Gladiator | Page 7

in that iron thing? Aren't you afraid it will
hurt itself?"
"Oh, no."
Mrs. Nolan viewed young Hugo. He was lying on a large pillow.
Presently he rolled off its surface. "Active youngster, isn't he?"
"Very," Mrs. Danner said, nervously.
Hugo, as if he understood and desired to demonstrate, seized a corner
of the pillow and flung it from him. It traversed a long arc and landed
on the floor. Mrs. Nolan was startled. "Goodness! I never saw a child
his age that could do that!"
"No. Let's go downstairs. I want to show you some tidies I'm making."
Mrs. Nolan paid no attention. She put the pillow back in the pen and
watched while Hugo tossed it out. "There's something funny about that.
It isn't normal. Have you seen a doctor?"
Mrs. Danner fidgeted. "Oh, yes. Little Hugo's healthy."
Little Hugo grasped the iron wall of his miniature prison. He pulled

himself toward it. His skirt caught in the floor. He pulled harder. The
pen moved toward him. A high soprano came from Mrs. Nolan. "He's
moved it! I don't think I could move it myself! I tell you, I'm going to
ask the doctor to examine him. You shouldn't let a child be like that."
Mrs. Danner, filled with consternation, sought refuge in prevarication.
"Nonsense," she said as calmly as she could. "All we Douglases are
like that. Strong children. I had a grandfather who could lift a cider keg
when he was five--two hundred pounds and more. Hugo just takes after
him, that's all."
In the afternoon the minister called. He talked of the church and the
town until he felt his preamble adequate. "I was wondering why you
didn't bring your child to be baptized, Mrs. Danner. And why you
couldn't come to church, now that it is old enough?"
"Well," she replied carefully, "the child is rather--irritable. And we
thought we'd prefer to have it baptized at home."
"It's irregular."
"We'd prefer it."
"Very well. I'm afraid"--he smiled--"that you're a little--ah--unfamiliar
with the upbringing of children. Natural--in the case of the first-born.
Quite natural. But--ah--I met Mrs. Nolan to-day. Quite by accident.
And she said that you kept the child--ah--in an iron pen. It seemed
unnecessarily cruel to me--"
"Did it?" Mrs. Danner's jaw set squarely.
But the minister was not to be turned aside lightly. "I'm afraid, if it's
true, that we--the church--will have to do something about it. You can't
let the little fellow grow up surrounded by iron walls. It will surely
point him toward the prison. Little minds are tender
and--ah--impressionable."
"We've had a crib and two pens of wood," Mrs. Danner answered tartly.

"He smashed them all."
"Ah? So?" Lifted eyebrows. "Temper, eh? He should be punished.
Punishment is the only mold for unruly children."
"You'd punish a six-months-old baby?"
"Why--certainly. I've reared seven by the rod."
Well blazing maternal instinct made her feel vicious. "Well you won't
raise mine by a rod. Or touch it--by a mile. Here's your hat, parson."
Mrs. Danner spent the next hour in prayer.
The village is known for the speed of its gossip and the sloth of its
intelligence. Those two factors explain the conditions which preluded
and surrounded the dawn of consciousness in young Hugo. Mrs.
Danner's extemporaneous fabrication of a sturdy ancestral line kept the
more supernatural elements of the baby's prowess from the public eye.
It became rapidly and generally understood that the Danner infant was
abnormal and that the treatment to which it was submitted was not
usual.
Hugo was sheltered, and his early antics, peculiar and startling as they
were to his parents, escaped public attention. The little current of talk
about him was kept alive only because there was so small an array of
topics for the local burghers. But it was not extraordinarily malicious.
Months piled up. A year passed and then another.
Hugo was a good-natured, usually sober, and very sensitive child.
Abednego Danner's fear that his process might have created muscular
strength at the expense of reason diminished and vanished as Hugo
learned to walk and to talk, and as he grasped the rudiments of human
behavior. His high little voice was heard in the house and about its
lawns.
They began to condition him. He was taught kindness and respect for
people and property. His every destructive impulse was carefully
curbed. That training was possible only because he was sensitive and

naturally susceptible to advice. Punishment had no physical terror for
him, because he could not feel it. But disfavor, anger, vexation, or
disappointment in another person reflected itself in him at once.
When he was four and a half, his mother sent him to Sunday school. He
was enrolled in a class that sat near her own, so she was able to keep a
careful