Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/375

 His forehead was cold, yet it was greasy with sweat as he babbled to the manageress of rooms and meals, as he prayed that Leora might not have seen the Things in that slow creaking wagon.

"I'd have choked her before I let her come, if I'd known," he was shuddering.

The woman apologized, "I must ask you gentlemen to carry your things up to your rooms. Our boys— They aren't here any more."

What became of the walking stick which, in such pleased vanity, Martin had bought in New York, he never knew. He was too busy guarding the cases of phage, and worrying, "Maybe this stuff would save everybody."

Now Stokes of St. Swithin's was a reticent man and hard, but when they had the last bag up-stairs, he leaned his head against a door, cried, "My God, Arrowsmith, I'm so glad you've got here," and broke from them, running One of the negro harbor-police, expressionless, speaking the English of the Antilles with something of the accent of Piccadilly, said, "Sar, have you any other command for I? If you permit, we boys will now go home. Sar, on the table is the whisky Dr. Stokes have told I to bring."

Martin stared. It was Sondelius who said, "Thank you very much, boys. Here's a quid between you. Now get some sleep.

They saluted and were not.

Sondelius made the novices as merry as he could for half an hour.

Martin and Leora woke to a broiling, flaring, green and crimson morning, yet ghastly still; awoke and realized that about them was a strange land, as yet unseen, and before them the work that in distant New York had seemed dramatic and joyful and that stank now of the charnel house.

A sort of breakfast was brought to them by a negress who, before she would enter, peeped fearfully at them from the door.

Sondelius rumbled in from his room, in an impassioned silk dressing-gown. If ever, spectacled and stooped, he had looked old, now he was young and boisterous.

"Hey, ya, Slim, I think we get some work here! Let me