Gladiator

by Wylie, Philip;

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say. You’re taking a chance. Plane strafing and shells.”

  “Well, what else are we to do? These are our orders.”

  “Nothing,” Hugo said.

  When the first shells fell among them, however, Danner forgot that his transference had cost his commission and sadly bereft Captain Crouan and his command. He forgot his repressed anger at the stupidity of American headquarters, and their bland assumption of knowledge superior to that gained by three years of actual fighting. He virtually took charge of his company, ignoring the bickering of a lieutenant who swore and shouted and accomplished nothing and who was presently beheaded for his lack of caution. A month later, with troops that had some feeling of respect for the enemy—a feeling gained through close and gory association—Hugo was returned his commission.

  Slowly at first, and with increasing momentum, the war was pushed up out of the trenches and the Germans retreated. The summer that filled the windows of American homes with gold stars passed. Hugo worked like a slave out beyond the front trenches, scouting, spying, destroying, salvaging, bending his heart and shoulder to a task that had long since become an acid routine. September, October, November. The end of that holocaust was very near.

  Then there came a day warmer than the rest and less rainy. Hugo was riding toward the lines on a camion. He rode as much as possible now. He had not slept for two days. His eyes were red and twitching. He felt tired—tired as if his fatigue were the beginning of death—tired so that nothing counted or mattered—tired of killing, of hating, of suffering—tired even of an ideal that had tarnished through long weathering. The camion was steel and it rattled and bumped over the road. Hugo lay flat in it, trying to close his eyes.

  Finally it stopped with a sharp jar, and the driver shouted that he could go no farther. Hugo clambered to the ground. He estimated that the battery toward which he was traveling was a mile farther. He began to walk. There was none of the former lunge and stride in his steps. He trudged, rather, his head bent forward. A little file of men approached him, and even at a distance, he did not need a second glance to identify them. Walking wounded.

  By ones and twos they began to pass him. He paid scant attention. Their field dressings were stained with the blood that their progress cost. They cursed and muttered. Some one had given them cigarettes, and a dozen wisps of smoke rose from each group. It was not until he reached the end of the straggling line that he looked up. Then he saw one man whose arms were both under bandage walking with another whose eyes were covered and whose hand, resting on his companion’s shoulder, guided his stumbling feet.

  Hugo viewed them as they came on and presently heard their conversation. “Christ, it hurts,” one of them said.

  “The devil with hurting, boy,” the blinded man answered. “So do I, for that matter. I feel like there was a hot poker in my brains.”

  “Want another butt?”

  “No, thanks. Makes me kind of sick to drag on them. Wish I had a drink, though.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Hugo heard his voice. “Hey, you guys,” it said. “Here’s some water. And a shot of cognac, too.”

  The first man stopped, and the blind man ran into him, bumping his head. He gasped with pain, but his lips smiled. “Damn nice of you, whoever you are.”

  They took the canteen and swallowed. “Go on,” Hugo said, and permitted himself a small lie. “I can get more in a couple of hours.” He produced his flask. “And finish off on a shot of this.”

  He held the containers for the armless man and handed them to the other. Their clothes were ragged and stained. Their shoes were in pieces. Sweat had soaked under the blind man’s armpits and stained his tunic. As Hugo watched him swallow thirstily, he started. The chin and the hair were familiar. His mind spun. He knew the voice, although its tenor was sadly changed.

  “Good God,” he said involuntarily, “it’s Lefty!” Lefty stiffened. “Who are you?”

  “Hugo Danner.”

  “Hugo Danner?” The tortured brain reflected. “Hugo! Good old Hugo! What, in the name of Jesus, are you doing here?”

  “Same thing you are.”

  An odd silence fell. The man with the shattered arms broke it. “Know this fellow?”

  “Do I know him! Gee! He was at college with me. One of my buddies. Gosh!” His hand reached out. “Put it there, Hugo.”

  They shook hands. “Got it bad, Lefty?”

