Gladiator

by Wylie, Philip;

  That his wife would submit to the plan or to the step it necessitated was beyond belief. She would never allow a sticky tube of foreign animal matter to be poured into her veins. She would not permit the will of God to be altered or her offspring to be the subject of experiment. Another man would have laughed at the notion of persuading her. Mr. Danner never laughed at matters that involved his wife.

  There was another danger. If the child was female and became a woman like his wife, then the effect of such strength would be awful indeed. He envisioned a militant reformer, an iron-bound Calvinist, remodeling the world single-handed. A Scotch Lilith, a matronly Gabriel, a she-Hercules. He shuddered.

  A hundred times he denied his science. A hundred and one times it begged him to be served. Each decision to drop the idea was followed by an effort to discover means to inoculate her without her knowledge. To his wakeful ears came the reverberation of her snores. He rose and paced the floor. A scheme came to him. After that he was lost.

  Mrs. Danner was surprised when her husband brought a bottle of blackberry cordial to her. It was his first gift to her in more than a year. She was fond of cordial. He was not. She took a glass after supper and then a second, which she drank “for him.” He smiled nervously and urged her to drink it. His hands clenched and unclenched. When she finished the second glass, he watched her constantly.

  “I feel sleepy,” she said.

  “You’re tired.” He tried to dissemble the eagerness in his voice. “Why don’t you lie down?”

  “Strange,” she said a moment later. “I’m not usually so—so—misty.”

  He nodded. The opiate in the cordial was working. She lay on the couch. She slept. The professor hastened to his laboratory. An hour later he emerged with a hypodermic syringe in his hand. His wife lay limply, one hand touching the floor. Her stern, dark face was relaxed. He sat beside her. His conscience raged. He hated the duplicity his task required. His eyes lingered on the swollen abdomen. It was cryptic, enigmatic, filled with portent. He jabbed the needle. She did not stir After that he substituted a partly empty bottle of cordial for the drugged liquor. It was, perhaps, the most practical thing he had ever done in his life.

  Mrs. Danner could not explain herself on the following morning. She belabored him. “Why didn’t you wake me and make me go to bed? Sleeping in my clothes! I never did such a thing in my life.”

  Danner went to the college. There was nothing more to do, nothing more to require his concentration. He could wait—as he had waited before.

  September, October, November. Chilly winds from the high mountains. The day-by-day freezing over of ponds and brooks. Smoke at the tops of chimneys. Snow. Thanksgiving. And always Mrs. Danner growing with the burden of her offspring. Mr. Danner sitting silent, watching, wondering, waiting. It would soon be time.

  On Christmas morning there entered into Mrs. Danner’s vitals a pain that was indefinable and at the same time certain. It thrust all thought from her mind. Then it diminished and she summoned her husband. “Get the doctor. It’s coming.”

  Danner tottered into the street and executed his errand. The doctor smiled cheerfully. “Just beginning? I’ll be over this afternoon.”

  “But—good Lord—you can’t leave her like—”

  “Nonsense.”

  He came home and found his wife dusting. He shook his head. “Get Mrs. Nolan,” she said. Then she threw herself on the bed again.

  Mrs. Nolan, the nearest neighbor, wife of Professor Nolan and mother of four children, was delighted. This particular Christmas was going to be a day of some excitement. She prepared hot water and bustled with unessential occupation.

  The doctor arrived after Danner had made his third trip. Mrs. Nolan prepared lunch. “I love to cook in other people’s kitchens,” she said. He wanted to strike her. Curious, he thought. At three-thirty the industry of the doctor and Mrs. Nolan increased and the silence of the two, paradoxically, increased with it.

  Then the early twilight fell. Mrs. Danner lay with her lank black hair plastered to her brow. She did not moan. Pain twisted and convulsed her. Downstairs Danner sat and sweated. A cry—his wife’s. Another—unfamiliar. Scurrying feet on the bare parts of the floor. He looked up. Mrs. Nolan leaned over the stair well.

  “It’s a boy, Mr. Danner. A beautiful boy. And husky. You never saw such a husky baby.”

