“You fellows are a lot younger than I am, eight-ten years, and you haven’t learned yet, like I have, that where the big pleasure is, is in Ideals and Service and a Public Career. Now just between you and me and the gatepost, my vogue doesn’t lie in real estate but in oratory. Fact, one time I planned to study law and go right in for politics. Just between ourselves, and I don’t want this to go any farther, I’ve been making some pretty good affiliations lately—been meeting some of the rising young Republican politicians. Of course a fellow has got to start in modestly, but I may say, sotto voce, that I expect to run for alderman next fall. It’s practically only a step from that to mayor and then to governor of the state, and if I find the career suits me, there’s no reason why in ten or twelve years, say in 1918 or 1920, I shouldn’t have the honor of representing the great state of Winnemac in Washington, D. C.!”
In the presence of a Napoleon like Clif and a Gladstone like George F. Babbitt, Martin perceived his own lack of power and business skill, and when he had returned to Mohalis he was restless. Of his poverty he had rarely thought, but now, in contrast to Clif’s rich ease, his own shabby clothes and his pinched room seemed shameful.
II
A long letter from Leora, hinting that she might not be able to return to Zenith, left him the more lonely. Nothing seemed worth doing. In that listless state he was mooning about the laboratory during elementary bacteriology demonstration hour, when Gottlieb sent him to the basement to bring up six male rabbits for inoculation. Gottlieb was working eighteen hours a day on new experiments; he was jumpy and testy; he gave orders like insults. When Martin came dreamily back with six females instead of males, Gottlieb shrieked at him, “You are the worst fool that was ever in this lab!”
The groundlings, second-year men who were not unmindful of Martin’s own scoldings, tittered like small animals, and jarred him into raging, “Well, I couldn’t make out what you said. And it’s the first time I ever fell down. I won’t stand your talking to me like that!”
“You will stand anything I say! Clumsy! You can take your hat and get out!”
“You mean I’m fired as assistant?”
“I am glad you haf enough intelligence to understand that, no matter how wretchet I talk!”
Martin flung away. Gottlieb suddenly looked bewildered and took a step toward Martin’s retreating back. But the class, the small giggling animals, they stood delighted, hoping for more, and Gottlieb shrugged, glared them into terror, sent the least awkward of them for the rabbits, and went on, curiously quiet.
And Martin, at Barney’s dive, was hotly drinking the first of the whiskys which sent him wandering all night, by himself. 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.