Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/379

 After them trailed an odor of rotting.

Martin did not feel superior to humanity.

With broad porches and low roof, among bright flamboyants and the cheerful sago palms, the bungalow of Penrith Lodge lay high on a crest, looking across the ugly flat of the town to the wash of sea. At its windows the reed jalousies whispered and clattered, and the high bare rooms were enlivened by figured Carib scarfs It had belonged to the port-doctor, dead these three days.

Inchcape Jones assured the doubtful Leora that she would nowhere else be so safe; the house was rat-proofed, and the doctor had caught the plague at the pier, had died without ever coming back to this well-beloved bungalow in which he, the professional bachelor, had given the most clamorous parties in St. Hubert.

Martin had with him sufficient equipment for a small laboratory, and he established it in a bedroom with gas and running water. Next to it was his and Leora's bedroom, then an apartment which Sondelius immediately made homelike by dropping his clothes and his pipe ashes all over it.

There were two colored maids and an ex-soldier butler, who received them and unpacked their bags as though the plague did not exist.

Martin was perplexed by their first caller. He was a singularly handsome young negro, quick-moving, intelligent of eye. Like most white Americans, Martin had talked a great deal about the inferiority of negroes and had learned nothing whatever about them. He looked questioning as the young man observed:

"My name is Oliver Marchand."

"Yes?"

"Dr. Marchand—I have my M.D. from Howard."

"Oh."

"May I venture to welcome you, Doctor? And may I ask before I hurry off—I have three cases from official families isolated at the bottom of the hill—oh, yes, in this crisis they permit a negro doctor to practise even among the whites! But— Dr. Stokes insists that D'Hérelle and you are right in