GLADIATOR
Philip Wylie
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
Once upon a time in Colorado lived a man named Abednego Danner and hiswife, Matilda. Abednego Danner was a professor of biology in a smallcollege in the town of Indian Creek. He was a spindling wisp of a man,with a nature drawn well into itself by the assaults of the world andparticularly of the grim Mrs. Danner, who understood nothing andundertook all. Nevertheless these two lived modestly in a frame house onthe hem of Indian Creek and they appeared to be a settled and peacefulcouple.
The chief obstacle to Mrs. Danner's placid dominion of her hearth wasProfessor Danner's laboratory, which occupied a room on the first floorof the house. It was the one impregnable redoubt in her domesticstronghold. Neither threat nor entreaty would drive him and what shetermed his "stinking, unchristian, unhealthy dinguses" from that room.After he had lectured vaguely to his classes on the structure of theParamecium caudatum and the law discovered by Mendel, he would shutthe door behind himself, and all the fury of the stalwart, black-hairedwoman could not drive him out until his own obscure ends were served.
It never occurred to Professor Danner that he was a great man or agenius. His alarm at such a notion would have been pathetic. He was sofascinated by the trend of his thoughts and experiments, in fact, thathe scarcely realized by what degrees he had outstripped a world thatwore picture hats, hobble skirts, and straps beneath its trouser legs.However, as the century turned and the fashions changed, he was carriedfurther from them, which was just as well.
On a certain Sunday he sat beside his wife in church, singing snatchesof the hymns in a doleful and untrue voice and meditating, during thelong sermon, on the structure of chromosomes. She, bolt upright andovershadowing him, like a coffin in the pew, rigid lest her black silkrustle, thrilled in some corner of her mind at the picture of hell andsalvation.
Mr. Danner's thoughts turned to Professor Mudge, whose barren pateshowed above the congregation a few rows ahead of him. There, he said tohimself, sat a stubborn and unenlightened man. And so, when the weeklytyranny of church was ended, he asked Mudge to dinner. That heaccomplished by an argument with his wife, audible the length of theaisle.
They walked to the Danner residence. Mrs. Danner changed her clotheshurriedly, basted the roast, made milk sauce for the string beans, andset three places. They went into the dining-room. Danner carved, thehome-made mint jelly was passed, the bread, the butter, the gravy; andMrs. Danner dropped out of the conversation, after guying her husband onhis lack of skill at his task of carving.
Mudge opened with the usual comment. "Well, Abednego, how are theblood-stream radicals progressing?"
His host chuckled. "Excellently, thanks. Some day I'll be ready to joltyou hidebound biologists into your senses."
Mudge's left eyebrow lifted. "So? Still the same thing, I take it? Stillbelieve that chemistry controls human destiny?"
"Almost ready to demonstrate it," Danner replied.
"Along what lines?"
"Muscular strength and the nervous discharge of energy."
Mudge slapped his thigh. "Ho ho! Nervous discharge of energy. You assumethe human body to be a voltaic pile, eh? That's good. I'll have to tellGropper. He'll enjoy it."
Danner, in some embarrassment, gulped a huge mouthful of meat. "Whynot?" he said. "Look at the ins