Gladiator, Philip Wylie [win 10 ebook reader .TXT] 📗

work might bear fruit. “The Euglena viridis,” he said in flat tones, “will be the subject of tomorrow’s study. I want you gentlemen to diagram the structure of the Euglena viridis and write five hundred words on its vital principles and processes. It is particularly interesting because it shares properties that are animal with properties that are vegetable.”

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 neighbour, 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. Danner sat prostrate in the parlour. He had done it. He had done more⁠—and that would be known later. Perhaps it would fail. He hoped it would fail. He wrung his hands. The concept of another person in his house had not yet occurred to him. Birth was his wife’s sickness⁠—until it was over.

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.

III

Calm and quiet held their negative sway over the Danner ménage 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. He was born with a quantity of black hair⁠—hair so dark as to be nearly blue. Abednego Danner, on seeing it, exercised the liberty which all husbands take, and investigated rumors of his wife’s forbears with his most secret thoughts. The principal rumor was that one of her lusty Covenanter grandsires had been intrigued by a squaw to the point of forgetting his Psalms and recalling only the Song of Solomon.

However that may have been, Hugo was an attractive and virile baby. 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