I
With Terry Wickett gone, Martin returned to phage. He made a false start and did the worst work of his life. He had lost his fierce serenity. He was too conscious of the ordeal of a professional social life, and he could never understand that esoteric phenomenon, the dinner-party—the painful entertainment of people whom one neither likes nor finds interesting.
So long as he had had a refuge in talking to Terry, he had not been too irritated by well-dressed nonentities, and for a time he had enjoyed the dramatic game of making Nice People accept him. Now he was disturbed by reason.
Clif Clawson showed him how tangled his life had grown.
When he had first come to New York, Martin had looked for Clif, whose boisterousness had been his comfort among Angus Duers and Irving Watterses in medical school. Clif was not to be found, neither at the motor agency for which he had once worked nor elsewhere on Automobile Row. For fourteen years Martin had not seen him.
Then to his laboratory at McGurk was brought a black-and-red card:
Clifford L. Clawson
(Clif)
Top Notch Guaranteed Oil Investments
“Clif! Good old Clif! The best friend a man ever had! That time he lent me the money to get to Leora! Old Clif! By golly I need somebody like him, with Terry out of it and all these tea-hounds around me!” exulted Martin.
He dashed out and stopped abruptly, staring at a man who was, not softly, remarking to the girl reception-clerk:
“Well, sister, you scientific birds certainly do lay on the agony! Never struck a sweller layout than you got here, except in crook investment-offices—and I’ve never seen a nicer cutie than you anywhere. How ’bout lil dinner one of these beauteous evenings? I expect I’ll parley-vous with thou full often now—I’m a great friend of Doc Arrowsmith. Fact I’m a doc myself—honest—real sawbones—went to medic school and everything. Ah! Here’s the boy!”
Martin had not allowed for the changes of fourteen years. He was dismayed.
Clif Clawson, at forty, was gross. His face was sweaty, and puffy with pale flesh; his voice was raw; he fancied checked Norfolk jackets, tight across his swollen shoulders and his beefy hips.
He bellowed, while he belabored Martin’s back:
“Well, well, well, well, well, well! Old Mart! Why, you old son of a gun! Why, you old son of a gun! Why, you damn old chicken-thief! Say you skinny little runt, I’m a son of a gun if you look one day older’n when I saw you last in Zenith!”
Martin was aware of the bright leering of the once-humble reception-clerk. He said, “Well, gosh, it certainly is good to see you,” and hastened to get Clif into the privacy of his office.
“You look fine,” he lied, when they were safe. “What you been doing with yourself? Leora and I did our best to look you up, when we first came to New York. Uh—Do you know about, uh, about her?”
“Yuh, I read about her passing away. Fierce luck. And about your swell work in the West Indies—where was it? I guess you’re a great man now—famous plague-chaser and all that stuff, and world-renowned skee-entist. I don’t suppose you remember your old friends now.”
“Oh, don’t be a chump! It’s—it’s—it’s fine to see you.”
“Well, I’m glad to observe you haven’t got the capitus enlargatus, Mart. Golly, I says to meself says I, if I blew in and old Mart high-hatted me, I’d just about come nigh unto letting him hear the straight truth, after all the compliments he’s been getting from the sassiety dames. I’m glad you’ve kept your head. I thought about writing you from Butte—been selling some bum oil-stock there and kind of got out quick to save the inspectors the trouble of looking over my books. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘I’ll just sit down and write the whey-faced runt a letter, and make him feel good by telling him how tickled I am over his nice work.’ But you know how it is—time kind of slips by. Well, this is excellentus! We’ll have a chance to see a whole lot of each other now. I’m going in with a fellow on an investment stunt here in New York. Great pickings, old kid! I’ll take you out and show you how to order a real feed, one of these days. Well, tell me what you been doing since you got back from the West Indies. I suppose you’re laying your plans to try and get in as the boss or president or whatever they call it of this gecelebrated Institute.”
“No—I, uh, well, I shouldn’t much care to be Director. I prefer sticking to my lab. I—Perhaps you’d like to hear about my work on phage.”
Rejoicing to discover something of which he could talk, Martin sketched his experiments.