  “It ought to be,” he said. They found him later in the back yard, prancing on the snow with weird, ungainly steps. A vacant smile lighted his features. They didn’t blame him.

  Chapter III

  CALM and quiet held their negative sway over the Danner menage for an hour, and then there was a disturbed fretting that developed into a lusty bawl. The professor passed a fatigued hand over his brow. He was unaccustomed to the dissonances of his offspring. Young Hugo—they had named him after a maternal uncle—had attained the age of one week without giving any indication of unnaturalness.

  That is not quite true. He was as fleshy as most healthy infants, but the flesh was more than normally firm. He was inordinately active. His eyes had been gray but, already, they gave promise of the inkiness they afterwards exhibited.

  Danner spent hours at the side of his crib speculating and watching for any sign of biological variation. But it was not until a week had passed that he was given evidence. By that time he was ready to concede the failure of his greatest experiment.

  The baby bawled and presently stopped. And Mrs. Danner, who had put it to breast, suddenly called her husband. “Abednego! Come here! Hurry!”

  The professor’s heart skipped its regular timing and he scrambled to the floor above. “What’s the matter?”

  Mrs. Danner was sitting in a rocking-chair. Her face was as white as paper. Only in her eyes was there a spark of life. He thought she was going to faint. “What’s the matter?” he said again.

  He looked at Hugo and saw nothing terrifying in the ravishing hunger which the infant showed.

  “Matter! Matter! You know the matter!”

  Then he knew and he realized that his wife had discovered. “I don’t. You look frightened. Shall I bring some water?”

  Mrs. Danner spoke again. Her voice was icy, distant, terrible. “I came in to feed him just a minute ago. He was lying in his crib. I tried to—to hug him and he put his arms out. As God lives, I could not pull that baby to me! He was too strong, Abednego! Too strong. Too strong. I couldn’t unbend his little arms when he stiffened them. I couldn’t straighten them when he bent them. And he pushed me—harder than you could push. Harder than I could push myself. I know what it means. You have done your horrible thing to my baby. He’s just a baby, Abednego. And you’ve done your thing to him. How could you? Oh, how could you!”

  Mrs. Danner rose and laid the baby gently on the chair. She Stood before her husband, towering over him, raised her hand, and struck with all her force. Mr. Danner fell to one knee, and a red welt lifted on his face. She struck him again and he fell against the chair. Little Hugo was dislodged. One hand caught a rung of the chair back and he hung suspended above the floor.

  “Look!” Mrs. Danner screamed.

  As they looked, the baby flexed its arm and lifted itself back into the chair. It was a feat that a gymnast would have accomplished with difficulty. Danner stared, ignoring the blows, the crimson on his cheek. For once in his lifetime, he suddenly defied his wife. He pointed to the child.

  “Yes, look!” His voice rang clearly. “I did it. I vaccinated you the night the cordial put you to sleep. And there’s my son. He’s strong. Stronger than a lion’s cub. And he’ll increase in strength as he grows until Samson and Hercules would be pygmies beside him. He’ll be the first of a new and glorious race. A race that doesn’t have to fear—because it cannot know harm. You can knock me down. You can knock me down a thousand times. I have given you a son whose little finger you cannot bend with a crow-bar. Oh, all these years I’ve listened to you and obeyed you and—yes, I’ve feared you a little—and God must hate me for it. Now t
ake your son. And my son. You cannot change him. You cannot bend him to your will. He is all I might have been. All that mankind should be.” Danner’s voice broke and he sobbed. He relented. “I know it’s hard for you. It’s against your religion—against your love even. But try to like him. He’s no different from you and me—only stronger. And strength is a glorious thing, a great thing. Then—afterwards—if you can—forgive me.” He collapsed.

  Blood pounded in her ears. She stared at the huddled body of her husband. He had stood like a prophet and spoken words of fire. She was shaken from her pettiness. For one moment she had loved Danner. In that same instant she had glimpsed the superhuman energy that had driven him through the long years of discouragement to triumph. She had seen his soul. She fell at his feet, and when Danner opened his eyes, he found her there, weeping. He took her in his arms, timidly, clumsily. “Don’t cry, Mattie. It’ll be all right. You love him, don’t you?”

