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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wonder, by J. D. Beresford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wonder
+
+Author: J. D. Beresford
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2008 [EBook #27188]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WONDER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+       BY J. D. BERESFORD
+
+ THESE LYNNEKERS
+ THE EARLY HISTORY OF JACOB STAHL
+ A CANDIDATE FOR TRUTH
+ THE INVISIBLE EVENT
+ THE HOUSE IN DEMETRIUS ROAD
+
+    GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+            NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                              THE
+                            WONDER
+
+
+                              BY
+
+                        J. D. BERESFORD
+ AUTHOR OF "THESE LYNNEKERS," "THE STORY OF JACOB STAHL," ETC.
+
+
+                           [Device]
+
+
+                           NEW YORK
+                    GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+            COPYRIGHT, 1917,
+       BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect
+    and variant spellings have been retained. Greek text appears as
+    originally printed.
+
+
+
+
+          TO
+ MY FRIEND AND CRITIC
+     HUGH WALPOLE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                PART ONE
+
+                MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT
+
+ CHAPTER                                                  PAGE
+     I. THE MOTIVE                                          11
+
+    II. NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF GINGER STOTT               22
+
+   III. THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF GINGER STOTT                 58
+
+
+                                PART TWO
+
+                      THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER
+
+    IV. THE MANNER OF HIS BIRTH                             71
+
+     V. HIS DEPARTURE FROM STOKE-UNDERHILL                  92
+
+    VI. HIS FATHER'S DESERTION                             107
+
+   VII. HIS DEBT TO HENRY CHALLIS                          118
+
+  VIII. HIS FIRST VISIT TO CHALLIS COURT                   143
+
+        INTERLUDE                                          149
+
+
+                         THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS
+
+    IX. HIS PASSAGE THROUGH THE PRISON OF KNOWLEDGE        155
+
+     X. HIS PASTORS AND MASTERS                            179
+
+    XI. HIS EXAMINATION                                    193
+
+   XII. HIS INTERVIEW WITH HERR GROSSMANN                  217
+
+  XIII. FUGITIVE                                           229
+
+
+                               PART THREE
+
+                     MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER
+
+   XIV. HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK                  235
+
+    XV. THE INCIPIENCE OF MY SUBJECTION TO THE WONDER      247
+
+   XVI. THE PROGRESS AND RELAXATION OF MY SUBJECTION       267
+
+  XVII. RELEASE                                            284
+
+ XVIII. IMPLICATIONS                                       299
+
+   XIX. EPILOGUE: THE USES OF MYSTERY                      305
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE MOTIVE
+
+
+I
+
+I could not say at which station the woman and her baby entered the
+train.
+
+Since we had left London, I had been struggling with Baillie's
+translation of Hegel's "Phenomenology." It was not a book to read among
+such distracting circumstances as those of a railway journey, but I was
+eagerly planning a little dissertation of my own at that time, and my
+work as a journalist gave me little leisure for quiet study.
+
+I looked up when the woman entered my compartment, though I did not
+notice the name of the station. I caught sight of the baby she was
+carrying, and turned back to my book. I thought the child was a freak,
+an abnormality; and such things disgust me.
+
+I returned to the study of my Hegel and read: "For knowledge is not the
+divergence of the ray, but the ray itself by which the truth comes to
+us; and if this ray be removed, the bare direction or the empty place
+would alone be indicated."
+
+I kept my eyes on the book--the train had started again--but the next
+passage conveyed no meaning to my mind, and as I attempted to re-read it
+an impression was interposed between me and the work I was studying.
+
+I saw projected on the page before me an image which I mistook at first
+for the likeness of Richard Owen. It was the conformation of the head
+that gave rise to the mistake, a head domed and massive, white and
+smooth--it was a head that had always interested me. But as I looked, my
+mind already searching for the reason of this hallucination, I saw that
+the lower part of the face was that of an infant. My eyes wandered from
+the book, and my gaze fluttered along the four persons seated opposite
+to me, till it rested on the reality of my vision. And even as my
+attention was thus irresistibly dragged from my book, my mind clung with
+a feeble desperation to its task, and I murmured under my breath like a
+child repeating a mechanically learned lesson: "Knowledge is not the
+divergence of the ray but the ray itself...."
