Gladiator by Philip Wylie (great novels txt) 📕

her eat the food. He knew such pity as he had seldom felt. Poor little kid! All alone, scared, going on the street because she would starve otherwise. It made him feel strong and capable. Before the meal was finished, she was talking furiously. Her pathetic life was unravelled. "I come from Brooklyn ... old man took to drink, an' ma beat it with a gent from Astoria ... never knew what happened to her.... I kept house for the old man till he tried to get funny with me.... Burlesque ... on the road ... the leading man.... He flew the coop when I told him, and then when it came, it was dead...." Another job ... the manager ... Coney and her dismissal. "I just couldn't let 'em have it when I didn't like 'em, mister. Guess I'm not tough like the other girls. My mother was French and she brought me up kind of decent. Well...." The little outward turning of her hands, the shrug of her shoulders.

"Don't worry, Charlotte. I won't let them eat you. To-morrow I'll set you up to a decent room and we'll go out and find some jobs here."

"You don't have to do that, mister. I'll make out. All I needed was a square and another day."

Charlotte sighed and smoked a cigarette with her coffee. Then they went out on the street and mixed with the throng. The voices of a score of barkers wheedled them. Hugo began to feel gay. He took Charlotte to see the strong man and watched his feats with a critical eye. He took her on the roller coaster and became taut and laughing when she screamed and held him. Then, laughing louder than before, they went through Steeplechase. She fell in the rolling barrel and he carried her out. They crossed over moving staircases and lost themselves in a maze, and slid down polished chutes into fountains of light and excited screaming. Always, afterwards, her hand found his arm, her great dark eyes looked into his and laughed. Always they turned toward the other men and girls with a proud and haughty expression that pointed to Hugo as her man, her conquest. Later they danced. They drank more beer.

"Golly," she whispered, as she snuggled against him, "you sure strut a mean fox trot."

"So do you, Charlotte."

"I been doin' it a lot, I guess."

The brazen crash of a finale. The table. A babble of voices, voices of people snatching pleasure from Coney Island's gaudy barrel of cheap amusements. Hugo liked it then. He liked the smell and touch of the multitude and the incessant hysteria of its presence. After midnight the music became more aggravating—muted, insinuating. Several of the dancers were drunk. One of them tried to cut in. Hugo shook his head.

"Gee!" Charlotte said, "I was sure hopin' you wouldn't let him."

"Why—I never thought of it."

"Most fellows would. He's a tough."

It was an introduction to an unfamiliar world. The "tough" came to their table and asked for a dance in thick accents. Charlotte paled and accepted. Hugo refused. "Say, bo, I'm askin' for a dance. I got concessions here. You can't refuse me, see? I guess you got me wrong."

"Beat it," Hugo said, "before I take a poke at you."

The intruder's answer was a swinging fist, which missed Hugo by a wide margin. Hugo stood and dropped him with a single clean blow. The manager came up, expostulated, ordered the tough's inert form from the floor, started the music.

"You shouldn't ought to have done it, mister. He'll get his gang."

"The hell with his gang."

Charlotte sighed. "That's the first time anybody ever stuck up for me. Jeest, mister, I've been wishin' an' wishin' for the day when somebody would bruise his knuckles for me."

Hugo laughed. "Hey, waiter! Two beers."

When she yawned, he took her out to the boulevard and walked at her side toward the shabby house. They reached the steps, and Charlotte began to cry.

"What's the matter?"

"I was goin' to thank you, but I don't know how. It was too nice of you. An' now I suppose I'll never see you again."

"Don't be silly. I'll show up at eight in the morning and we'll have breakfast together."

Charlotte looked into his face wistfully. "Say, kid, be a good guy and take me to your hotel, will you? I'm scared I'll lose you."

He held her hands. "You won't lose me. And I haven't got a hotel—yet."

"Then—come up an' stay with me. Honest, I'm all right. I can prove it to you. It'll be doin' me a favor."

"I ought not to, Charlotte."

She threw her arms around him and kissed him. He felt her breath on his lips and the warmth of her body. "You gotta, kid. You're all I ever had. Please, please."

Hugo walked up the stairs thoughtfully. In her small room he watched her disrobe. So willingly now—so eagerly. She turned back the covers of the bed. "It ain't much of a dump, baby, but I'll make you like it."

Much later, in the abyss of darkness, he heard her voice, sleepy and still husky. "Say, mister, what's your name?"

In the morning they went down to the boulevard together. The gay d�bris of the night before lay in the street, and men were sweeping it away. But their spirits were high. They had breakfast together in a quiet enchantment. Once she kissed him.

"Would you like to keep house—for me?" he asked.

"Do you mean it?" She seemed to doubt every instant that good fortune had descended permanently upon her. She was like a dreamer who anticipated a sombre awakening even while he clung to the bliss of his dream.

"Sure, I mean it. I'll get a job and we'll find an apartment and you can spend your spare time swimming and lying on the beach." He knew a twinge of unexpected jealousy. "That is, if you'll promise not to look at all the men who are going to look at you." He was ashamed of that statement.

Charlotte, however, was not sufficiently civilized to be displeased. "Do you think I'd two-time the first gent that ever worried about what I did in my spare moments? Why, if you brought home a few bucks to most of the birds I know, they wouldn't even ask how you earned it—they'd be so busy lookin' for another girl an' a shot of gin."

"Well—let's go."

