Through both the economico-literary and the Rolls-Royce sections of Joyce’s set the rumor panted that there was a new diversion in an exhausted world—going out to Martin’s laboratory and watching him work, and being ever so silent and reverent, except perhaps when Joyce murmured, “Isn’t he adorable the way he teaches his darling bacteria to say ‘Pretty Polly’!” or when Latham Ireland convulsed them by arguing that scientists had no sense of humor, or Sammy de Lembre burst out in his marvelous burlesque of jazz:
Oh, Mistah Back-sil-lil-us, don’t you gri-in at me;
You mi-cro-bi-o-log-ic cuss, I’m o-on-to thee.
When Mr. Dr. Arrowsmith’s done looked at de clues,
You’ll sit in jail a-singin’ dem Bac-ter-i-uh Blues.
Joyce’s cousin from Georgia sparkled, “Mart is so cute with all those lil vases of his. But Ah can always get him so mad by tellin’ him the trouble with him is, he don’t go to church often enough!”
While Martin sought to concentrate.
They flocked from the house to his laboratory only once a week, which was certainly not enough to disturb a resolute man—merely enough to keep him constantly waiting for them.
When he sedately tried to explain this and that to Joyce, she said, “Did we bother you this evening? But they do admire you so.”
He remarked, “Well,” and went to bed.
V
R. A. Hopburn, the eminent patent-lawyer, as he drove away from the Arrowsmith-Lanyon mansion grunted at his wife:
“I don’t mind a host throwing the port at you, if he thinks you’re a chump, but I do mind his being bored at your daring to express any opinion whatever.... Didn’t he look silly, out in his idiotic laboratory!... How the deuce do you suppose Joyce ever came to marry him?”