Gladiator, Philip Wylie [sight word books txt] 📗

wondering first what that talent might be and then recognizing that Hugo meant his strength. “Nonsense. Any male in his right senses would give all his wits to be as strong as you are.”

It was a polite, friendly thing to say. Hugo could not refrain from comparing himself to Valentine Mitchel. An artist—a clever artist and one who would some day be important to the world. Because people could understand what he drew, because it represented a level of thought and expression. He was, like Hugo, in the doldrums of progress. But Mitchel would emerge, succeed, be happy—or at least satisfied with himself—while Hugo was bound to silence, was compelled never to allow himself full expression. Humanity would never accept and understand him.

The increased heat of August suggested by its very intensity a shortness of duration, an end of summer. Hugo began to wonder what he would do with Charlotte when he went back to Webster. He worried about her a good deal and she, guessing the subject of his frequent fits of silence, made a resolve in her tough and worldly mind. She had learned more about certain facets of Hugo than he knew himself. She realized that he was superior to her and that, in almost any other place than Coney Island, she would be a liability to him. The thought that he would have to desert her made Hugo very miserable. He knew that he would miss Charlotte and he knew that the blow to her might spell disaster. After all, he thought, he had not improved her morals or raised her vision. He did not realize that he had made both almost sublime by the mere act of being considerate. “White,” Charlotte called it.

Nevertheless she was not without an intense sense of self-protection, despite her condition on the night he had found her. She knew that womankind lived at the expense of mankind. She saw the emotional respect in which Valentine Mitchel unwittingly held Hugo. He had scarcely spoken ten serious words to her. She realized that the artist saw her as a property of his friend. That, in a way, made her valuable. It was a subtle advantage, which she pressed with all the skill it required. One night when Hugo was at work and the chill of autumn had breathed on the hot shore, she told Valentine that he was a very nice boy and that she liked him very much. He went away distraught, which was what she had intended, and he carried with him a new and as yet inarticulate idea, which was what she had foreseen.

When she felt that the situation had ripened to the point of action, she waited for the precise moment. It came swiftly and in a better guise than she had hoped. On a night in early September, when the crowds had thinned a little, Hugo was just buckling himself into the harness that lifted the horse. The spectators were waiting for the denouement with bickering patience. Charlotte was standing on the platform, watching him with expressionless eyes. She knew that soon she would not see Hugo any more. She knew that he was tired of his small show, that he was chafing to be gone; and she knew that his loyalty to her would never let him go unless it was made inevitable by her. The horse was ready. She watched the muscles start out beneath Hugo’s tawny skin. She saw his lips set, his head thrust back. She worshiped him like that. Unemotionally, she saw the horse lifted up from the floor. She heard the applause. There was a bustle at the gate.

Half a dozen people entered in single file. Three young men. Three girls. They were intoxicated. They laughed and spoke in loud voices. She saw by their clothes and their manner that they were rich. Slumming in Coney Island. She smiled at the young men as she had always smiled at such young men, friendly, impersonally. Hugo did not see their entrance. They came very near.

“My God, it’s Hugo Danner!”

Hugo heard Lefty’s voice and recognized it. The horse was dropped to the floor. He turned. An expression of startled amazement crossed his features. Chuck, Lefty, Iris, and three people whom he did not know were staring at him. He saw the stupefied recognition on the faces of his friends. One despairing glance he cast at Charlotte and then he went on with his act.

They waited for him until it was over. They clasped him to their bosoms. They acknowledged Charlotte with critical glances. “Come on and join the party,” they said.

After that, their silence was worse than any questions. They talked freely and merrily enough, but behind their words was a deep reserve. Lefty broke it when he had an opportunity to take Hugo aside. “What in hell is eating you? Aren’t you coming back to Webster?”

“Sure. That is—I think so. I had to do this to make some money. Just about the time school closed, my family went broke.”

“But, good God, man, why didn’t you tell us? My father is an alumnus and he’d put up five thousand a year, if necessary, to see you kept on the football team.”

Hugo laughed. “You don’t think I’d take it, Lefty?”

“Why not?” A pause. “No, I suppose you’d be just the God-damned kind of a fool that wouldn’t. Who’s the girl?”

Hugo did not falter. “She’s a tart I’ve been living with. I never knew a better one—girl, that is.”

Have you gone crazy?”

“On the contrary, I’ve got wise.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake, don’t say anything about it on the campus.”

Hugo bit his lip. “Don’t worry. My business is—my own.”

They joined the others, drinking at the table. Charlotte was telling a joke. It was not a nice joke. He had not thought of her jokes before—because Iris and Chuck and Lefty had not been listening to them. Now, he was embarrassed. Iris asked him to dance with her. They went out on the floor.

“Lovely little thing, that Charlotte,” she said acidly.

“Isn’t she!” Hugo answered with such enthusiasm that she did not speak during the rest of the dance.

Finally the ordeal ended. Lefty and his guests embarked in an automobile for the city.

“You know such people,” Charlotte half-whispered. Hugo’s cheeks still flamed, but his heart bled for her.

“I guess they aren’t much,” he replied.

She answered hotly: “Don’t you be like that! They’re nice people. They’re fine people. That Iris even asked me to her house. Gave me a card to see her.” Charlotte could guess what Iris wanted. So could Hugo. But Charlotte pretended to be innocent.

He kissed Charlotte good-night and walked in the streets until morning. Hugo could see no solution. Charlotte was so trusting, so good to him. He could not imagine how she would receive any suggestion that she go to New York and get a job, while he return to college, that he see her during vacations, that he send money to her. But he knew that a hot fire dwelt within her and that her fury would rise, her grief, and that he would be made very miserable and ashamed. She chided him at breakfast for his walk in the dark. She laughed and kissed him and pushed him bodily to his work. He looked back as he walked down to the curb. She was leaning out of the window. She waved her hand. He rounded the corner with wretched leaden steps. The morning, concerned with the petty business of receipts, refurbishings, cleaning, went slowly. When he returned for lunch it was with the decision to tell her the truth about his life and its requirements and to let her decide.

She did not come to the door to kiss him. (She had imagined that lonely return.) She did not answer his brave and cheerful hail. (She had let the sound of it ring upon her ear a thousand times.) She was gone. (She knew he would sit down and cry.) Then, stumbling, he found the two notes. But he already understood.

The message from Valentine Mitchel was reckless, impetuous. “Dear Hugo—Charlotte and I have fallen in love with each other and I’ve run away with her. I almost wish you’d come after us and kill me. I hate myself for betraying you. But I love her, so I cannot help it. I’ve learned to see in her what you first saw in her. Good-by, good luck.”

Hugo put it down. Charlotte would be good to him. In a way, he didn’t deserve her. And when he was famous, some day, perhaps she would leave him, too. He hesitated to read her note. “Good-by, darling, I do not love you any more. C.”

It was ludicrous, transparent, pitiful, and heroic. Hugo saw all those qualities. “Good-by, darling, I do not love you any more.” She had written it under Valentine’s eyes. But she was shrewd enough to placate her new lover while she told her sad little story to her old. She would want him to feel bad. Well, God knew, he did. Hugo looked at the room. He sobbed. He bolted into the street, tears streaming down his cheeks; he drew his savings from the bank—seven hundred and eighty-four dollars and sixty-four cents; he rushed to the haunted house, flung his clothes into a bag; he sat drearily on a subway for an hour. He paced the smooth floor of a station He swung aboard a train. He came to Webster, his head high, feeling a great pride in Charlotte and in his love for her, walking in glad strides over the familiar soil.