Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [35]
He was ordering, with agony. He had appropriated four dollars for the orgy, strictly including the tip, and his standard of good food was that he must spend every cent of the four dollars. While he wondered what “Puree St. Germain” could be, and the waiter hideously stood watching behind his shoulder, Madeline fell to. She chanted with horrifying politeness:
“Mr. Arrowsmith tells me you are a nurse, Miss — Tozer.”
“Yes, sort of.”
“Do you find it interesting?”
“Well — yes — yes, I think it’s interesting.”
“I suppose it must be wonderful to relieve suffering. Of course my work — I’m taking my Doctor of Philosophy degree in English —” She made it sound as though she were taking her earldom —“it’s rather dry and detached. I have to master the growth of the language and so on and so forth. With your practical training, I suppose you’d find that rather stupid.”
“Yes, it must be — no, it must be very interesting.”
“Do you come from Zenith, Miss — Tozer?”
“No, I come from — Just a little town. Well, hardly a town. . . . North Dakota.”
“Oh! North Dakota!”
“Yes. . . . Way West.”
“Oh, yes. . . . Are you staying East for some time?” It was precisely what a much-resented New York cousin had once said to Madeline.
“Well, I don’t — Yes, I guess I may be here quite some time.”
“Do you, uh, do you find you like it here?”
“Oh, yes, it’s pretty nice. These big cities — So much to see.”
“‘Big’? Well, I suppose it all depends on the point of view, DOESN’T it? I always think of New York as big but — Of course — Do you find the contrast to North Dakota interesting?”
“Well, of course it’s different.”
“Tell me what North Dakota’s like. I’ve always wondered about these Western states.” It was Madeline’s second plagiarism of her cousin. “What is the general impression it makes on you?”
“I don’t think I know just how you mean.”
“I mean what is the general effect? The — IMPRESSION.”
“Well, it’s got lots of wheat and lots of Swedes.”
“But I mean — I suppose you’re all terribly virile and energetic, compared with us Easterners.”
“I don’t — Well, yes, maybe.”
“Have you met lots of people in Zenith?”
“Not so AWFULLY many.”
“Oh, have you met Dr. Birchall, that operates in your hospital? He’s such a nice man, and not just a good surgeon but frightfully talented. He sings won-derfully, and he comes from the most frightfully nice family.”
“No, I don’t think I’ve met him yet,” Leora bleated.
“Oh, you must. And he plays the slickest — the most gorgeous game of tennis. He always goes to all these millionaire parties on Royal Ridge. Frightfully smart.”
Martin now first interrupted. “Smart? Him? He hasn’t got any brains whatever.”
“My dear child, I didn’t mean ‘smart’ in that sense!” He sat alone and helpless while she again turned on Leora and ever more brightly inquired whether Leora knew this son of a corporation lawyer and that famous debutante, this hatshop and that club. She spoke familiarly of what were known as the Leaders of Zenith Society, the personages who appeared daily in the society columns of the Advocate–Times, the Cowxes and Van Antrims and Dodsworths. Martin was astonished by the familiarity; he remembered that she had once gone to a charity ball in Zenith but he had not known that she was so intimate with the peerage. Certainly Leora had appallingly never heard of these great ones, nor even attended the concerts, the lectures, the recitals at which Madeline apparently spent all her glittering evenings.
Madeline shrugged a little, then, “Well — Of course with the fascinating doctors and everybody that you meet in the hospital, I suppose you’d find lectures frightfully tame. Well —” She dismissed Leora and looked patronizingly at Martin. “Are you planning some more work on the what-is-it with rabbits?”
He was grim. He could do it now, if he got it over quickly. “Madeline! Brought you two together because — Don’t know whether you cotton to each other or not, but I wish you could, because I’ve — I’m not making any excuses for myself. I couldn’t help it. I’m engaged to both of you, and I want