  The bound head shook. “Not so bad. I guess—I kind of feel that I won’t be able to see much any more. Eyes all washed out. Got mustard gas in ‘em. But I’ll be all right, you know. A little thing like that’s nothing. Glad to be alive. Still have my sex appeal, anyhow. Still got the old appetite. But—listen—what happened to you? Why in hell did you quit? Woodman nearly went crazy looking for you.”

  “Oh—” Hugo’s thoughts went back a distance that seemed infinite, into another epoch and another world—“oh, I just couldn’t stick it. Say, you guys, wait a minute.” He turned. His camion-driver was lingering in the distance. “Wait here.” He rushed back. The armless man whistled.

  “God in heaven! Your friend there can sure cover the ground.”

  “Yeah,” Lefty said absently. “He always could.”

  In a moment Hugo returned. “I got it all fixed up for you two to ride in. No limousine, but it’ll carry you.”

  Lefty’s lips trembled. “Gee—Jesus Christ—” he amended stubbornly; “that’s decent. I don’t feel so dusty today. Damn it, if I had any eyes, I guess I’d cry. Must be the cognac.”

  “Nothing at all, Lefty old kid. Here, I’ll give you a hand.” He took Lefty’s arm over his shoulder, encircled him with his own, and carried him rapidly over the broken road.

  “Still got the old fight,” Lefty murmured as he felt himself rushed forward.

  They reached the truck. Lefty sat down on the metal bottom with a sigh. “Thanks, old bean. I was just about kaput. Tough going, this war. I saw my first shell fall yesterday. Never saw a single German at all. One of those squudgy things came across, and before I knew it, there was onion in my eye for a goal.” The truck motor roared. The armless man came alongside and was lifted beside Lefty. “Well, Hugo, so long.” You sure were a friend in need. Never forget it. And look me up when the Krauts are all dead, will you?” The gears clashed. “Thanks again—and for the cognac, too.” He waved airily. “See you later.”

  Hugo stalked back on the road. Once he looked over his shoulder. The truck was a blur of dust. “See you later. See you later. See you later.” Lefty would never see him later—never see any one ever.

  That night he sat in a quiet stupor, all thought of great ideal, of fine abandon, of the fury of justice, and all flagrant phrases brought to an abrupt end by the immediate claims of his own sorrow. Tom Shayne was blasted to death. The stinging horror of mustard had fallen into Lefty’s eyes. All the young men were dying. The friendships he had made, the human things that gave in memory root to the earth were ripped up and shriveled. That seemed grossly wrong and patently ignoble. He discarded his personal travail. It was nothing. His life had been comprised of attempt and failure, of disappointment and misunderstanding; he was accustomed to witness the blunting of the edge of his hopes and the dulling of his desires when they were enacted.

  His heart ached as he thought of the toil, the effort, the energy and hope and courage that had been spilled over those mucky fields to satisfy the lusts and foolish hates of the demagogues. He was no longer angry. The memory of Lefty sitting smilingly on the van and calling that he would see him later was too sharp an emotion to permit brain storms and pyrotechnics.

  If he could but have ended the war single-handed, it might have been different. But he was not great enough for that. He had been a thousand men, perhaps ten thousand, but he could not be millions. He could not wrap his arms around a continent and squeeze it into submission. There were too many people and they were too stupid to do more than fear him and hate him. Sitting there, he re
alized that his naive faith in himself and the universe had foundered. The war was only another war that future generations would find romantic to contemplate and dull to study. He was only a species of genius who had missed his mark by a cosmic margin.

  When he considered his failure, he believed that he was not thinking about himself. There he was, entrusted with special missions which he accomplished no one knew how, and no one questioned in those hectic days. Those who had seen him escape machine-gun fire, carry tons, leap a hundred yards, kill scores, still clung to their original concepts of mankind and discredited the miracle their own eyes had witnessed. Too many strange things happened in that blasting carnival of destruction for one strange sight of one strange man to leave a great mark. Personal security was at too great a premium to leave much room for interest and speculation. Even Captain Crouan believed he was only a man of freak strength and Major Ingalls in his present situation was too busy to do more than note that Hugo was capable and nod his head when Hugo reported another signal victory, ascribing it to his long experience in the war rather than to his peculiar abilities.