+
+For several seconds the eyes of the infant held mine. Its gaze was
+steady and clear as that of a normal child, but what differentiated it
+was the impression one received of calm intelligence. The head was
+completely bald, and there was no trace of eyebrows, but the eyes
+themselves were protected by thick, short lashes.
+
+The child turned its head, and I felt my muscles relax. Until then I had
+not been conscious that they had been stiffened. My gaze was released,
+pushed aside as it were, and I found myself watching the object of the
+child's next scrutiny.
+
+This object was a man of forty or so, inclined to corpulence, and
+untidy. He bore the evidences of failure in the process of becoming. He
+wore a beard that was scanty and ragged, there were bald patches of skin
+on the jaw; one inferred that he wore that beard only to save the
+trouble of shaving. He was sitting next to me, the middle passenger of
+the three on my side of the carriage, and he was absorbed in the pages
+of a half-penny paper--I think he was reading the police reports--which
+was interposed between him and the child in the corner diagonally
+opposite to that which I occupied.
+
+The man was hunched up, slouching, his legs crossed, his elbows seeking
+support against his body; he held his clumsily folded paper close to his
+eyes. He had the appearance of being very myopic, but he did not wear
+glasses.
+
+As I watched him, he began to fidget. He uncrossed his legs and hunched
+his body deeper into the back of his seat. Presently his eyes began to
+creep up the paper in front of him. When they reached the top, he
+hesitated a moment, making a survey under cover, then he dropped his
+hands and stared stupidly at the infant in the corner, his mouth
+slightly open, his feet pulled in under the seat of the carriage.
+
+As the child let him go, his head drooped, and then he turned and looked
+at me with a silly, vacuous smile. I looked away hurriedly; this was not
+a man with whom I cared to share experience.
+
+The process was repeated. The next victim was a big, rubicund,
+healthy-looking man, clean shaved, with light-blue eyes that were
+slightly magnified by the glasses of his gold-mounted spectacles. He,
+too, had been reading a newspaper--the _Evening Standard_--until the
+child's gaze claimed his attention, and he, too, was held motionless by
+that strange, appraising stare. But when he was released, his surprise
+found vent in words. "This," I thought, "is the man accustomed to act."
+
+"A very remarkable child, ma'am," he said, addressing the thin,
+ascetic-looking mother.
+
+
+II
+
+The mother's appearance did not convey the impression of poverty. She
+was, indeed, warmly, decently, and becomingly clad. She wore a long
+black coat, braided and frogged; it had the air of belonging to an older
+fashion, but the material of it was new. And her bonnet, trimmed with
+jet ornaments growing on stalks that waved tremulously--that, also, was
+a modern replica of an older mode. On her hands were black thread
+gloves, somewhat ill-fitting.
+
+Her face was not that of a country woman. The thin, high-bridged nose,
+the fallen cheeks, the shadows under eyes gloomy and retrospective--these
+were marks of the town; above all, perhaps, that sallow greyness of the
+skin which speaks of confinement....
+
+The child looked healthy enough. Its great bald head shone resplendently
+like a globe of alabaster.
+
+"A very remarkable child, ma'am," said the rubicund man who sat facing
+the woman.
+
+The woman twitched her untidy-looking black eyebrows, her head trembled
+slightly and set the jet fruit of her bonnet dancing and nodding.
+
+"Yes, sir," she replied.
+
+"Very remarkable," said the man, adjusting his spectacles and leaning
+forward. His action had an air of deliberate courage; he was justifying
+his fortitude after that temporary aberration.
+
+I watched him a little nervously. I remembered my feelings when, as a
+child, I had seen some magnificent enter the lion's den in a travelling
+circus. The failure on my right was, also, absorbed in the spectacle; he
+stared, open-mouthed, his eyes blinking and shifting.
+
+The other three occupants of the compartment, sitting on the same side
+as the woman, back to the engine, dropped papers and magazines and
+turned their heads, all interest. None of these three had, so far as I
+had observed, fallen under the spell of inspection by the infant, but I
+noticed that the man--an artisan apparently--who sat next to the woman
+had edged away from her, and that the three passengers opposite to me
+were huddled towards my end of the compartment.
