Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [210]
He came now and then to tea, to dinner; he learned the ways of her house, her servants, the more nearly intelligent of her friends. He liked — and possibly he was liked by — some of them. With one friend of hers Martin had a state of undeclared war. This was Latham Ireland, an achingly well-dressed man of fifty, a competent lawyer who was fond of standing in front of fireplaces and being quietly clever. He fascinated Joyce by telling her that she was subtle, then telling her what she was being subtle about.
Martin hated him.
In midsummer Martin was invited for a week-end at Joyce’s vast blossom-hid country house at Greenwich. She was half apologetic for its luxury; he was altogether unhappy.
The strain of considering clothes; of galloping out to buy white trousers when he wanted to watch the test-tubes in the constant-temperature bath, of trying to look easy in the limousine which met him at the station, and of deciding which servants to tip and how much and when, was dismaying to a simple man. He felt rustic when, after he had blurted, “Just a minute til I go up and unpack my suit-case,” she said gently, “Oh, that will have been done for you.”
He discovered that a valet had laid out for him to put on, that first evening, all the small store of underclothes he had brought, and had squeezed out on his brush a ribbon of toothpaste.
He sat on the edge of his bed, groaning, “This is too rich for my blood!”
He hated and feared that valet, who kept stealing his clothes, putting them in places where they could not be found, then popping in menacingly when Martin was sneaking about the enormous room looking for them.
But his chief unhappiness was that there was nothing to do. He had no sport but tennis, at which he was too rusty to play with these chattering unidentified people who filled the house and, apparently with perfect willingness, worked at golf and bridge. He had met but few of the friends of whom they talked. They said, “You know dear old R. G.,” and he said, “Oh, YES,” but he never did know dear old R. G.
Joyce was as busily amiable as when they were alone at tea, and she found for him a weedy flapper whose tennis was worse than his own, but she had twenty guests — forty at Sunday lunch — and he gave up certain agreeable notions of walking with her in fresh lanes and, after excitedly saying this and that, perhaps kissing her. He had one moment with her. As he was going, she ordered, “Come here, Martin,” and led him apart.
“You haven’t really enjoyed it.”
“Why, sure, course I—”
“Of course you haven’t! And you despise us, rather, and perhaps you’re partly right. I do like pretty people and gracious manners and good games, but I suppose they seem piffling after nights in a laboratory.”
“No, I like ’em too. In a way. I like to look at beautiful women — at you! But — Oh, darn it, Joyce, I’m not up to it. I’ve always been poor and horribly busy. I haven’t learned your games.”
“But, Martin, you could, with the intensity you put into everything.”
“Even getting drunk in Blackwater!”
“And I hope in New York, too! Dear Roger, he did have such an innocent, satisfying time getting drunk at class-dinners! But I mean: if you went at it, you could play bridge and golf — and talking — better than any of them. If you only knew how frightfully recent most of the ducal class in America are! And Martin: wouldn’t it be good for you? Wouldn’t you work all the better if you got away from your logarithmic tables now and then? And are you going to admit there’s anything you can’t conquer?”
“No, I—”
“Will you come to dinner on Tuesday week, just us two, and we’ll fight it out?”
“Be glad to.”
For a number of hours, on the train to Terry Wickett’s vacation place in the Vermont hills, Martin was convinced that he loved Joyce Lanyon, and that he was going to attack the art of being amusing as he had attacked physical chemistry. Ardently, and quite humorlessly, as he sat stiffly in a stale Pullman chaircar with his feet up on his suit-case, he pictured himself wearing a club-tie (presumably