"Yes, you are. Mother said so."
Hugo struggled with the two hymn books on the table. "I can't even lift
these books," he lied.
The other child was impressed and tried to explain the situation later,
taking the cause of Hugo's weakness against the charge of strength. But
the accusation rankled in Hugo's young mind. He hated to be
different--and he was beginning to realize that he was different.
From his earliest day that longing occupied him. He sought to hide his
strength. He hated to think that other people were talking about him.
The distinction he enjoyed was odious to him because it aroused
unpleasant emotions in other people. He could not realize that those
emotions sprang from personal and group jealousy, from the hatred of
superiority.
His mother, ever zealous to direct her son in the path of righteousness,
talked to him often about his strength and how great it would become and
what great and good deeds he could do with it. Those lectures on
virtuous crusades had two uses: they helped check any impulses in her
son which she felt would be harmful to her and they helped her to
become used to the abnormality in little Hugo. In her mind, it was like
telling a hunchback that his hump was a blessing disguised. Hugo was
always aware of the fact that her words connoted some latent evil in his
nature.
The motif grew in Mrs. Danner's thoughts until she sought a definite
outlet for it. One day she led her child to a keg filled with sand. "All
of us," she said to her son, "have to carry a burden through life. One
of your burdens will be your strength. But that might can make right.
See that little keg?"
"Mmmmm."
"That keg is temptation. Can you say it?"
"Temshun."
"Every day in your life you must bear temptation and throw it from you.
Can you bear it?"
"Huh?"
"Can you pick up that keg, Hugo?"
He lifted it in his chubby arms. "Now take it to the barn and back," his
mother directed. Manfully he walked with the keg to the barn and back.
He felt a little silly and resentful. "Now--throw temptation as far away
from you as you can."
Mrs. Danner gasped. The distance he threw the keg was frightening.
"You musn't throw it so far, Hugo," she said, forgetting her allegory
for an instant.
"You said as far as I can. I can throw it farther, too, if I wanna."
"No. Just throw it a little way. When you throw it far, it doesn't look
right. Now--fill it up with sand, and we'll do it over."
Hugo was perplexed. A vague wish to weep occupied him as he filled the
keg. The lesson was repeated. Mrs. Danner had excellent Sunday-school
instincts, even if she had no real comprehension of ethics. Some days
later the burden of temptation was exhibited, in all its dramatic
passages, to Mrs. Nolan and another lady. Again Hugo was resentful and
again he felt absurd. When he threw the keg, it broke.
"My!" Mrs. Nolan said in a startled tone.
"How awful!" the other woman murmured. "And he's just a child."
That made Hugo suddenly angry and he jumped. The woman screamed. Mrs.
Nolan ran to tell whomever she could find. Mrs. Danner whipped her son
and he cried softly.
Abednego Danner left the discipline of his son to his wife. He watched
the child almost furtively. When Hugo was five, Mr. Danner taught him to
read. It was a laborious process and required an entire winter. But Hugo
emerged with a new world open to him--a world which he attacked with
interest. No one bothered him when he read. He could be found often on
sunny days, when other children were playing, prone on the floor,
puzzling out sentences in the books of the family library and trying to
catch their significance. During his fifth year he was not allowed to
play with other children. The neighbourhood insisted on that.
With the busybodyness and contrariness of their kind the same neighbours
insisted that Hugo be sent to school in the following fall. When, on the
opening day, he did not appear, the truant officer called for him. Hugo
heard the conversation between the officer and his mother. He was
frightened. He vowed to himself that his abnormality should be hidden
deeply.
After that he was dropped into that microcosm of human life to which so
little attention is paid by adults. School frightened and excited Hugo.
For one thing, there were girls in school--and Hugo knew nothing about
them except that they were different from himself. There were
teachers--and they made one work, whether one wished to work or not.
They represented power, as a jailer represents power. The children
feared teachers. Hugo feared them.
But the lesson of Hugo's first six years was fairly well planted. He
blushingly ignored the direct questions of those children whom his fame
had reached. He gave no reason to anyone for suspecting him of
abnormality. He became so familiar to his comrades that their curiosity
gradually vanished. He would not play games with them--his mother had
forbidden that. But he talked to them and was as friendly as they
allowed him to be. His sensitiveness and fear of ridicule made him a
voracious student. He liked books. He liked to know things and to learn
them.
Thus, bound by the conditionings of his babyhood, he reached the spring
of his first year in school without accident. Such tranquillity could
not long endure. The day which his mother had dreaded ultimately
arrived. A lanky farmer's son, older than the other children in the
first grade, chose a particularly quiet and balmy recess period to
plague little Hugo. The farmer's boy was, because of his size, the bully
and the leader of all the other boys. He had not troubled himself to
resent Hugo's exclusiveness or Hugo's reputation until that morning when
he found himself without occupation. Hugo was sitting in the sun, his
dark eyes staring a little sadly over the laughing, rioting children.
The boy approached him. "Hello, strong man." He was shrewd enough to
make his voice so loud as to be generally audible. Hugo looked both
harmless and slightly pathetic.
"I'm not a strong man."
"Course you're not. But everybody thinks you are--except me. I'm not
afraid of you."
"I don't want you to be afraid of me. I'm not afraid of you, either."
"Oh, you aren't, huh? Look." He touched Hugo's chest with his finger,
and when Hugo looked down, the boy lifted his finger into Hugo's face.
"Go away and let me alone."