Gladiator - Philip Wylie (readnow .TXT) 📗

They reached the truck. Lefty sat down on the metal bottom with a sigh. “Thanks, old bean. I was just about kaputt. Tough going, this war. I saw my first shell fall yesterday. Never saw a single German at all. One of those squdgy 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 anyone 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 shrivelled. 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.

Even his great sacrifice had been vain. It was always thus. His deeds frightened men or made them jealous. When he conceived a fine thing, the masses, individually or collectively, transformed it into something cheap. His fort in the forest had been branded a hoax. His effort to send himself through college and to rescue Charlotte from an unpleasant life had ended in vulgar comedy. Even that had been her triumph, her hour, and an incongruous strain of greatness had filtered through her personality rather than his. Now his years in the war were reduced to no grandeur, to a mere outlet for his savage instinct to destroy. After such a life, he reflected, he could no longer visualize himself engaged in any search for a comprehension of real values.

His mind was thorny with doubts. Seeing himself as a man made hypocritical by his gifts and the narrowness of the world, discarding his own problem as tragically solved, Hugo then looked upon the war as the same sort of colossal error. A waste. Useless, hopeless, gaining nothing but the temporal power which it so blatantly disavowed, it had exacted the price of its tawdry excitement in lives, and, now that it was almost finished, mankind was ready to emerge blank-faced and panting, no better off than before.

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 realized 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 or 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 is 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. Tonight, tomorrow, 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.

It was a cold night, but Hugo perspired. Was he to go again into the holocaust to avenge a friend? Was he to live over those crimson seconds that followed the death of