Gladiator

by Philip Wylie

  V

  Extremely dark of hair, of eyes and skin, moderately tall, and shapedwith that compact, breath-taking symmetry that the male figure sometimesassumes, a brilliantly devised, aggressive head topping his broadshoulders, graceful, a man vehemently alive, a man with the promise of ayoung God. Hugo at eighteen. His emotions ran through his eyes like hotsteel in a dark mould. People avoided those eyes; they contained astatement from which ordinary souls shrank.

  His skin glowed and sweated into a shiny red-brown. His voice was deepand alluring. During twelve long and fierce years he had fought to knowand control himself. Indian Creek had forgotten the terrible child.

  Hugo's life at that time revolved less about himself than it had duringhis first years. That was both natural and fortunate. If his classmatesin school and the older people of the town had not discounted his earlyphysical precocity, even his splendid vitality might not have beensufficient to prevent him from becoming moody and melancholy.

  But when with the passage of time he tossed no more bullies, carried nomore barrels of temptation, built no more fortresses, and grew sohandsome that the matrons of Indian Creek as well as the adolescentgirls in high school followed him with wayward glances, when the menfound him a gay and comprehending companion for any sport or adventure,when his teachers observed that his intelligence was oftenembarrassingly acute, when he played on three teams and was elected anofficer in his classes each year, then that half of Hugo which waspurely mundane and human dominated him and made him happy.

  His adolescence, his emotions, were no different from those of any youngman of his age and character. If his ultimate ambitions followed anothertrajectory, he postponed the evidence of it. Hugo was in love with AnnaBlake, the girl who had attracted him when he was six. The residents ofIndian Creek knew it. Her family received his calls with the winkingtolerance which the middle class grants to young passion. And she waswarm and tender and flirtatious and shy according to the policies thatshe had learned from custom.

  The active part of Hugo did not doubt that he would marry her after hehad graduated from the college in Indian Creek, that they would settlesomewhere near by, and that they would raise a number of children. Hissubconscious thoughts made reservations that he, in moments when he wasintimate with himself, would admit frankly. It made him a little ashamedof himself to see that on one night he would sit with Anna and kiss herardently until his body ached, and on another he would deliberately planto desert her. His idealism at that time was very great and untried andit did not occur to him that all men are so deliberately calculating inthe love they disguise as absolute.

  Anna had grown into a very attractive woman. Her figure was rounded andtall. Her hair was darker than the waxy curls of her childhood, and avital gleam had come into it. Her eyes were still as blue and her voice,shorn of its faltering youngness, was sweet and clear. She wasundoubtedly the prettiest girl in high school and the logicalsweet-heart for Hugo Danner. A flower ready to be plucked, at eighteen.

  When Hugo reached his senior year, that readiness became almost animpatience. Girls married at an early age in Indian Creek. She lookeddown the corridor of time during which he would be in college, she feltthe pressure of his still slumbering passion, and she sensed hissuperiority over most of the town boys. Only a very narrow critic wouldcall her resultant tactics dishonourable. They were too intensely humanand too clearly born of social and biological necessity.

  She had let him kiss her when they were sixteen. And afterwards, beforeshe went to sleep, she sighed rapturously at the memory of his warm,firm lips, his strong, rough arms. Hugo had gone home through thedizzily spinning dusk, through the wind-strummed trees and the fragrantfields, his breath deep in his chest, his eyes hot and somewhatunderstanding.

  Gradually Anna increased that license. She knew and she did not knowwhat she was doing. She played a long game in which she said: "If ourlove is consummated too soon, the social loss will be balanced by aspeedier marriage, because Hugo is honourable; but that will neverhappen." Two years after that first kiss, when they were floating on thenarrow river in a canoe, Hugo unfastened her blouse and exposed thecreamy beauty of her bosom to the soft moonlight and she did notprotest. That night he nearly possessed her, and after that night helearned through her unspoken, voluptuous suggestion all the technique oflove-making this side of consummation.

  When, finally, he called one night at her house and found that she wasalone and that her parents and her brother would not return until thenext day, they looked at each other with a shining agreement. He turnedthe lights out and they sat on the couch in the darkness, listening tothe passing of people on the sidewalk outside. He undressed her. Hewhispered halting, passionate phrases. He asked her if she was afraidand let himself be laughed away from his own conscience. Then he tookher and loved her.

  Afterwards, going home again in the gloom of late night, he looked up atthe stars and they stood still. He realized that a certain path of lifehad been followed to its conclusion. He felt initiated into the adultworld. And it had been so simple, so natural, so sweet.... He threw agreat stone into the river and laughed and walked on, after a while.

  Through the summer that followed, Hugo and Anna ran the course of theiraffair. They loved each other violently and incessantly and with noother evil consequence than to invite the open "humphs" of villagegossips and to involve him in several serious talks with her father.Their courtship was given the benefit of conventional doubt, however,and their innocence was hotly if covertly protested by the Blakes. Mrs.Danner coldly ignored every fragment of insinuation. She hoped that Hugoand Anna would announce their engagement and she hinted that hope. Hugohimself was excited and absorbed. Occasionally he thought he wassterile, with an inclination to be pleased rather than concerned if itwas true.

  He added tenderness to his characteristics. And he loved Anna too much.Toward the end of that summer she lost weight and became irritable. Theyquarrelled once and then again. The criteria for his physical conductbeing vague in his mind, Hugo could not gauge it correctly. And he didnot realize that the very ardour of his relation with her was abnormal.Her family decided to send her away, believing the opposite of the truthresponsible for her nervousness and weakness. A week before she left,Hugo himself tired of his excesses.

  One evening, dressing for a last passionate rendezvous, he looked in hismirror as he tied his scarf and saw that he was frowning. Studying thefrown, he perceived with a shock what made it. He did not want to seeAnna, to take her out, to kiss and rumple and clasp her, to returnthinking of her, feeling her, sweet and smelling like her. It annoyedhim. It bored him. He went through it uneasily and quarrelled again. Twodays later she departed.

  He acted his loss well and she did not show her relief until she sat onthe train, tired, shattered, and uninterested in Hugo and in life. Thenshe cried. But Hugo was through. They exchanged insincere letters. Helooked forward to college in the fall. Then he received a letter fromAnna saying that she was going to marry a man she had met and known forthree weeks. It was a broken, gasping, apologetic letter. Every one wasoutraged at Anna and astounded that Hugo bore the shock so courageously.

  The upshot of that summer was to fill his mind with fetid memories,which abated slowly, to make him disgusted with himself and tired ofIndian Creek. He decided to go to a different college, one far away fromthe scene of his painful youth and his disillusioned maturity. He choseWebster University because of the greatness of its name. If AbednegoDanner was hurt at his son's defection from his own college, he saidnothing. And Mrs. Danner, grown more silent and reserved, yielded to herson's unexpected decision.

  Hugo packed his bags one September afternoon, with a feeling ofdreaminess. He bade farewell to his family. He boarded the train. Hismind was opaque. The spark burning in it was one of dawning adventureburied in a mass of detail. He had never been far from his native soil.Now he was going to see cities and people who were almost foreign, inthe sophisticated East. But all he could dwell on was a swift cinema ofa defeate
d little boy, a strong man who could never be strong, asurfeited love, a truant and dimly comprehensible blonde girl, a muddystreet and a red station, a clapboard house, a sonorous church withhushed puppets in the pews, fudge parties, boats on the little river,cold winter, and ice over the mountains, and a fortress where once upona time he had felt mightier than the universe.