Hugo went to one of the largest side shows. After some questioning he found the manager. "I'm H. Smith," he said, "and I want to apply for a job."

"Doin' what?"

"This is my wife." The manager stared and nodded. Charlotte took his arm and rubbed it against herself, thinking, perhaps, that it was a wifely gesture. Hugo smiled inwardly and then looked at the sprawled form of the manager. There, to that seamy-faced and dour man who was almost unlike a human being, he was going to offer the first sale of his majestic strength. A side-show manager, sitting behind a dirty desk in a dirty building.

"A strong-man act," Hugo said.

Charlotte tittered. She thought that the bravado of her new friend was over-stepping the limits of good sense. The manager sat up. "I'd like to have a good strong man, yes. The show needs one. But you're not the bird. You haven't got the beef. Go over and watch that damned German work."

Hugo bent over and fastened one hand on the back of the chair on which the manager sat. Without evidence of effort he lifted the chair and its occupant high over his head.

"For Christ's sake, let me down," the manager said.

Hugo swung him through the air in a wide arc. "I say, mister, that I'm three times stronger than that German. And I want your job. If I don't look strong enough, I'll wear some padded tights. And I'll give you a show that'll be worth the admission. But I want a slice of the entrance price—and maybe a separate tent, see? My name is Hogarth"—he winked at Charlotte—"and you'll never be sorry you took me on."

The manager, panting and astonished, was returned to the floor. His anger struggled with his pleasure at Hugo's showmanship. "Well, what else can you do? Weight-lifting is pretty stale."

Hugo thought quickly. "I can bend a railroad rail—not a spike. I can lift a full-grown horse with one—one shoulder. I can chin myself on my little finger. I can set a bear trap with my teeth—"

"That's a good number."

"I can push up just twice as much weight as any one else in the game and you can print a challenge on my tent. I can pull a boa constrictor straight—"

"We'll give you a chance. Come around here at three this afternoon with your stuff and we'll try your act. Does this lady work in it? That'll help."

"Yes," Charlotte said.

Hugo nodded. "She's my assistant."

They left the building, and when she was sure they were out of earshot, Charlotte said: "What do you do, strong boy, fake 'em?"

"No. I do them."

"Aw—you don't need to kid me."

"I'm not. You saw me lift him, didn't you? Well—that was nothing."

"Jeest! That I should live to see the day I got a bird like you."

Until three o'clock Hugo and Charlotte occupied their time with feverish activity. They found a small apartment not far from the sea-shore. It was clean and bright and it had windows on two sides. Its furniture was nearly new, and Charlotte, with tears in her eyes, sat in all the chairs, lay on the bed, took the egg-beater from the drawer in the kitchen table and spun it in an empty bowl. They went out together and bought a quantity and a variety of food. They ate an early luncheon and Hugo set out to gather the properties for his demonstration. At three o'clock, before a dozen men, he gave an exhibition of strength the like of which had never been seen in any museum of human abnormalities.

When he went back to his apartment, Charlotte, in a gingham dress which she had bought with part of the money he had given her, was preparing dinner. He took her on his lap. "Did you get the job?"

"Sure I did. Fifty a week and ten per cent of the gate receipts."

"Gee! That's a lot of money!"

Hugo nodded and kissed her. He was very happy. Happier, in a certain way, than he had ever been or ever would be again. His livelihood was assured. He was going to live with a woman, to have one always near to love and to share his life. It was that concept of companionship, above all other things, which made him glad.

Two days later, as Hugo worked to prepare the vehicles of his exhibition, he heard an altercation outside the tent that had been erected for him. A voice said: "Whatcha tryin' to do there, anyhow?"

"Why, I was making this strong man as I saw him. A man with the expression of strength in his face."

"But you gotta bat' robe on him. What we want is muscles. Muscles, bo. Bigger an' better than any picture of any strong man ever made. Put one here—an' one there—"

"But that isn't correct anatomy."

"To hell wit' that stuff. Put one there, I says."

"But he'll be out of drawing, awkward, absurd."

"Say, listen, do you want ten bucks for painting this sign or shall I give it to some one else?"

"Very well. I'll do as you say. Only—it isn't right."

Hugo walked out of the tent. A young man was bending over a huge sheet made of many lengths of oilcloth sewn together. He was a small person, with pale eyes and a white skin. Beside him stood the manager, eyeing critically the strokes applied to the cloth. In a semi-finished state was the young man's picture of the imaginary Hogarth.

"That's pretty good," Hugo said.

The young man smiled apologetically. "It isn't quite right. You can see for yourself you have no muscles there—and there. I suppose you're Hogarth?"

"Yes."

"Well—I tried to explain the anatomy of it, but Mr. Smoots says anatomy doesn't matter. So here we go." He made a broad orange streak.

Hugo smiled. "Smoots is not an anatomical critic of any renown. I say, Smoots, let him paint it as he sees best. God knows the other posters are atrocious enough."

The youth looked up from his work. "Good God, don't tell me you're really Hogarth!"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Well—well—I—I guess it was your English."

"That's funny. And I don't blame you." Hugo realized that the young sign-painter was a person of some culture. He was about Hugo's age, although he seemed younger on first glance. "As a matter of fact, I'm a college man." Smoots had moved away. "But, for the love of God, don't tell any one around here."

The painter stopped. "Is that so! And you're doing this—to make money?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'll be