Clif spanked his forehead with a spongy hand and shouted:
“Wait! Say, I’ve got an idea—and you can come right in on it. As I apperceive it, the dear old Gen. Public is just beginning to hear about this bac—what is it?—bacteriophage junk. Look here! Remember that old scoundrel Benoni Carr, that I introduced as a great pharmacologist at the medical banquet? Had din-din with him last eventide. He’s running a sanitarium out on Long Island—slick idea, too—practically he’s a bootlegger; gets a lot of high-rollers out there and let’s ’em have all the hooch they want, on prescriptions, absolutely legal and watertight! The parties they throw at that joint, dames and everything! Believe me, Uncle Clif is sore stricken with tootelus bootelus and is going to the Carr Sanitarium for what ails him! But now look: Suppose we got him or somebody to rig up a new kind of cure—call it phageotherapy—oh, it takes Uncle Clif to invent the names that claw in the bounteous dollars! Patients sit in a steam cabinet and eat tablets made of phage, with just a little strychnin to jazz up their hearts! Brand-new! Million in it! What-cha-think?”
Martin was almost feeble. “No. I’m afraid I’m against it.”
“Why?”
“Well, I—Honestly, Clif, if you don’t understand it, I don’t know how I can explain the scientific attitude to you. You know—that’s what Gottlieb used to call it—scientific attitude. And as I’m a scientist—least I hope I am—I couldn’t—Well, to be associated with a thing like that—”
“But, you poor louse, don’t you suppose I understand the scientific attitude? Gosh, I’ve seen a dissecting-room myself! Why, you poor crab, of course I wouldn’t expect you to have your name associated with it! You’d keep in the background and slip us all the dope, and get a lot of publicity for phage in general so the Dee‑ah People would fall easier, and we’d pull all the strong-arm work.”
“But—I hope you’re joking, Clif. If you weren’t joking, I’d tell you that if anybody tried to pull a thing like that, I’d expose ’em and get ’em sent to jail, no matter who they were!”
“Well, gosh, if you feel that way about it—!”
Clif was peering over the fatty pads beneath his eyes. He sounded doubtful:
“I suppose you have the right to keep other guys from grabbing your own stuff. Well, all right, Mart. Got to be teloddeling. Tell you what you might do, though, if that don’t hurt your tender conscience, too: you might invite old Clif up t’ the house for dinner, to meet the new lil wifey that I read about in the sassiety journals. You might happen to remember, old bean, that there have been times when you were glad enough to let poor fat old Clif slip you a feed and a place to sleep!”
“Oh, I know. You bet there have! Nobody was ever decenter to me; nobody. Look. Where you staying? I’ll find out from my wife what dates we have ahead, and telephone you tomorrow morning.”
“So you let the Old Woman keep the worksheet for you, huh? Well, I never butt into anybody’s business. I’m staying at the Berrington Hotel, room 617—’member that, 617—and you might try and phone me before ten tomorrow. Say, that’s one grand sweet song of a cutie you got on the door here. What cha think? How’s chances on dragging her out to feed and shake a hoof with Uncle Clif?”
As primly as the oldest, most staid scientist in the Institute, Martin protested, “Oh, she belongs to very nice family. I don’t think I should try it. Really, I’d rather you didn’t.”
Clif’s gaze was sharp, for all its fattiness.
With excessive cordiality, with excessive applause when Clif remarked, “You better go back to work and put some salt on a coupla bacteria’s tails,” Martin guided him to the reception-room, safely past the girl clerk, and to the elevator.
For a long time he sat in his office and was thoroughly wretched.
He had for years pictured Clif Clawson as another Terry Wickett. He saw that Clif was as different from Terry as from Rippleton Holabird. Terry was rough, he was surly, he was colloquial, he despised many fine and gracious things, he offended many fine and gracious people, but these acerbities made up the haircloth robe wherewith he defended a devotion to such holy work as no cowled monk ever knew. But Clif—
“I’d do the world a service by killing that man!” Martin fretted. “Phageotherapy at a yegg sanitarium! I stand him only because I’m too much of a coward to risk his going around saying that ‘in the days of my Success, I’ve gone back on my old friends.’ (Success! Puddling at work! Dinners! Talking to idiotic women! Being furious because you weren’t invited to the dinner to the Portuguese minister!) No. I’ll phone Clif we can’t have him at the house.”
Over him came remembrance of Clif’s loyalty in the old barren days, and Clif’s joy to share with him every pathetic gain.
“Why should he understand my feeling about phage? Was his scheme any worse than plenty of reputable drug-firms? How much was I righteously offended, and how much was I sore because he didn’t recognize the high social position of the rich Dr. Arrowsmith?”
He gave up the question, went home, explained almost frankly to Joyce what her probable opinion of Clif would be, and contrived that Clif should be invited to dinner with only the two of them.
“My dear Mart,” said Joyce, “why do you insult me by hinting that I’m such a snob that I’ll be offended by racy slang and by business ethics very much like those of dear Roger’s grandpapa? Do you think I’ve never ventured out of the drawing-room? I thought you’d seen me outside it! I shall probably like your Clawson person very much indeed.”
