Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/105

 With each drink he admitted that he had an excellent chance to become a drunkard, and with each he boasted that he did not care. Had Leora been nearer than Wheatsylvania, twelve hundred miles away, he would have fled to her for salvation. He was still shaky next morning, and he had already taken a drink to make it possible to live through the morning when he received the note from Dean Silva bidding him report to the office at once.

The dean lectured:

"Arrowsmith, you've been discussed a good deal by the faculty council of late. Except in one or two courses—in my own I have no fault to find—you have been very inattentive. Your marks have been all right, but you could do still better. Recently you have also been drinking. You have been seen in places of very low repute, and you have been intimate with a man who took it upon himself to insult me, the Founder, our guests, and the University. Various faculty members have complained of your superior attitude—making fun of our courses right out in class! But Dr. Gottlieb has always warmly defended you. He insisted that you have a real flair for investigative science. Last night, however, he admitted that you had recently been impertinent to him. Now unless you immediately turn over a new leaf, young man, I shall have to suspend you for the rest of the year and, if that doesn't do the work, I shall have to ask for your resignation. And I think it might be a good thing for your humility—you seem to have the pride of the devil, young man!—it might be a good idea for you to see Dr. Gottlieb and start off your reformation by apologizing—"

It was the whisky spoke, not Martin:

"I'm damned if I will! He can go to the devil! I've given him my life, and then he tattles on me—"

"That's absolutely unfair to Dr. Gottlieb. He merely—"

"Sure. He merely let me down. I'll see him in hell before I'll apologize, after the way I've worked for him. And as for Clif Clawson that you were hinting at—him 'take it on himself to insult anybody'? He just played a joke, and you went after his scalp. I'm glad he did it!"

Then Martin waited for the words that would end his scientific life.

The little man, the rosy, pudgy, good little man, he stared and hummed and spoke softly: