Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/151

 classmates in college that he was from pure and probably noble German stock. He was welcomed, or half welcomed, in a motoring, poker-playing, country-club set, and he had to have more money. Gottlieb missed twenty dollars from his desk. He who ridiculed conventional honor had the honor, as he had the pride, of a savage old squire. A new misery stained his incessant bitterness at having to deceive Hunziker. He faced Robert with, "My boy, did you take the money from my desk?"

Few youngsters could have faced that jut of his hawk nose, the red-veined rage of his sunken eyes. Robert spluttered, then shouted:

"Yes, I did! And I've got to have some more! I've got to get some clothes and stuff. It's your fault. You bring me up to train with a lot of fellows that have all the cash in the world, and then you expect me to dress like a hobo!"

"Stealing—"

"Rats! What's stealing! You're always making fun of these preachers that talk about Sin and Truth and Honesty and all those words that've been used so much they don't mean a darn' thing and— I don't care! Daws Hunziker, the old man's son, he told me his dad said you could be a millionaire, and then you keep us strapped like this, and Mom sick— Let me tell you, back in Mohalis Mom used to slip me a couple of dollars almost every week and— I'm tired of it! If you're going to keep me in rags, I'm going to cut out college!"

Gottlieb stormed, but there was no force in it. He did not know, all the next fortnight, what his son was going to do, what himself was going to do.

Then, so quietly that not till they had returned from the cemetery did they realize her passing, his wife died, and the next week his oldest daughter ran off with a worthless laughing fellow who lived by gambling.

Gottlieb sat alone. Over and over he read the Book of Job. "Truly the Lord hath smitten me and my house," he whispered. When Robert came in, mumbling that he would be good, the old man lifted to him a blind face, unhearing. But as he repeated the fables of his fathers it did not occur to him to believe them, or to stoop in fear before their God of Wrath—or to gain ease by permitting Hunziker to defile his discovery.

He arose, in time, and went silently to his laboratory. His experiments were as careful as ever, and his assistants saw no