+
+The child had abstracted its gaze, which was now directed down the aisle
+of the carriage, indefinitely focussed on some point outside the window.
+It seemed remote, entirely unconcerned with any human being.
+
+I speak of it asexually. I was still uncertain as to its sex. It is true
+that all babies look alike to me; but I should have known that this
+child was male, the conformation of the skull alone should have told me
+that. It was its dress that gave me cause to hesitate. It was dressed
+absurdly, not in "long-clothes," but in a long frock that hid its feet
+and was bunched about its body.
+
+
+III
+
+"Er--does it--er--can it--talk?" hesitated the rubicund man, and I grew
+hot at his boldness. There seemed to be something disrespectful in
+speaking before the child in this impersonal way.
+
+"No, sir, he's never made a sound," replied the woman, twitching and
+vibrating. Her heavy, dark eyebrows jerked spasmodically, nervously.
+
+"Never cried?" persisted the interrogator.
+
+"Never once, sir."
+
+"Dumb, eh?" He said it as an aside, half under his breath.
+
+"'E's never spoke, sir."
+
+"Hm!" The man cleared his throat and braced himself with a deliberate
+and obvious effort. "Is it--he--not water on the brain--what?"
+
+I felt that a rigour of breathless suspense held every occupant of the
+compartment. I wanted, and I know that every other person there wanted,
+to say, "Look out! Don't go too far." The child, however, seemed
+unconscious of the insult: he still stared out through the window, lost
+in profound contemplation.
+
+"No, sir, oh no!" replied the woman. "'E's got more sense than a
+ordinary child." She held the infant as if it were some priceless piece
+of earthenware, not nursing it as a woman nurses a baby, but balancing
+it with supreme attention in her lap.
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+We had been awaiting this question.
+
+"A year and nine munse, sir."
+
+"Ought to have spoken before that, oughtn't he?"
+
+"Never even cried, sir," said the woman. She regarded the child with a
+look into which I read something of apprehension. If it were
+apprehension it was a feeling that we all shared. But the rubicund man
+was magnificent, though, like the lion tamer of my youthful experience,
+he was doubtless conscious of the aspect his temerity wore in the eyes
+of beholders. He must have been showing off.
+
+"Have you taken opinion?" he asked; and then, seeing the woman's lack of
+comprehension, he translated the question--badly, for he conveyed a
+different meaning--thus,
+
+"I mean, have you had a doctor for him?"
+
+The train was slackening speed.
+
+"Oh! yes, sir."
+
+"And what do _they_ say?"
+
+The child turned its head and looked the rubicund man full in the eyes.
+Never in the face of any man or woman have I seen such an expression of
+sublime pity and contempt....
+
+I remembered a small urchin I had once seen at the Zoological Gardens.
+Urged on by a band of other urchins, he was throwing pebbles at a great
+lion that lolled, finely indifferent, on the floor of its playground.
+Closer crept the urchin; he grew splendidly bold; he threw larger and
+larger pebbles, until the lion rose suddenly with a roar, and dashed
+fiercely down to the bars of its cage.
+
+I thought of that urchin's scared, shrieking face now, as the rubicund
+man leant quickly back into his corner.
+
+Yet that was not all, for the infant, satisfied, perhaps, with its
+victim's ignominy, turned and looked at me with a cynical smile. I was,
+as it were, taken into its confidence. I felt flattered, undeservedly
+yet enormously flattered. I blushed, I may have simpered.
+
+The train drew up in Great Hittenden station.
+
+The woman gathered her priceless possession carefully into her arms, and
+the rubicund man adroitly opened the door for her.
+
+"Good day, sir," she said, as she got out.
+
+"Good day," echoed the rubicund man with relief, and we all drew a deep
+breath of relief with him in concert, as though we had just witnessed
+the safe descent of some over-daring aviator.
+
+
+IV
+
+As the train moved on, we six, who had been fellow-passengers for some
+thirty or forty minutes before the woman had entered our compartment, we
+who had not till then exchanged a word, broke suddenly into general
+conversation.
