Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/225

 to meet him, they stood about him in a polite and twittery circle, and dismayingly they expected him to say something intelligent. Then, suffering, ghastly frightened, dumb, he was led through an arched doorway into the auditorium. Millions of faces were staring at his apologetic insignificance—faces in the curving lines of pews, faces in the low balcony, eyes which followed him and doubted him and noted that his heels were run down.

The agony grew while he was prayed over and sung over.

The pastor and the lay chairman of the Lecture Course opened with suitable devotions. While Martin trembled and tried to look brazenly at the massed people who were looking at him, while he sat nude and exposed and unprotected on the high platform, the pastor made announcement of the Thursday Missionary Supper and the Little Lads' Marching Club. They sang a brief cheerful hymn or two—Martin wondering whether to sit or stand—and the chairman prayed that "our friend who will address us to-day may have power to put his Message across." Through the prayer Martin sat with his forehead in his hand, feeling foolish, and raving, "I guess this is the proper attitude—they're all gawping at me—gosh, won't he ever quit?—oh, damn it, now what was that point I was going to make about fumigation?—oh, Lord, he's winding up and I've got to shoot!"

Somehow, he was standing by the reading-desk, holding it for support, and his voice seemed to be going on, producing reasonable words. The blur of faces cleared and he saw individuals. He picked out a keen old man and tried to make him laugh and marvel.

He found Leora, toward the back, nodding to him, reassuring him. He dared to look away from the path of faces directly in front of him. He glanced at the balcony—

The audience perceived a young man who was being earnest about sera and vaccines but, while his voice buzzed on, that churchly young man had noted two silken ankles distinguishing the front row of the balcony, had discovered that they belonged to Orchid Pickerbaugh and that she was flashing down admiration.

At the end Martin had the most enthusiastic applause ever known—all lecturers, after all lectures, are gratified by that kind of applause—and the chairman said the most flattering things ever uttered, and the audience went out with the most