  As he sat empty-eyed in the darkness, smoking cigarettes and breathing in his own and the world’s tragic futility, his own and the world’s abysmal sorrow, that stubborn ancestral courage and determination that was in him still continued to lash his reason. “Even if the war was not worth while,” it whispered, “you have committed yourself to it. You are bound and pledged to see it to the bitter end. You cannot finish it on a declining note. To-night, to-morrow, you must begin again.” At the same time his lust for carnage stirred within him like a long-subdued demon. Now he recognized it and knew that it must be mastered. But it combined with his conscience to quicken his sinews anew.

  He lit a fresh cigarette and planned what he would do. On the next night he would prepare himself very carefully. He would eat enormously, provide himself with food and water, rest as much as he could, and then start south and east in a plane. He would drive it far into Germany. When its petrol failed, he would crash it. Stepping from the ruins, he would hasten on in the darkness, on, on, like Pheidippides, till he reached the center of the enemy government. There, crashing through the petty human barriers, he would perform his last feat, strangling the Emperor, slaying the generals, pulling the buildings apart with his Samsonian arms, and disrupting the control of the war.

  He had dreamed of such an enterprise even before he had enlisted. But he had known that he lacked sufficient stamina without a great internal cause, and no rage, no blood-madness, was great enough to drive him to that effort. With amazement he realized that a clenched determination depending on the brain rather than the emotions was a greater catalyst than any passion. He knew that he could do such a thing. In the warmth of that knowledge he completed his plan tranquilly and retired. For twelve hours, by order undisturbed, Hugo slept.

  In the bright morning, he girded himself. He requisitioned the plane he needed through Major Ingalls. He explained that requirement by saying that he was going to bomb a battery of big guns. The plane offered was an old one. Hugo had seen enough of flying in his French service to understand its navigation. He ate the huge meal he had planned. And then, a cool and grim man, he made his way to the hangar. In fifteen minutes his last adventure would have commenced. But a dispatch rider, charging on to the field in a roaring motor cycle, announced the signing of the Armistice and the end of the war.

  Hugo stood near his plane when he heard the news. Two rnen at his side began to cry, one repeating over and over: “And I’m still alive, so help me God. I wish I was dead, like Joey.” Hugo was rigid. His first gesture was to lift his clenched fist and search for an object to smash with it. The fist lingered in the air. His rage passed—rage that would have required a giant vent had it occurred two days sooner. He relaxed. His arm fell. He ruffled his black hair; his blacker eyes stared and then twinkled. His lips smiled for the first time in many months. His great shoulders sagged. “I should have guessed it,” he said to himself, and entered the rejoicing with a fervor that was unexpected.

  Chapter XVI

  THERE must be in heaven a certain god—a paunchy, cynical god whose task it is to arrange for each of the birthward-marching souls a set of circumstances so nicely adjusted to its character that the result of its life, in triumph or defeat, will be hinged on the finest of threads. So Hugo must have felt coming home from war. He had celebrated the Armistice hugely, not because it had spared his life—most of the pomp, parade, bawdiness, and glory had originated in such a deliverance—but because it had rescued him from the hot blast of destructiveness. An instantaneous realization of that prevented despair. He had failed in the hour of becoming death itself; such failure was fortunate because life to him, even at the end of the war, seemed more the effort of creation than the business of annihilation.

  To know that had cost a struggle—a struggle that took place at the hangar as the dispatch-bearer rode up and that remained crucial only between the instant when he lifted his fist and when he lowered it. Brevity made it no less intense; a second of time had resolved his soul afresh, had redistilled it and recombined it.