  She stared at the babe. “Of course I love him. Wash your face, Abednego.”

  After that there was peace in the house, and with it the child grew. During the next months they ignored his peculiarities. When they found him hanging outside his crib, they put him back gently. When he smashed the crib, they discussed a better place for him to repose. No hysteria, no conflict. When, in the early spring, young Hugo began to recognize them and to assert his feelings, they rejoiced as all parents rejoice.

  Danner made a pen of the iron heads and feet of two old beds. He wired them together. The baby was kept in the in-closure thus formed. The days warmed and lengthened. No one except the Danners knew of the prodigy harbored by their unostentatious house. But the secret was certain to leak out eventually.

  Mrs. Nolan, the next-door neighbor, was first to learn it. She had called on Mrs. Danner to borrow a cup of sugar. The call, naturally, included a discussion of various domestic matters and a visit to the baby. She voiced a question that had occupied her mind for some time.

  “Why do you keep the child in that iron thing? Aren’t you afraid it will hurt itself?”

  “Oh, no.”

  Mrs. Nolan viewed young Hugo. He was lying on a large pillow. Presently he rolled off its surface. “Active youngster, isn’t he?”

  “Very,” Mrs. Danner said, nervously.

  Hugo, as if he understood and desired to demonstrate, seized a corner of the pillow and flung it from him. It traversed a long arc and landed on the floor. Mrs. Nolan was startled. “Goodness! I never saw a child his age that could do that!”

  “No. Let’s go downstairs. I want to show you some tidies I’m making.”

  Mrs. Nolan paid no attention. She put the pillow back in the pen and watched while Hugo tossed it out. “There’s something funny about that. It isn’t normal. Have you seen a doctor?”

  Mrs. Danner fidgeted. “Oh, yes. Little Hugo’s healthy.”

  Little Hugo grasped the iron wall of his miniature prison. He pulled himself toward it. His skirt caught in the floor. He pulled harder. The pen moved toward him. A high soprano came from Mrs. Nolan. “He’s moved it! I don’t think I could move it myself! I tell you, I’m going to ask the doctor to examine him. You shouldn’t let a child be like that.”

  Mrs. Danner, filled with consternation, sought refuge in prevarication. “Nonsense,” she said as calmly as she could. “All we Douglases are like that. Strong children. I had a grandfather who could lift a cider keg when he was five—two hundred pounds and more. Hugo just takes after him, that’s all.”

  In the afternoon the minister called. He talked of the church and the town until he felt his preamble adequate. “I was wondering why you didn’t bring your child to be baptized, Mrs. Danner. And why you couldn’t come to church, now that it is old enough?”

  “Well,” she replied carefully, “the child is rather—irritable. And we thought we’d prefer to have it baptized at home.”

  “It’s irregular.”

  “We’d prefer it.”

  “Very well. I’m afraid”—he smiled—“that you’re a little—ah—unfamiliar with the upbringing of children. Natural—in the case of the first-born. Quite natural. But—ah—I met Mrs. Nolan to-day. Quite by accident. And she said that you kept the child—ah—in an iron pen. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to me—”

  “Did it?” Mrs. Danner’s jaw set squarely.

  But the minister was not to be turned aside lightly. “I’m afraid, if it’s true, that we—the church—will have to do something about it. You can’t let the little fellow grow up surrounded by iron walls. It will surely point him toward the prison. Little minds are tender and—ah—impressionable.”

  “We’ve had a crib and two pens of wood,” Mrs. Danner answered tartly. “He smashed them all.”

  “Ah? So?” Lifted eyebrows. “Temper, eh? He should be punished. Punishment is the only mold for unruly children.”

  “You’d punish a six-months-old baby?”

  “Why—certainly. I’ve reared seven by the rod.”

  Well blazing maternal instinct made her feel vicious. “Well you won’t raise mine by a rod. Or touch it—by a mile. Here’s your hat, parson.” Mrs. Danner spent the next hour in prayer.

