Gladiator

by Philip Wylie

  XX

  Hugo had three hours to wait for a Chicago train. His wages purchasedhis ticket and left him in possession of twenty dollars. His clothingwas nondescript; he had no baggage. He did not go outside the GrandCentral Terminal, but sat patiently in the smoking-room, waiting for thetime to pass. A guard came up to him and asked to see his ticket. Hugodid not remonstrate and produced it mechanically; he would undoubtedlybe mistaken for a tramp amid the sleek travellers and commuters.

  When the train started, his fit of perplexed lethargy had not abated.His hands and feet were cold and his heart beat slowly. Life hadaccustomed him to frustration and to disappointment, yet it wasagonizing to assimilate this new cudgeling at the hands of fate. The oldgreen house in the Connecticut hills had been a refuge; Roseanne hadbeen a refuge. They were, both of them, peaceful and whimsical and theyhad seemed innocent of the capacity for great anguish. Every man dreamsof the season-changed countryside as an escape; every man dreams of awoman on whose broad breast he may rest, beneath whose tumbling hair andmoth-like hands he may discover forgetfulness and freedom. Some men aresuccessful in a quest for those anodynes. Hugo could understand thesharp contours of one fact: because he was himself, such a quest wouldalways end in failure. No woman lived who could assuage him; his fireswould not yield to any temporal powers.

  He was barren of desire to investigate deeper into the philosophy ofhimself. All people turned aside by fate fall into the same morass.Except in his strength, Hugo was pitifully like all people: wounds couldeasily be opened in his sensitiveness; his moral courage could be taxedto the fringe of dilemma; he looked upon his fellow men sometimes withawe at the variety of high places they attained in spite of the heavyhandicap of being human--he looked upon them again with repugnance--andvery rarely, as he grew older, did such inspections of his kind includea study of the difference between them and him made by his singulargift. When that thought entered his mind, it gave rise to peculiarspeculations.

  He approached thirty, he thought, and still the world had not re-echoedwith his name; the trumps, banners, and cavalcade of his glory had beenonly shadows in the sky, dust at sunset that made evanescent andintangible colours. Again, he thought, the very perfection of hisprowess was responsible for its inapplicability; if he but had anAchilles' heel so that his might could taste the occasional tonic ofinadequacy, then he could meet the challenge of possible failure withsuccessful effort. More frequently he condemned his mind and spirit fornot being great enough to conceive a mission for his thews. Then hewould fall into a reverie, trying to invent a creation that would be asmagnificent as the destructions he could so easily envision.

  In such a painful and painstaking mood he was carried over theAlleghenies and out on the Western plains. He changed trains at Chicagowithout having slept, and all he could remember of the journey was aprotracted sorrow, a stabbing consciousness of Roseanne, dulled by hislast picture of her, and a hopeless guessing of what she thought abouthim now.

  Hugo's mother met him at the station. She was unaltered, everything wasunaltered. The last few instants in the vestibule of the train had beena series of quick remembrances; the whole countryside was like along-deserted house to which he had returned. The mountains took on afamiliar aspect, then the houses, then the dingy red station. Lastly hismother, upright and uncompromisingly grim, dressed in her perpetualmourning of black silk. Her recognition of Hugo produced only theslightest flurry and immediately she became mundane.

  "Whatever made you come in those clothes?"

  "I was working outdoors, mother. I got right on a train. How is father?"

  "Sinking slowly."

  "I'm glad I'm in time."

  "It's God's will." She gazed at him. "You've changed a little, son."

  "I'm older." He felt diffident. A vast gulf had risen between thisvigorous, religious woman and himself.

  She opened a new topic. "Whatever in the world made you send us all thatmoney?"

  Hugo smiled. "Why--I didn't need it, mother. And I thought it would makeyou and father happy."

  "Perhaps. Perhaps. It has done some good. I've sent four missionariesout in the field and I am thinking of sending two more. I had a newaddition put on the church, for the drunkards and the fallen. And we puta bathroom in the house. Your father wanted two, but I wouldn't hear ofit."

  "Have you got a car?"

  "Car? I couldn't use one of those inventions of Satan. Your father mademe hire this one to meet you. There's Anna Blake's house. She marriedthat fellow she was flirting with when you went away. And there's ourhouse. It was painted last month."

  Now all the years had dropped away and Hugo was a child again, anadolescent again. The car stopped.

  "You can go right up. He's in the front room. I'll get lunch."

  Hugo's father was lying on the bed watching the door. A little wizenedold man with a big head and thin yellow hands. Illness had made his eyesrheumy, but they lighted up when his son entered, and he half raisedhimself.

  "Hello, father."

  "Hugo! You've come back."

  "Yes, father."

