Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [207]
He refused all invitations to speak, and the urgent organizations which had invited him responded with meekness that they understood how intimidatingly busy Dr. Arrowsmith was, and if he ever COULD find the time, they would be most highly honored —
Rippleton Holabird was elected full Director now, in succession to Gottlieb, and he sought to use Martin as the prize exhibit of the Institute. He brought all the visiting dignitaries, all the foreign Men of Measured Merriment, in to see him, and they looked pleased and tried to think up questions. Then Martin was made head of the new Department of Microbiology at twice his old salary.
He never did learn what was the difference between microbiology and bacteriology. But none of his glorification could he resist. He was still too dazed — he was more dazed when he had seen Max Gottlieb.
VI
The morning after his return he had telephoned to Gottlieb’s flat, had spoken to Miriam and received permission to call in the late afternoon.
All the way uptown he could hear Gottlieb saying, “You were my son! I gave you eferyt’ing I knew of truth and honor, and you haf betrayed me. Get out of my sight!”
Miriam met him in the hall, fretting, “I don’t know if I should have let you come at all, Doctor.”
“Why? Isn’t he well enough to see people?”
“It isn’t that. He doesn’t really seem ill, except that he’s feeble, but he doesn’t know anyone. The doctors say it’s senile dementia. His memory is gone. And he’s just suddenly forgotten all his English. He can only speak German, and I can’t speak it, hardly at all. If I’d only studied it, instead of music! But perhaps it may do him good to have you here. He was always so fond of you. You don’t know how he talked of you and the splendid experiment you’ve been doing in St. Hubert.”
“Well, I—” He could find nothing to say.
Miriam led him into a room whose walls were dark with books. Gottlieb was sunk in a worn chair, his thin hand lax on the arm.
“Doctor, it’s Arrowsmith, just got back!” Martin mumbled.
The old man looked as though he half understood; he peered at him, then shook his head and whimpered, “Versteh’ nicht.” His arrogant eyes were clouded with ungovernable slow tears.
Martin understood that never could he be punished now and cleansed. Gottlieb had sunk into his darkness still trusting him.
VII
Martin closed his flat — their flat — with a cold swift fury, lest he yield to his misery in finding among Leora’s possessions a thousand fragments which brought her back: the frock she had bought for Capitola McGurk’s dinner, a petrified chocolate she had hidden away to munch illegally by night, a memorandum, “Get almonds for Sandy.” He took a grimly impersonal room in a hotel, and sunk himself in work. There was nothing for him but work and the harsh friendship of Terry Wickett.
His first task was to check the statistics of his St. Swithin treatments and the new figures still coming in from Stokes. Some of them were shaky, some suggested that the value of phage certainly had been confirmed, but there was nothing final. He took his figures to Raymond Pearl the biometrician, who thought less of them than did Martin himself.
He had already made a report of his work to the Director and the Trustees of the Institute, with no conclusion except “the results await statistical analysis and should have this before they are published.” But Holabird had run wild, the newspapers had reported wonders, and in on Martin poured demands that he send out phage; inquiries as to whether he did not have a phage for tuberculosis, for syphilis; offers that he take charge of this epidemic and that.
Pearl had pointed out that his agreeable results in first phaging the whole of Carib village must be questioned, because it was possible that when he began, the curve of the disease had already passed its peak. With this and the other complications, viewing his hot work in St. Hubert as coldly