The day after Martin had invited him to dinner, Clif telephoned to Joyce:
“This Mrs. Arrowsmith? Well, say, this is old Clif.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch it.”
“Clif! Old Clif!”
“I’m frightfully sorry but—Perhaps there’s a bad connection.”
“Why, it’s Mr. Clawson, that’s going to feed with you on—”
“Oh, of course. I am so sorry.”
“Well, look: What I wanted to know is: Is this going to be just a homey grub-grabbing or a real soiree? In other words, honey, shall I dress natural or do I put on the soup-and-fish? Oh, I got ’em—swallowtail and the whole darn outfit!”
“I—Do you mean—Oh. Shall you dress for dinner? I think perhaps I would.”
“Attaboy! I’ll be there, dolled up like a new saloon. I’ll show you folks the cutest lil line of jeweled studs you ever laid eyes on. Well, it’s been a great pleezhure to meet Mart’s Missus, and we will now close with singing ‘Till We Meet Again’ or ‘Au Reservoir.’ ”
When Martin came home, Joyce faced him with, “Sweet, I can’t do it! The man must be mad. Really, dear, you just take care of him and let me go to bed. Besides: you two won’t want me—you’ll want to talk over old times, and I’d only interfere. And with baby coming in two months now, I ought to go to bed early.”
“Oh, Joy, Clif’d be awfully offended, and he’s always been so decent to me and—And you’ve often asked me about my cub days. Don’t you want,” plaintively, “to hear about ’em?”
“Very well, dear. I’ll try to be a little sunbeam to him, but I warn you I shan’t be a success.”
They worked themselves up to a belief that Clif would be raucous, would drink too much, and slap Joyce on the back. But when he appeared for dinner he was agonizingly polite and flowery—till he became slightly drunk. When Martin said “damn,” Clif reproved him with, “Of course I’m only a hick, but I don’t think a lady like the Princess here would like you to cuss.”
And, “Well, I never expected a rube like young Mart to marry the real bon-ton article.”
And, “Oh, maybe it didn’t cost something to furnish this dining-room, oh, not a-tall!”
And, “Champagne, heh? Well, you’re certainly doing poor old Clif proud. Your Majesty, just tell your High Dingbat to tell his valay to tell my secretary the address of your bootlegger, will you?”
In his cups, though he severely retained his moral and elegant vocabulary, Clif chronicled the jest of selling oil-wells unprovided with oil and of escaping before the law closed in; the cleverness of joining churches for the purpose of selling stock to the members; and the edifying experience of assisting Dr. Benoni Carr to capture a rich and senile widow for his sanitarium by promising to provide medical consultation from the spirit-world.
Joyce was silent through it all, and so superbly polite that everyone was wretched.
Martin struggled to make a liaison between them, and he had no elevating remarks about the strangeness of a man’s boasting of his own crookedness, but he was coldly furious when Clif blundered:
“You said old Gottlieb was sort of down on his luck now.”
“Yes, he’s not very well.”
“Poor old coot. But I guess you’ve realized by now how foolish you were when you used to fall for him like seven and a half brick. Honestly, Lady Arrowsmith, this kid used to think Pa Gottlieb was the cat’s pajamas—begging your pardon for the slanguageness.”
“What do you mean?” said Martin.
“Oh, I’m onto Gottlieb! Of course you know as well as I do that he always was a self-advertiser, getting himself talked about by confidin’ to the whole ops terrara what a strict scientist he was, and putting on a lot of dog and emitting these wise cracks about philosophy and what fierce guys the regular docs were. But what’s worse than—Out in San Diego I ran onto a fellow that used to be an instructor in botany in Winnemac, and he told me that with all this antibody stuff of his, Gottlieb never gave any credit to—well, he was some Russian that did most of it before and Pa Gottlieb stole all his stuff.”
That in this charge against Gottlieb there was a hint of truth, that he knew the great god to have been at times ungenerous, merely increased the rage which was clenching Martin’s fist in his lap.
Three years before, he would have thrown something, but he was an adaptable person. He had yielded to Joyce’s training in being quietly instead of noisily disagreeable; and his only comment was “No, I think you’re wrong, Clif. Gottlieb has carried the antibody work way beyond all the others.”
Before the coffee and liqueurs had come into the drawing-room, Joyce begged, at her prettiest, “Mr. Clawson, do you mind awfully if I slip up to bed? I’m so frightfully glad to have had the opportunity of meeting one of my husband’s oldest friends, but I’m not feeling very well, and I do think I’d be wise to have some rest.”