  "I've waited for you. Sit down here on the bed. Move me over a little.Now close the door. Is it cold out? I was afraid you might not get here.I was afraid you might get sick on the train. Old people are like that,Hugo." He shaded his eyes. "You aren't a very big man, son. Somehow Ialways remembered you as big. But--I suppose"--his voice thinned--"Isuppose you don't want to talk about yourself."

  "Anything you want to hear, father."

  "I can't believe you came back." He ruminated. "There were a thousandthings I wanted to ask you, son--but they've all gone from my mind. I'mnot so easy in your presence as I was when you were a little shaver."

  Hugo knew what those questions would be. Here, on his death-bed, hisfather was still a scientist. His soul flinched from giving its account.He saw suddenly that he could never tell his father the truth; pity,kindredship, kindness, moved him. "I know what you wanted to ask,father. Am I still strong?" It took courage to suggest that. But he wasrewarded. The old man sighed ecstatically. "That's it, Hugo, my son."

  "Then--father, I am. I grew constantly stronger when I left you. Incollege I was strong. At sea I was strong. In the war. First I wanted tobe mighty in games and I was. Then I wanted to do services. And I did,because I could."

  The head nodded on its feeble neck. "You found things to do? I--I hopedyou would. But I always worried about you. Every day, son, every day forall these years, I picked up the papers and looked at them withmisgivings. 'Suppose,' I said to myself, 'suppose my boy lost his temperlast night. Suppose someone wronged him and he undertook to avengehimself.' I trusted you, Hugo. I could not quite trust--the other thing.I've even blamed myself and hated myself." He smiled. "But it's allright--all right. So I am glad. Then, tell me--what--what--"

  "What have I done?"

  "Do you mind? It's been so long and you were so far away."

  "Well--" Hugo swept his memory back over his career--"so many things,father. It's hard to recite one's own--"

  "I know. But I'm your father, and my ears ache to hear."

  "I saved a man pinned under a wagon. I saved a man from a shark. Ipulled open a safe in which a man was smothering. Many things like that.Then--there was the war."

  "I know. I know. When you wrote that you had gone to war, I wasfrightened--and happy. Try as I might, I could not think of a greatconstructive cause for you to enter. I had to satisfy myself by thinkingthat you could find such a cause. Then the war came. And you wrote thatyou were in it. I was happy. I am old, Hugo, and perhaps my nationalismand my patriotism are dead. Sides in a war did not seem to matter. Butpeace mattered to me, and I thought--I hoped that you could hastenpeace. Four years, Hugo. Your letters said nothing. Four years. And thenit stopped. And I understood. War is property fighting property, notDavid fighting Goliath. The greatest David would be unavailing now. Evenyou could do little enough."

  "Perhaps not so little, father."

  "There were things, then?"
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br />   Hugo could not disappoint his father with the whole formidable truth."Yes." He lied with a steady gaze. "I stopped the war."

  "You!"

  "After four years I perceived the truth of what you have just said. Waris a mistake. It is not sides that matter. The object of war is to makepeace. On a dark night, father, I went alone into the enemy lines. Forone hundred miles that night I upset every gun, I wrecked everyammunition train, I blew up every dump--every arsenal, that is. Alone Idid it. The next day they asked for peace. Remember the false armistice?Somehow it leaked out that there would be victory and surrender thenext night--because of me. Only the truth about me was never known. Anda day later--it came."

  The weak old man was transported. He raised himself up on his elbows."You did that! Then all my work was not in vain. My dream and my prayerwere justified! Oh, Hugo, you can never know how glad I am you came andtold me this. How glad."

  He repeated his expression of joy until his tongue was weary; then hefell back. Hugo sat with shining eyes during the silence that followed.His father at length groped for a glass of water. Strength returned tohim. "I could ask for no more, son. And yet we are petulant, insatiablecreatures. What is doing now? The world is wicked. Yet it trieshalf-heartedly to rebuild itself. One great deed is not enough--or areyou tired?"

  Hugo smiled. "Am I ever tired, father? Am I vulnerable?"

  "I had forgotten. It is so hard for the finite mind to think beyonditself. Not tired. Not vulnerable. No. There was Samson--the cat." Hewas embarrassed. "I hurt you?"

  "No, father." He repeated it. Every gentle fall of the word "father"from his lips and every mention of "son" by his father was rareprivilege, unfamiliar elixir to the old man. His new lie took its cuefrom Abednego Danner's expressions. "My work goes on. Now it is withAmerica. I expect to go to Washington soon to right the wrongs ofpolitics and government. Vicious and selfish men I shall force fromtheir high places. I shall secure the idealistic and the courageous." Itwas a theory he had never considered, a possible practice born ofnecessity. "The pressure I shall bring against them will be physical andmental. Here a man will be driven from his house mysteriously. There aman will slip into the limbo. Yonder an inconspicuous person willsuddenly be braced by a new courage; his enemies will be gone and hiswork will progress unhampered. I shall be an invisible agent ofright--right as best I can see it. You understand, father?"