+
+"Water on the brain; I don't care what any one says," asserted the
+rubicund man.
+
+"My sister had one very similar," put in the failure, who was sitting
+next to me. "It died," he added, by way of giving point to his instance.
+
+"Ought not to exhibit freaks like that in public," said an old man
+opposite to me.
+
+"You're right, sir," was the verdict of the artisan, and he spat
+carefully and scraped his boot on the floor; "them things ought to be
+kep' private."
+
+"Mad, of course, that's to say imbecile," repeated the rubicund man.
+
+"Horrid head he'd got," said the failure, and shivered histrionically.
+
+They continued to demonstrate their contempt for the infant by many
+asseverations. The reaction grew. They were all bold now, and all wanted
+to speak. They spoke as the survivors from some common peril; they were
+increasingly anxious to demonstrate that they had never suffered
+intimidation, and in their relief they were anxious to laugh at the
+thing which had for a time subdued them. But they never named it as a
+cause for fear. Their speech was merely innuendo.
+
+At the last, however, I caught an echo of the true feeling.
+
+It was the rubicund man who, most daring during the crisis, was now bold
+enough to admit curiosity.
+
+"What's your opinion, sir?" he said to me. The train was running into
+Wenderby; he was preparing to get out; he leaned forward, his fingers on
+the handle of the door.
+
+I was embarrassed. Why had I been singled out by the child? I had taken
+no part in the recent interjectory conversation. Was this a consequence
+of the notice that had been paid to me?
+
+"I?" I stammered, and then reverted to the rubicund man's original
+phrase, "It--it was certainly a very remarkable child," I said.
+
+The rubicund man nodded and pursed his lips. "Very," he muttered as he
+alighted, "Very remarkable. Well, good day to you."
+
+I returned to my book, and was surprised to find that my index finger
+was still marking the place at which I had been interrupted some fifteen
+minutes before. My arm felt stiff and cramped.
+
+I read: "... and if this ray be removed, the bare direction or the empty
+place would alone be indicated."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF GINGER STOTT
+
+
+I
+
+Ginger Stott is a name that was once as well known as any in England.
+Stott has been the subject of leading articles in every daily paper; his
+life has been written by an able journalist who interviewed Stott
+himself, during ten crowded minutes, and filled three hundred pages with
+details, seventy per cent. of which were taken from the journals, and
+the remainder supplied by a brilliant imagination. Ten years ago Ginger
+Stott was on a pinnacle, there was a Stott vogue. You found his name at
+the bottom of signed articles written by members of the editorial staff;
+you bought Stott collars, although Stott himself did not wear collars;
+there was a Stott waltz, which is occasionally hummed by clerks, and
+whistled by errand-boys to this day; there was a periodical which lived
+for ten months, entitled _Ginger Stott's Weekly_; in brief, during one
+summer there was a Stott apotheosis.
+
+But that was ten years ago, and the rising generation has almost
+forgotten the once well-known name. One rarely sees him mentioned in the
+morning paper now, and then it is but the briefest reference; some such
+note as this "Pickering was at the top of his form, recalling the finest
+achievements of Ginger Stott at his best," or "Flack is a magnificent
+find for Kent: he promises to completely surpass the historic feats of
+Ginger Stott." These journalistic superlatives only irritate those who
+remember the performances referred to. We who watched the man's career
+know that Pickering and Flack are but tyros compared to Stott; we know
+that none of his successors has challenged comparison with him. He was a
+meteor that blazed across the sky, and if he ever has a true successor,
+such stars as Pickering and Flack will shine pale and dim in comparison.
+
+It makes one feel suddenly old to recall that great matinée at the
+Lyceum, given for Ginger Stott's benefit after he met with his accident.
+In ten years so many great figures in that world have died or fallen
+into obscurity. I can count on my fingers the number of those who were
+then, and are still, in the forefront of popularity. Of the others poor
+Captain Wallis, for instance, is dead--and no modern writer, in my
+opinion, can equal the brilliant descriptiveness of Wallis's articles in
+the _Daily Post_. Bobby Maisefield, again, Stott's colleague, is a
+martyr to rheumatism, and keeps a shop in Ailesworth, the scene of so
+many of his triumphs. What a list one might make, but how uselessly. It
+is enough to note how many names have dropped out, how many others are
+the names of those we now speak of as veterans. In ten years! It
+certainly makes one feel old.
