Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [206]
He was rescued from them by Rippleton Holabird, who burst through them with his hands out, crying, “Oh, my dear fellow! We know all that’s happened. We grieve for you so, and we’re so glad you were spared to come back to us.”
Whatever Martin might, under the shadow of Max Gottlieb, have said about Holabird, now he wrung his hands and muttered, “It’s good to be home.”
Holabird (he was wearing a blue shirt with a starched blue collar, like an actor) could not wait till Martin’s baggage had gone through the customs. He had to return to his duties as Acting Director of the Institute. He delayed only to hint that the Board of Trustees were going to make him full Director, and that certainly, my dear fellow, he would see that Martin had the credit and the reward he deserved.
When Holabird was gone, driving away in his neat coupe (he often explained that his wife and he could afford a chauffeur, but they preferred to spend the money on other things), Martin was conscious of Terry Wickett, leaning against a gnawed wooden pillar of the wharf-house, as though he had been there for hours.
Terry strolled up and snorted, “Hello, Slim. All O.K.? Lez shoot the stuff through the customs. Great pleasure to see the Director and you kissing.”
As they drove through the summer-walled streets of Brooklyn, Martin inquired, “How’s Holabird working out as Director? And how is Gottlieb?”
“Oh, the Holy Wren is no worse than Tubbs; he’s even politer and more ignorant. . . . Me, you watch me! One of these days I’m going off to the woods — got a shack in Vermont — going to work there without having to produce results for the Director! They’ve stuck me in the Department of Biochemistry. And Gottlieb —” Terry’s voice became anxious. “I guess he’s pretty shaky — They’ve pensioned him off. Now look, Slim: I hear you’re going to be a gilded department-head, and I’ll never be anything but an associate member. Are you going on with me, or are you going to be one of the Holy Wren’s pets — hero-scientist?”
“I’m with you, Terry, you old grouch.” Martin dropped the cynicism which had always seemed proper between him and Terry. “I haven’t got anybody else. Leora and Gustaf are gone and now maybe Gottlieb. You and I have got to stick together!”
“It’s a go!”
They shook hands, they coughed gruffly, and talked of straw hats.
V
When Martin entered the Institute, his colleagues galloped up to shake hands and to exclaim, and if their praise was flustering, there is no time at which one can stomach so much of it as at home-coming.
Sir Robert Fairlamb had written to the Institute a letter glorifying him. The letter arrived on the same boat with Martin, and next day Holabird gave it out to the press.
The reporters, who had been only a little interested at his landing, came around for interviews, and while Martin was sulky and jerky Holabird took them in hand, so that the papers were able to announce that America, which was always rescuing the world from something or other, had gone and done it again. It was spread in the prints that Dr. Martin Arrowsmith was not only a powerful witch-doctor and possibly something of a laboratory-hand, but also a ferocious rat-killer, village-burner, Special Board addresser, and snatcher from death. There was at the time, in certain places, a doubt as to how benevolent the United States had been to its Little Brothers — Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua — and the editors and politicians were grateful to Martin for this proof of their sacrifice and tender watchfulness.
He had letters from the Public Health service; from an enterprising Midwestern college which desired to make him a Doctor of Civil Law; from medical schools and societies which begged him to address them. Editorials on his work appeared in the medical journals and the newspapers; and Congressman Almus Pickerbaugh telegraphed him from Washington in what the Congressman may conceivably have regarded as verse: “They got to go some to get ahead of