  Abednego smiled like a happy child. "I do, son. To be you must besplendid."

  "The most splendid thing on earth! And I have you to thank, you and yourgenius to tender gratitude to. I am merely the agent. It is you thatcreated and the whole world that benefits."

  Abednego's face was serene--not smug, but transfigured. "I yearned asyou now perform. It is strange that one cloistered mortal can becomeinspired with the toil and lament of the universe. Yet there is a dangerof false pride in that, too. I am apt to fall into the pit because mycup is so full here at the last. And the greatest problem of all is notsettled."

  "What problem?" Hugo asked in surprise.

  "Why, the problem that up until now has been with me day and night.Shall there be made more men like you--and women like you?"

  The idea staggered Hugo. It paralyzed him and he heard his father'svoice come from a great distance. "Up in the attic in the black trunkare six notebooks wrapped in oilpaper. They were written in pencil, butI went over them carefully in ink. That is my life-work, Hugo. It is thesecret--of you. Given those books, a good laboratory worker could gothrough all my experiments and repeat each with the same success. Itried a little myself. I found out things--for example, the effect ofthe process is not inherited by the future generations. It must be doneover each time. It has seemed to me that those six little books--youcould slip them all into your coat pocket--are a terrible explosive.They can rip the world apart and wipe humanity from it. In malicioushands they would end life. Sometimes, when I became nervous waiting forthe newspapers, waiting for a letter from you, I have been sorelytempted to destroy them. But now--"

  "Now?" Hugo echoed huskily.

  "Now I understand. There is no better keeping for them than your own. Igive them to you."

  "Me!"

  "You, son. You must take them, and the burden must be yours. You havegrown to manhood now and I am proud of you. More than proud. If I werenot, I myself would destroy the books here on this bed. Matilda wouldbring them and I would watch them burn so that the danger would gowith--" he cleared his throat--"my dream."

  "But--"

  "You cannot deny me. It is my wish. You can see what it means. A worldgrown suddenly--as you are."

  "I, father--"

  "You have not avoided responsibility. You will not avoid this, thegreatest of your responsibilities. Since the days when I made thosenotes--what days!--biology has made great strides. For a time I wasanxious. For a time I thought that my research might be rediscovered.But it cannot be. Theory has swung in a different direction." He smiledwith inner amusement. "The opticians have decided that the microscope Imade is impossible. The biochemists, moving through the secretions ofsuch things as hippuric acid in the epithelial cells, to enzymes, tohormones, to chromosomes, have put a false construction on everything.It will take hundreds, thousands of years to see the light. The darknessis so intense and the error so plausible that they may never see againexactly as I saw. The fact of you, at best, may remain always no morethan a theory. This is not vanity. My findings were a combination ofaccidents almost outside the bounds of mathematical probability. It isyou who must bear the light."

  Hugo felt that now, indeed, circumstance had closed around him and lefthim without succour or recourse. He bowed his head. "I will do it,father."

  "Now I can die in peace--in joy."

  With an almost visible wrench Hugo brought himself back to hissurroundings. "Nonsense, father. You'll probably get well."

  "No, son. I've studied the progress of this disease in the lowerorders--when I saw it imminent. I shall die--not in pain, but in sleep.But I shall not be dead--because of you." He held out his hand for Hugo.

  Some time later the old professor fell asleep and Hugo tiptoed from theroom. Food was sizzling downstairs in the kitchen, but he ignored it,going out into the sharp air by the front door. He hastened along thestreets and soon came to the road that led up the mountain. He climbedrapidly, and when he dared, he discarded the tedious little steps of allmankind. He reached the side of the quarry where he had built the stonefort, and seated himself on a ledge that hung over it. Trees, creepers,and underbrush had grown over the place, but through theOctober-stripped barricade of their branches he could see a heap ofstones that was his dolmen, on which the hieroglyph of him wasinscribed.

  Two tears scalded his cheeks; he trembled with the welter of hisemotions. He had failed his father, failed his trust, failed the world;and in the abyss of that grief he could catch no sight of promise orhope. Having done his best, he had still done nothing, and it wasnecessary for him to lie to put the thoughts of a dying man to rest. Thepity of that lie! The folly of the picture he had painted ofhimself--Hugo Danner the scourge of God, Hugo Danner the destroyingangel, Hugo Danner the hero of a quick love-affair that turned brownand dead like a plucked flower, the sentimental soldier, the involuntarymisanthrope.

  "I must do it!" he whispered fiercely. The ruined stones echoed thesound of his voice with a remote demoniac jeer. Do what? What, strongman? What?