Gladiator - Philip Wylie (readnow .TXT) 📗

was strong. At sea I was strong. In the war. First I wanted to be 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 hoped you would. But I always worried about you. Every day, son, every day for all these years, I picked up the papers and looked at them with misgivings. ‘Suppose,’ I said to myself, ‘suppose my boy lost his temper last night. Suppose someone wronged him and he undertook to avenge himself.’ 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 all right⁠—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. I pulled 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 was frightened⁠—and happy. Try as I might, I could not think of a great constructive cause for you to enter. I had to satisfy myself by thinking that you could find such a cause. Then the war came. And you wrote that you were in it. I was happy. I am old, Hugo, and perhaps my nationalism and my patriotism are dead. Sides in a war did not seem to matter. But peace mattered to me, and I thought⁠—I hoped that you could hasten peace. Four years, Hugo. Your letters said nothing. Four years. And then it stopped. And I understood. War is property fighting property, not David fighting Goliath. The greatest David would be unavailing now. Even you could do little enough.”

“Perhaps not so little, father.”

“There were things, then?”

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. War is a mistake. It is not sides that matter. The object of war is to make peace. On a dark night, father, I went alone into the enemy lines. For one hundred miles that night I upset every gun, I wrecked every ammunition train, I blew up every dump⁠—every arsenal, that is. Alone I did it. The next day they asked for peace. Remember the false armistice? Somehow it leaked out that there would be victory and surrender the next night⁠—because of me. Only the truth about me was never known. And a 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 prayer were justified! Oh, Hugo, you can never know how glad I am you came and told me this. How glad.”

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

Hugo smiled. “Am I ever tired, father? Am I vulnerable?”

“I had forgotten. It is so hard for the finite mind to think beyond itself. Not tired. Not vulnerable. No. There was Samson⁠—the cat.” He was 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 rare privilege, unfamiliar elixir to the old man. His new lie took its cue from Abednego Danner’s expressions. “My work goes on. Now it is with America. I expect to go to Washington soon to right the wrongs of politics and government. Vicious and selfish men I shall force from their high places. I shall secure the idealistic and the courageous.” It was a theory he had never considered, a possible practice born of necessity. “The pressure I shall bring against them will be physical and mental. Here a man will be driven from his house mysteriously. There a man will slip into the limbo. Yonder an inconspicuous person will suddenly be braced by a new courage; his enemies will be gone and his work will progress unhampered. I shall be an invisible agent of right⁠—right as best I can see it. You understand, father?”

Abednego smiled like a happy child. “I do, son. To be you must be splendid.”

“The most splendid thing on earth! And I have you to thank, you and your genius to tender gratitude to. I am merely the agent. It is you that created and the whole world that benefits.”

Abednego’s face was serene⁠—not smug, but transfigured. “I yearned as you now perform. It is strange that one cloistered mortal can become inspired with the toil and lament of the universe. Yet there is a danger of false pride in that, too. I am apt to fall into the pit because my cup is so full here at the last. And the greatest problem of all is not settled.”

“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’s voice come from a great distance. “Up in the attic in the black trunk are six notebooks wrapped in oilpaper. They were written in pencil, but I went over them carefully in ink. That is