Ira was going to be a medical missionary. He was a man of twenty-nine, a graduate of Pottsburg Christian College and of the Sanctification Bible and Missions School. He had played football; he was as strong and nearly as large as a steer, and no steer ever bellowed more enormously. He was a bright and happy Christian, a romping optimist who laughed away sin and doubt, a joyful Puritan who with annoying virility preached the doctrine of his tiny sect, the Sanctification Brotherhood, that to have a beautiful church was almost as damnable as the debaucheries of card-playing.
Martin found himself viewing “Billy,” their cadaver—an undersized, blotchy old man with a horrible little red beard on his petrified, vealy face—as a machine, fascinating, complex, beautiful, but a machine. It damaged his already feeble belief in man’s divinity and immortality. He might have kept his doubts to himself, revolving them slowly as he dissected out the nerves of the mangled upper arm, but Ira Hinkley would not let him alone. Ira believed that he could bring even medical students to bliss, which, to Ira, meant singing extraordinarily long and unlovely hymns in a chapel of the Sanctification Brotherhood.
“Mart, my son,” he roared, “do you realize that in this, what some might call a sordid task, we are learning things that will enable us to heal the bodies and comfort the souls of countless lost unhappy folks?”
“Huh! Souls. I haven’t found one yet in old Billy. Honest, do you believe that junk?”
Ira clenched his fist and scowled, then belched with laughter, slapped Martin distressingly on the back, and clamored, “Brother, you’ve got to do better than that to get Ira’s goat! You think you’ve got a lot of these fancy Modern Doubts. You haven’t—you’ve only got indigestion. What you need is exercise and faith. Come on over to the Y. M. C. A. and I’ll take you for a swim and pray with you. Why, you poor skinny little agnostic, here you have a chance to see the Almighty’s handiwork, and all you grab out of it is a feeling that you’re real smart. Buck up, young Arrowsmith. You don’t know how funny you are, to a fellow that’s got a serene faith!”
To the delight of Clif Clawson, the class jester, who worked at the next table, Ira chucked Martin in the ribs, patted him, very painfully, upon the head, and amiably resumed work, while Martin danced with irritation.
V
In college Martin had been a “barb”—he had not belonged to a Greek Letter secret society. He had been “rushed,” but he had resented the condescension of the aristocracy of men from the larger cities. Now that most of his Arts classmates had departed to insurance offices, law schools, and banks, he was lonely, and tempted by an invitation from Digamma Pi, the chief medical fraternity.
Digamma Pi was a lively boarding-house with a billiard table and low prices. Rough and amiable noises came from it at night, and a good deal of singing about When I Die Don’t Bury Me at All; yet for three years Digams had won the valedictory and the Hugh Loizeau Medal in Experimental Surgery. This autumn the Digams elected Ira Hinkley, because they had been gaining a reputation for dissipation—girls were said to have been smuggled in late at night—and no company which included the Reverend Mr. Hinkley could possibly be taken by the Dean as immoral, which was an advantage if they were to continue comfortably immoral.
Martin had prized the independence of his solitary room. In a fraternity, all tennis rackets, trousers, and opinions are held in common. When Ira found that Martin was hesitating, he insisted, “Oh, come on in! Digam needs you. You do study hard— I’ll say that for you—and think what a chance you’ll have to influence The Fellows for good.”