  The village is known for the speed of its gossip and the sloth of its intelligence. Those two factors explain the conditions which preluded and surrounded the dawn of consciousness in young Hugo. Mrs. Danner’s extemporaneous fabrication of a sturdy ancestral line kept the more supernatural elements of the baby’s prowess from the public eye. It became rapidly and generally understood that the Danner infant was abnormal and that the treatment to which it was submitted was not usual.

  Hugo was sheltered, and his early antics, peculiar and startling as they were to his parents, escaped public attention. The little current of talk about him was kept alive only because there was so small an array of topics for the local burghers. But it was not extraordinarily malicious. Months piled up. A year passed and then another.

  Hugo was a good-natured, usually sober, and very sensitive child. Abednego Danner’s fear that his process might have created muscular strength at the expense of reason diminished and vanished as Hugo learned to walk and to talk, and as he grasped the rudiments of human behavior. His high little voice was heard in the house and about its lawns.

  They began to condition him. He was taught kindness and respect for people and property. His every destructive impulse was carefully curbed. That training was possible only because he was sensitive and naturally susceptible to advice. Punishment had no physical terror for him, because he could not feel it. But disfavor, anger, vexation, or disappointment in another person reflected itself in him at once.

  When he was four and a half, his mother sent him to Sunday school. He was enrolled in a class that sat near her own, so she was able to keep a careful eye on him. But Hugo did not misbehave. It was his first contact with a group of children, his first view of the larger cosmos. He sat quietly with his hands folded, as he had been told to sit. He listened to the teacher’s stories of Jesus with excited interest.

  On his third Sunday he heard one of the children whisper: “Here comes the strong boy.”

  He turned quickly, his cheeks red. “I’m not. I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. Mother said so.”

  Hugo struggled with the two hymn books on the table. “I can’t even lift these books,” he lied.

  The other child was impressed and tried to explain the situation later, taking the cause of Hugo’s weakness against the charge of strength. But the accusation rankled in Hugo’s young mind. He hated to be different—and he was beginning to realize that he was different.

  From his earliest day that longing occupied him. He sought to hide his strength. He hated to think that other people were talking about him. The distinction he enjoyed was odious to him because it aroused unpleasant emotions in other people. He could not realize that those emotions sprang from personal and group jealousy, from the hatred of superiority.

  His mother, ever zealous to direct her son in
the path of righteousness, talked to him often about his strength and how great it would become and what great and good deeds he could do with it. Those lectures on virtuous crusades had two uses; they helped check any impulses in her son which she felt would be harmful to her and they helped her to become used to the abnormality in little Hugo. In her mind, it was like telling a hunchback that his hump was a blessing disguised. Hugo was always aware of the fact that her words connoted some latent evil in his nature.

  Abednego Danner left the discipline of his son to his wife. He watched the child almost furtively. When Hugo was five, Mr. Danner taught him to read. It was a laborious process and required an entire winter. But Hugo emerged with a new world open to him—a world which he attacked with interest. No one bothered him when he read. He could be found often on sunny days, when other children were playing, prone on the floor, puzzling out sentences in the books of the family library and trying to catch their significance. During his fifth year he was not allowed to play with other children. The neighborhood insisted on that.

  With the busybodyness and contrariness of their kind the same neighbors insisted that Hugo be sent to school in the following fall. When, on the opening day, he did not appear, the truant officer called for him. Hugo heard the conversation between the officer and his mother. He was frightened. He vowed to himself that his abnormality should be hidden deeply.

  After that he was dropped into that microcosm of human life to which so little attention is paid by adults. School frightened and excited Hugo. For one thing, there were girls in school—and Hugo knew nothing about them except that they were different from himself. There were teachers—and they made one work, whether one wished to work or not. They represented power, as a jailer represents power. The children feared teachers. Hugo feared them.

  But the lesson of Hugo’s first six years was fairly well planted. He blushingly ignored the direct questions of those children whom his fame had reached. He gave no reason to any one for suspecting him of abnormality. He became so familiar to his comrades that their curiosity gradually vanished. He would not play games with them—his mother had forbidden that. But he talked to them and was as friendly as they allowed him to be. His sensitiveness and fear of ridicule made him a voracious student. He liked books. He liked to know things and to learn them.