A tall, rangy medic came out of the dean’s sanctum, very red but with a jaunty stride, crossed the room in four steps and banged the door … Bet it was no new experience for that door!
Distracted from his invoice of the book shelf, Mr. Merrick glowered at the bony maiden who rattled the typewriter. Smug and surly she was; mouth all screwed up into an ugly little rosette, lashless eyes snapping, sharp nose sniffing … Easy to see what she was doing—writing a letter to some poor boob inviting him to come in at nine and see the dean … She ought to add a postscript that he would be expected to spend half of a fine June morning in this dismal hole waiting for his nibs to finish the Free Press and his nails, take his legs off the table, and push a buzzer to let the beggar in.
“Dean Whitley will see you now, Mr. Merrick.”
“Mr. Merrick,” said Dean Whitley, after Bobby had taken the chair recommended to him, “I must have a friendly chat with you. During the first few weeks of last semester, you gave promise, I am informed, of an exceptionally interesting career in the medical profession. Shortly after the mid-semester examinations, which I see you passed with the highest marks of your class, you began to slip. You quickly used up all your cuts. You became disinterested and disgruntled. What’s the trouble?”
“I think you’ll find I’ve been doing average work, sir.”
Dean Whitley shook a long, bony finger.
“Exactly! Average work! Do you hanker to be an average doctor?”
“Well—when you put it that way—of course not.”
The dean tilted back in his swivel-chair and clasped his hands behind his head.
“Your case is somewhat unusual, Merrick. You are the heir apparent to a large fortune. You did not have to seek a vocation. It was a surprise to all your friends that you came here. Your line of least resistance was polo. But you plunged into your work with an enthusiasm that put the whole first-year class on its toes and challenged the instructional corps to offer the best it had. Now—precisely what has happened to your spirit? Is there anything we can do to put you in the running again?”
Bobby twisted the links of a platinum watch-chain, head hanging.
“You’re quite right, Dean Whitley. I suppose it was the novelty kept me alive at first.”
“Yes—but see here!” The dean reversed a sheaf of tabulations and pushed it across the table. “Just follow that line from opening day to the Thanksgiving recess, and there isn’t a cut! You didn’t flick a class! … Pursue it the rest of the way and see what you did to your scholastic credit! … What happened to you on or about Thanksgiving? … Perhaps you should be treated for it—whatever it was. You’re too promising to lose if we can save you!”
“I just got tired of it. Too much drudgery.”
“It wasn’t drudgery before!”
“Well—I think I began to notice that it was, about that time.”
“Ever think of giving it up?”
“Oh—no, sir! I can’t do that!”
“Why not? You don’t aspire to be a mere second-rater, do you?”
“I suppose I’ll have to content myself with that. I’ll have plenty of company, won’t I?”
The dean fiddled with a paper-knife and looked down his nose glumly.
“This is very disappointing! … Sure you don’t want to give me your full confidence and let me try to help you?”
Bobby moved to the edge of his chair, and took up his hat.
“There’s nothing you can do, sir. Thank you for your interest. I’ll try to do better.”
On the front steps he met Dawson, a first-year medic with whom he had a mere nodding acquaintance. Dawson was a lean-faced, hollow-eyed, shabby chap, who had a desperate time of it trying to keep up. Slightly older than the average, more was expected of him than he was able to deliver. Not infrequently he was scornfully panned by his instructors who seemed to enjoy watching him wince under their satirical jabs.
A question, having been muffed by three or four, would be tossed at him in some such fashion as, “And of course you wouldn’t know, would you, Mr. Dawson?” Seven times out of nine, he wouldn’t. Bobby’s sympathy had been excited, occasionally … What were they trying to do to the poor devil? … Drive him into the river?
“Hello, Merrick! … Been deaning?”
“Oh yes,” said Bobby brightly. “But not in the way you probably suspect. You see, the dean and I meet frequently for a game of cribbage. He’s good too. I presume you’re having tea with him presently?”
Dawson was grim.
“Naw—I’m going in to tell him I’m through and that they can all go to hell!”
“That would be a great blunder, Dawson.” Bobby became owlishly didactic. “They might go—and where would that leave you? You see, my son, every time you send a man to hell, with whom you have had close personal contacts, he takes part of you along with him. And then, some fine day, when things are ever so much better with you, and you need to collect all there is of your scattered personality for some noble purpose, a considerable chunk of you is missing—and—and you have to go to hell after it.”
“What’s the big idea? Trying to kid me? If so, don’t! I’m in no mood for it … Up to the last ditch—if you don’t mind my weepin’ on your neck!”
“How about a bite of lunch together?” suggested Bobby, amazed at his own proposal of hospitality to this morose, threadbare fellow. “All you’re seeing him for is to tell him to go to hell. Put it off till tomorrow. He won’t object to the delay.”
Yielding with a crooked smile to Bobby’s persuasion, Dawson fell into step.
“Anything you’d like to get off your chest?” inquired his host, after their order had been given. “Perhaps you’d enjoy singing a few verses of your hymn of hate. If so,