+
+
+II
+
+No apology is needed for telling again the story of Stott's career.
+Certain details will still be familiar, it is true, the historic details
+that can never be forgotten while cricket holds place as our national
+game. But there are many facts of Stott's life familiar to me, which
+have never been made public property. If I must repeat that which is
+known, I can give the known a new setting; perhaps a new value.
+
+He came of mixed races. His mother was pure Welsh, his father a
+Yorkshire collier; but when Ginger was nine years old his father died,
+and Mrs. Stott came to live in Ailesworth where she had immigrant
+relations, and it was there that she set up the little paper-shop, the
+business by which she maintained herself and her boy. That shop is still
+in existence, and the name has not been altered. You may find it in the
+little street that runs off the market place, going down towards the
+Borstal Institution.
+
+There are many people alive in Ailesworth to-day who can remember the
+sturdy, freckled, sandy-haired boy who used to go round with the morning
+and evening papers; the boy who was to change the fortunes of a county.
+
+Ginger was phenomenally thorough in all he undertook. It was one of the
+secrets of his success. It was this thoroughness that kept him engaged
+in his mother's little business until he was seventeen. Up to that age
+he never found time for cricket--sufficient evidence of his remarkable
+and most unusual qualities.
+
+It was sheer chance, apparently, that determined his choice of a career.
+
+He had walked into Stoke-Underhill to deliver a parcel, and on his way
+back his attention was arrested by the sight of a line of vehicles drawn
+up to the boarded fencing that encloses the Ailesworth County Ground.
+The occupants of these vehicles were standing up, struggling to catch a
+sight of the match that was being played behind the screen erected to
+shut out non-paying sightseers. Among the horses' feet, squirming
+between the spokes of wheels, utterly regardless of all injury, small
+boys glued their eyes to knot-holes in the fence, while others climbed
+surreptitiously, and for the most part unobserved, on to the backs of
+tradesmen's carts. All these individuals were in a state of tremendous
+excitement, and even the policeman whose duty it was to move them on,
+was so engrossed in watching the game that he had disappeared inside the
+turnstile, and had given the outside spectators full opportunity for
+eleemosynary enjoyment.
+
+That tarred fence has since been raised some six feet, and now encloses
+a wider sweep of ground--alterations that may be classed among the minor
+revolutions effected by the genius of the thick-set, fair-haired youth
+of seventeen, who paused on that early September afternoon to wonder
+what all the fuss was about. The Ailesworth County Ground was not famous
+in those days; not then was accommodation needed for thirty thousand
+spectators, drawn from every county in England to witness the
+unparallelled.
+
+Ginger stopped. The interest of the spectacle pierced his absorption in
+the business he had in hand. Such a thing was almost unprecedented.
+
+"What's up?" he asked of Puggy Phillips.
+
+Puggy Phillips--hazarding his life by standing on the shiny, slightly
+curved top of his butcher's cart--made no appropriate answer.
+"Yah--_ah_--AH!" he screamed in ecstasy. "Oh! played! Pla-a-a-ayed!!"
+
+Ginger wasted no more breath, but laid hold of the little brass rail
+that encircled Puggy's platform, and with a sudden hoist that lifted the
+shafts and startled the pony, raised himself to the level of a
+spectator.
+
+"'Ere!" shouted the swaying, tottering Puggy. "What the ... are yer rup
+to?"
+
+The well-drilled pony, however, settled down again quietly to maintain
+his end of the see-saw, and, finding himself still able to preserve his
+equilibrium, Puggy instantly forgot the presence of the intruder.
+
+"What's up?" asked Ginger again.
+
+"Oh! Well _'it_, WELL 'IT!" yelled Puggy. "Oh! Gow on, gow on agen! Run
+it _aht_. Run it AH-T."
+
+Ginger gave it up, and turned his attention to the match.
+
+It was not any famous struggle that was being fought out on the old
+Ailesworth Ground; it was only second-class cricket, the deciding match
+of the Minor Counties championship. Hampdenshire and Oxfordshire, old
+rivals, had been neck-and-neck all through the season, and, as luck
+would have it, the engagement between them had been the last fixture on
+the card.