  Not long after that he started back to America. Hugo wrote to his family that the war was ended, that he was well, that he expected to see them some time in the near future. The ship that carried him reached the end of the blue sea; he was disembarked and demobilized in New York. He realized even before he was accustomed to the novelty of civilian clothes that a familiar, friendly city had changed. The retrospective spell of the eighties and nineties had vanished. New York was brand-new, blatant, rushing, prosperous. The inheritance from Europe had been assimilated; a social reality, entirely foreign and American, had been wrought and New York was ready to spread it across the parent world. Those things were pressed quickly into Hugo’s mind by his hotel, the magazines, a chance novel of the precise date, the cinema, and the more general, more indefinite human pulses.

  After a few days of random inspection, of casual imbibing, he called upon Tom Shayne’s father. He would have preferred to escape all painful reminiscing, but he went partly as a duty and partly from necessity: he had no money whatever.

  A butler opened the door of a large stone mansion and ushered Hugo to the library, where Mr. Shayne rose eagerly. “I’m so glad you came. Knew you’d be here soon. How are you?”

  Hugo was slightly surprised. In his host’s manner was the hardness and intensity that he had observed everywhere. “I’m very well, thanks.”

  “Splendid! Cocktails, Smith.”

  There was a pause. Mr. Shayne smiled. “Well, it’s over, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “All over. And now we’ve got to beat the spears into plowshares, eh?”

  “We have.”

  Mr. Shayne chuckled. “Some of my spears were already made into plows, and it was a great season for the harvest, young man—a great season.”

  Hugo was still uncertain of Mr. Shayne’s deepest viewpoint. His uncertainty nettled him. “The grim reaper has done some harvesting on his own account—” He spoke almost rudely.

  Mr. Shayne frowned disapprovingly. “I made up my mind to forget, Danner. To forget and to buckle down. And I’ve done both. You’ll want to know what happened to the funds I handled for you—”

  “I wasn’t particularly—”

  The older man shook his head with grotesque coyness. “Not so fast, not so fast. You were particularly eager to hear. We’re getting honest about our emotions in this day and place. You’re eaten with impatience. Well—I won’t hold out, Danner, I’ve made you a million. A clean, cold million.”

  Hugo had been struggling in a rising tide of incomprehension; that statement engulfed him. “Me? A million?”

  “In the bank in your name waiting for a blonde girl.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t exactly understand, Mr. Shayne.” The banker readjusted his glasses and swallowed a cocktail by tipping back his head. Then he rose, paced across the broad carpet, and faced Hugo. “Of c
ourse you don’t understand. Well, I’ll tell you about it. Once you did a favor for me which has no place in this conversation.” He hesitated; his face seemed to flinch and then to be jerked back to its former expression. “In return I’ve done a little for you. And I want to add a word to the gift of your bank book. You have, if you’re careful, leisure to enjoy life, freedom, the world at your feet. No more strife for you, no worry, and no care. Take it. Be a hedonist. There is nothing else. I’ve lain in bed nights enjoying the life that lies ahead of you, my boy. Vicariously voluptuous. Catchy phrase, isn’t it? My own. I want to see you do it up brown.”

  Hugo rubbed his hand across his forehead. It was not long ago that this same man had sat at an estaminet and wept over snatches of a childhood which death had made sacred. Here he stood now, asking that a life be done up brown, and meaning cheap, obvious things. He wished that he had never called on Tom’s father.

  “That wasn’t my idea of living—” he said slowly. “It will be. Forget the war. It was a dream. I realized it suddenly. If I had not, I would still be—just a banker. Not a great banker. The great banker. I saw, suddenly, that it was a dream. The world was made. So I took my profit from it, beginning on the day I saw.”

  “How, exactly?”

  “Eh?”

  “I mean—how did you profit by the war?” Mr. Shayne smiled expansively. “What was in demand then, my boy? What were the stupid, traduced, misguided people raising billions to get? What? Why, shells, guns, foodstuffs. For six months I had a corner on four chemicals vitally necessary to the government. And the government got them—at my price. I owned a lot of steel. I mixed food and diplomacy in equal parts—and when the pie was opened, it was full of solid gold.”

  Hugo’s voice was strange. “And that is the way—my money was made?”