As the trolley came into the center of the city, Martin coaxed, “There’s an all-night lunch up Oberlin Avenue where we can get some white mule. Come on. It’ll straighten you up.”
Angus was shaky and stumbling— Angus the punctilious. Martin led him into the lunch-room where, between catsup bottles, they had raw whisky in granite-like coffee cups. Angus leaned his head on his arm and sobbed, careless of stares, till he had drunk himself into obliteration, and Martin steered him home. Then to Martin, in his furnished room with Clif snoring, the evening became incredible and nothing more incredible than Angus Duer. “Well, he’ll be a good friend of mine now, for always. Fine!”
Next morning, in the hall of the Anatomy Building, he saw Angus and rushed toward him. Angus snapped, “You were frightfully stewed last night, Arrowsmith. If you can’t handle your liquor better than that, you better cut it out entirely.”
He walked on, clear-eyed, unruffled.
CHAPTER VIII
I
And always Martin’s work went on—assisting Max Gottlieb, instructing bacteriological students, attending lectures and hospital demonstrations—sixteen merciless hours to the day. He stole occasional evenings for original research or for peering into the stirring worlds of French and German bacteriological publications; he went proudly now and then to Gottlieb’s cottage where, against rain-smeared brown wall-paper, were Blake drawings and a signed portrait of Koch. But the rest was nerve-gnawing.
Neurology, O.B., internal medicine, physical diagnosis; always a few pages more than he could drudge through before he fell asleep at his rickety study-table.
Memorizing of gynecology, of ophthalmology, till his mind was burnt raw.
Droning afternoons of hospital demonstrations, among stumbling students barked at by tired clinical professors.