“Madam the Princess, I noticed you were looking peeked.”
“Oh! Well—Good night!”
Martin and Clif settled in large chairs in the drawing-room, and tried to play at being old friends happy in meeting. They did not look at each other.
After Clif had cursed a little and told three sound smutty stories, to show that he had not been spoiled and that he had been elegant only to delight Joyce, he flung:
“Huh! So that is that, as the Englishers remark. Well, I could see your Old Lady didn’t cotton to me. She was just as chummy as an iceberg. But gosh, I don’t mind. She’s going to have a kid, and of course women, all of ’em, get cranky when they’re that way. But—”
He hiccuped, looked sage, and bolted his fifth cognac.
“But what I never could figure out—Mind you, I’m not criticizing the Old Lady. She’s as swell as they make ’em. But what I can’t understand is how after living with Leora, who was the real thing, you can stand a hoity-toity skirt like Joycey!”
Then Martin broke.
The misery of not being able to work, these months since Terry had gone, had gnawed at him.
“Look here, Clif. I won’t have you discuss my wife. I’m sorry she doesn’t please you, but I’m afraid that in this particular matter—”
Clif had risen, not too steadily, though his voice and his eyes were resolute.
“All right. I figured out you were going to high-hat me. Of course I haven’t got a rich wife to slip me money. I’m just a plain old hobo. I don’t belong in a place like this. Not smooth enough to be a butler. You are. All right. I wish you luck. And meanwhile you can go plumb to hell, my young friend!”
Martin did not pursue him into the hall.
As he sat alone he groaned, “Thank Heaven, that operation’s over!”
He told himself that Clif was a crook, a fool, and a fat waster; he told himself that Clif was a cynic without wisdom, a drunkard without charm, and a philanthropist who was generous only because it larded his vanity. But these admirable truths did not keep the operation from hurting any more than it would have eased the removal of an appendix to be told that it was a bad appendix, an appendix without delicacy or value.
He had loved Clif—did love him and always would. But he would never see him again. Never!
The impertinence of that flabby blackguard to sneer at Gottlieb! His boorishness! Life was too short for—
“But hang it—yes, Clif is a tough, but so am I. He’s a crook, but wasn’t I a crook to fake my plague figures in St. Hubert—and the worse crook because I got praise for it?”
He bobbed up to Joyce’s room. She was lying in her immense four-poster, reading Peter Whiffle.
“Darling, it was all rather dreadful, wasn’t it!” she said. “He’s gone?”
“Yes … He’s gone … I’ve driven out the best friend I ever had—practically. I let him go, let him go off feeling that he was a rotter and a failure. It would have been decenter to have killed him. Oh, why couldn’t you have been simple and jolly with him? You were so confoundedly polite! He was uneasy and unnatural, and showed up worse than he really is. He’s no tougher than—he’s a lot better than the financiers who cover up their stuff by being suave … Poor devil! I’ll bet right now Clif’s tramping in the rain, saying, ‘The one man I ever loved and tried to do things for has turned against me, now he’s—now he has a lovely wife. What’s the use of ever being decent?’ he’s saying … Why couldn’t you be simple and chuck your highfalutin’ manners for once?”
“See here! You disliked him quite as much as I did, and I will not have you blame it on me! You’ve grown beyond him. You that are always blaring about Facts—can’t you face the fact? For once, at least, it’s not my fault. You may perhaps remember, my king of men, that I had the good sense to suggest that I shouldn’t appear tonight; not meet him at all.”
“Oh—well—yes—gosh—but—Oh, I suppose so. Well, anyway—It’s over, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Darling, I do understand how you feel. But isn’t it good it is over! Kiss me good night.”
“But”—Martin said to himself, as he sat feeling naked and lost and homeless, in the dressing-gown of gold dragonflies on black silk which she had bought for him in Paris—“but if it’d been Leora instead of Joyce—Leora would’ve known Clif was a crook, and she’d’ve accepted it as a fact. (Talk about your facing facts!) She wouldn’t’ve insisted on sitting as a judge. She wouldn’t’ve said, ‘This is different from me, so it’s wrong.’ She’d’ve said, ‘This is different from me, so it’s interesting.’ Leora—”
He had a sharp, terrifying vision of her, lying there coffinless, below the mold in a garden on the Penrith Hills.
He came out of it to growl, “What was it Clif said? ‘You’re not her husband—you’re her butler—you’re too smooth.’ He was right! The whole point is: I’m not allowed to see who I want to. I’ve been so clever that I’ve made myself the slave of Joyce and Holy Holabird.”
He was always going to, but he never did see Clif Clawson again.