Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [86]
Once (still do men tell of it gratefully, up and down the Valley), they played for seventy-two unbroken hours, in the office of the Wheatsylvania garage. It had been a livery-stable; it was littered with robes and long whips, and the smell of horses mingled with the reek of gasoline.
The players came and went, and sometimes they slept on the floor for an hour or two, but they were never less than four in the game. The stink of cheap feeble cigarettes and cheap powerful cigars hovered about the table like a malign spirit; the floor was scattered with stubs, matches, old cards, and whisky bottles. Among the warriors were Martin, Alec Ingleblad the barber, and a highway engineer, all of them stripped to flannel undershirts, not moving for hour on hour, ruffling their cards, eyes squinting and vacant.
When Bert Tozer heard of the affair, he feared for the good fame of Wheatsylvania, and to everyone he gossiped about Martin’s evil ways and his own patience. Thus it happened that while Martin was at the height of his prosperity and credit as a physician, along the Pony River Valley sinuated the whispers that he was a gambler, that he was a “drinking man,” that he never went to church; and all the godly enjoyed mourning, “Too bad to see a decent young man like that going to the dogs.”
Martin was as impatient as he was stubborn. He resented the well-meant greetings: “You ought to leave a little hooch for the rest of us to drink, Doc,” or “I s’pose you’re too busy playing poker to drive out to the house and take a look at the woman.” He was guilty of an absurd and boyish tactlessness when he heard Norblom observing to the postmaster, “A fellow that calls himself a doctor just because he had luck with that fool Agnes Ingleblad, he hadn’t ought to go getting drunk and disgracing —”
Martin stopped. “Norblom! You talking about me?”
The storekeeper turned slowly. “I got more important things to do ‘n talk about you,” he cackled.
As Martin went on he heard laughter.
He told himself that these villagers were generous; that their snooping was in part an affectionate interest, and inevitable in a village where the most absorbing event of the year was the United Brethren Sunday School picnic on Fourth of July. But he could not rid himself of twitchy discomfort at their unending and maddeningly detailed comments on everything. He felt as though the lightest word he said in his consultation-room would be megaphoned from flapping ear to ear all down the country roads.
He was contented enough in gossiping about fishing with the barber, nor was he condescending to meteorologicomania, but except for Leora he had no one with whom he could talk of his work. Angus Duer had been cold, but Angus had his teeth into every change of surgical technique, and he was an acrid debater. Martin saw that, unless he struggled, not only would he harden into timid morality under the pressure of the village, but be fixed in a routine of prescriptions and bandaging.
He might find a stimulant in Dr. Hesselink of Groningen.
He had seen Hesselink only once, but everywhere he heard of him as the most honest practitioner in the Valley. On impulse Martin drove down to call on him.
Dr. Hesselink was a man of forty, ruddy, tall, broad-shouldered. You knew immediately that he was careful and that he was afraid of nothing, however much he might lack in imagination. He received Martin with no vast ebullience, and his stare said, “Well, what do you want? I’m a busy man.”
“Doctor,” Martin chattered, “do you find it hard to keep up with medical developments?”
“No. Read the medical journals.”
“Well, don’t you — gosh, I don’t want to get sentimental about it, but don’t you find that without contact with the Big Guns you get mentally lazy — sort of lacking in inspiration?”
“I do not! There’s enough inspiration for me in trying to help the sick.”
To himself Martin was protesting, “All right, if you don’t want to be friendly, go