Читать книгу Magnificent Obsession - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 13

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It was at the State University, however, that Bobby had struck his stride. Neither a loafer nor a dunce, he easily ran circles around the average student in such classes as stirred his curiosity. Zoology?...He ate it up! Physiology...psychology...chemistry...he was constantly amazing his friends by his ardent boning, especially in chemistry, in the face of his utter indifference to scholastic credit in the courses he disliked.

His David-and-Jonathan friendship with Tom Masterson had been good for him; better for him than for Tom, a likeable youngster with an insatiable ambition to be a short-story writer.

They had found each other as rushees at a luncheon for freshmen in the Delta Omega house, and decided on the spot to room together. Young Masterson, however eager to emancipate himself from the restraints of a rather severely disciplined household, was something of an idealist, and opened up a new world to Bobby who, listening at first because he liked Tom, and later because he liked what Tom said, learned from his youthful tutor a love for the classics which, in the original, he had despised.

But Masterson, not having been brought up on cocktails, was not much advantaged by the tardy instruction he received in exchange for his Greek and Roman mythology. Once he started—no matter what the hour, place, or circumstance—Tom could be depended upon to continue drinking until he was unconscious. Bobby, approximately sober, would get him home, somehow, and put him to bed with all the solicitude of a mother. Apparently it never occurred to him that he was jeopardizing his chum's future.

"Poor old Tommy!" he would say, unlacing his shoes. "I'm afraid you'll just never learn to drink like a gentleman!"

Nor was the Merrick influence much of a blessing upon the Delta Omega house into which he and Tom moved as sophomores. Had he been less lovable, he might have been less dangerous. His charming irresistibility was fatal to the good resolutions of many a chap who honestly wanted to stay sober and do his work. Even the seniors—by custom disdainful of juvenile society—once they were in debt to him for lavish hospitality which was at first reluctantly accepted, found themselves careening over the road in Bobby's big touring-car, late Friday afternoons, en route to his grandfather's home on Lake Saginack.

And the indulgent old man, believing they would all have a better time if they had the house to themselves—and eager to be out of the racket—would be driven in to the city to find sanctuary at the Columbia Club. The neighbourhood used to protest, but old Nicholas always reminded them—when they complained of drunken demons, for whose conduct he was presumably responsible, driving recklessly with open mufflers and raucous sirens, at all hours of the night—that boys would be boys. When they smashed something, he paid for it.

Not infrequently Bobby's week-end guests went back to Ann Arbor on Monday morning without a nickel; wearing their very socks by permission of their host, who owned them after an all-day poker game on Sunday. How often they promised themselves, "Never again!" but it was hard to stand out against Bobby's insidious smile. Moreover, the food and service at old Nicholas' country palace was a tempting diversion from the near-starvation of fraternity fare and the discomforts of a crowded house where nothing ever received anxious thought and respect but the impending payments on the mortgage.