Gladiator - Philip Wylie (readnow .TXT) 📗

“I don’t know. What’s your favorite vice? We can locate it in Marseilles.”

Hugo frowned. “Well, vice is so limited in its scope.”

His companion chuckled. “Isn’t it? I’ve always said vice was narrow. The next time I see Aunt Emma I’m going to say: ‘Emma, vice is becoming too narrow in its scope.’ She’ll be furious and it will bring her to an early demise and I’ll inherit a lot more money, and that will be the real tragedy. She’s a useless old fool, Aunt Emma. Never did a valuable thing in her life. Goes in for charity⁠—just like we go in for golf and whatnot. Oh, well, to hell with Aunt Emma.”

Hugo banged his glass on the table. “Garçon! Encore deux whiskey à l’eau and to hell with Aunt Emma.”

“Like to play roulette?”

“Like to try.”

They climbed into a taxi. Shayne gave an address and they were driven to another quarter of the town. In a room packed with people in evening clothes they played for an hour. Several people spoke to Shayne and he introduced Hugo to them. Shayne won and Hugo lost. They went out into the night. The streets were quieter in that part of town. Two girls accosted them.

“That gives me an idea,” Shayne said. “Let’s find a phone. Maybe we can get Marcelle and Claudine.”

Marcelle and Claudine met them at the door of the old house. Their arms were laden with champagne bottles. The interior of the dwelling belied its cold, grey, ancient stones. Hugo did not remember much of what followed that evening. Short, unrelated fragments stuck in his mind⁠—Shayne chasing the white form of Marcelle up and down the stairs; himself in a huge bathtub washing a back in front of him, his surprise when he saw daylight through the wooden shutters of the house.

Someone was shaking him. “Come on, soldier. The leave’s up.”

He opened his eyes and collected his thoughts. He grinned at Shayne. “All right. But if I had to defend myself right now⁠—I’d fail against a good strong mouse.”

“We’ll fix that. Hey! Marcelle! Got any Fernet-Branca?”

The girl came with two large glasses of the pick-me-up. Hugo swallowed the bitter brown fluid and shuddered. Claudine awoke. “Chéri!” she sighed, and kissed him.

They sat on the edge of the bed. “Boy!” Hugo said. “What a binge!”

“You like eet?” Claudine murmured.

He took her hand. “Loved it, darling. And now we’re going to war.”

“Ah!” she said, and, at the door: “Bonne chance!”

Shayne left Hugo, after agreeing on a time and place for their meeting in the afternoon. The hours passed slowly. Hugo took another drink, and then, exerting his judgment and will, he refrained from taking more. At noon he partook of a light meal. He thought, or imagined, that the ecstasy of the day before was showing some signs of decline. It occurred to him that the people might be very sober and quiet before the war was a thing to be written into the history of France.

The sun was shining. He found a place in the shade where he could avoid it. He ordered a glass of beer, tasted it, and forgot to finish it. The elation of his first hours had passed. But the thing within him that had caused it was by no means dead. As he sat there, his muscles tensed with the picturization of what was soon to be. He saw the grim shadows of the enemy. He felt the hot splash of blood. For one suspended second he was ashamed of himself, and then he stamped out that shame as being something very much akin to cowardice.

He wondered why Shayne was joining the Legion and what sort of person he was underneath his rather haughty exterior. A man of character, evidently, and one who was weary of the world to which he had been privileged. Hugo’s reverie veered to his mother and father. He tried to imagine what they would think of his enlistment, of him in the war; and even what they thought of him from the scant and scattered information he had supplied. He was sure that he would justify himself. He felt purged and free and noble. His strength was a thing of wreck and ruin, given to the world at a time when wreck and ruin were needed to set it right. It was odd that such a product should emerge from the dusty brain of a college professor in a Bible-ridden town.

Hugo had not possessed a religion for a long time. Now, wondering on another tangent if the war might not bring about his end, he thought about it. He realized that he would hate himself for murmuring a prayer or asking protection. He was gamer than the Cross-obsessed weaklings who were not wise enough to look life in the face and not brave enough to draw the true conclusions from what they saw. True conclusions? He meditated. What did it matter⁠—agnosticism, atheism, pantheism⁠—anything but the savage and anthropomorphic twaddle that had been doled out since the Israelites singled out Jehovah from among their many gods. He would not commit himself. He would go back with his death to the place where he had been before he was born and feel no more regret than he had in that oblivious past. Meanwhile he would fight! He moved restively and waited for Shayne with growing impatience.

Until that chaotic and gorgeous hour he had lived for nothing, proved nothing, accomplished nothing. Society was no better in any way because he had lived. He excepted the lives he had saved, the few favors he had done. That was nothing in proportion to his powers. He was his own measure, and by his own efforts would he satisfy himself. War! He flexed his arms. War. His black eyes burned with a formidable light.

Then Shayne came. Walking with long strides. A ghostly smile on his lips. A darkness in his usually pale-blue eyes. Hugo liked him. They said a few words