it!”
And slowly, under the considerable increase in respect given to him at Institute lunches, Martin himself was “for it.”
“We could get one of those new apartments on Park Avenue. Don’t suppose they cost more than three thousand a year,” he meditated. “Wouldn’t be so bad to be able to entertain people there. Not that I’d let it interfere with my work. . . . Kind of nice.”
It was still more kind of nice, however agonizing in the taking, to be recognized socially.
Capitola McGurk, who hitherto had not perceived him except as an object less interesting than Gladys the Centrifuge, telephoned: “. . . Dr. Tubbs so enthusiastic and Ross and I are so pleased. Be delighted if Mrs. Arrowsmith and you could dine with us next Thursday at eight-thirty.”
Martin accepted the royal command.
It was his conviction that after glimpses of Angus Duer and Rippleton Holabird he had seen luxury, and understood