+
+When Ginger rose to the level of spectator, the match was anybody's
+game. Bobby Maisefield was batting. He was then a promising young colt
+who had not earned a fixed place in the Eleven. Ginger knew him
+socially, but they were not friends, they had no interests in common.
+Bobby had made twenty-seven. He was partnered by old Trigson, the
+bowler, (he has been dead these eight years,) whose characteristic score
+of "Not out ... 0," is sufficiently representative of his methods.
+
+It was the fourth innings, and Hampdenshire with only one more wicket to
+fall, still required nineteen runs to win. Trigson could be relied upon
+to keep his wicket up, but not to score. The hopes of Ailesworth centred
+in the ability of that almost untried colt Bobby Maisefield--and he
+seemed likely to justify the trust reposed in him. A beautiful late cut
+that eluded third man and hit the fence with a resounding bang, nearly
+drove Puggy wild with delight.
+
+"Only fifteen more," he shouted. "Oh! Played; pla-a-a-yed!"
+
+But as the score crept up, the tensity grew. As each ball was delivered,
+a chill, rigid silence held the onlookers in its grip. When Trigson,
+with the field collected round him, almost to be covered with a sheet,
+stonewalled the most tempting lob, the click of the ball on his bat was
+an intrusion on the stillness. And always it was followed by a deep
+breath of relief that sighed round the ring like a faint wind through a
+plantation of larches. When Bobby scored, the tumult broke out like a
+crash of thunder; but it subsided again, echoless, to that intense
+silence so soon as the ball was "dead."
+
+Curiously, it was not Bobby who made the winning hit but Trigson. "One
+to tie, two to win," breathed Puggy as the field changed over, and it
+was Trigson who had to face the bowling. The suspense was torture.
+Oxford had put on their fast bowler again, and Trigson, intimidated,
+perhaps, did not play him with quite so straight a bat as he had opposed
+to the lob-bowler. The ball hit Trigson's bat and glanced through the
+slips. The field was very close to the wicket, and the ball was
+travelling fast. No one seemed to make any attempt to stop it. For a
+moment the significance of the thing was not realised; for a moment
+only, then followed uproar, deafening, stupendous.
+
+Puggy was stamping fiercely on the top of his cart; the tears were
+streaming down his face; he was screaming and yelling incoherent words.
+And he was representative of the crowd. Thus men shouted and stamped and
+cried when news came of the relief of Kimberley, or when that false
+report of victory was brought to Paris in the August of 1870....
+
+The effect upon Ginger was a thing apart. He did not join in the fierce
+acclamation; he did not wait to see the chairing of Bobby and Trigson.
+The greatness of Stott's character, the fineness of his genius is
+displayed in his attitude towards the dramatic spectacle he had just
+witnessed.
+
+As he trudged home into Ailesworth, his thoughts found vent in a
+muttered sentence which is peculiarly typical of the effect that had
+been made upon him.
+
+"I believe I could have bowled that chap," he said.
+
+
+III
+
+In writing a history of this kind, a certain licence must be claimed. It
+will be understood that I am filling certain gaps in the narrative with
+imagined detail. But the facts are true. My added detail is only
+intended to give an appearance of life and reality to my history. Let
+me, therefore, insist upon one vital point. I have not been dependent on
+hearsay for one single fact in this story. Where my experience does not
+depend upon personal experience, it has been received from the
+principals themselves. Finally, it should be remembered that when I
+have, imaginatively, put words into the mouths of the persons of this
+story, they are never essential words which affect the issue. The
+essential speeches are reported from first-hand sources. For instance,
+Ginger Stott himself has told me on more than one occasion that the
+words with which I closed the last section, were the actual words spoken
+by him on the occasion in question. It was not until six years after the
+great Oxfordshire match that I myself first met the man, but what
+follows is literally true in all essentials.
+
+There was a long, narrow strip of yard, or alley, at the back of Mrs.
+Stott's paper-shop, a yard that, unfortunately, no longer exists. It has
+been partly built over, and another of England's memorials has thus been
+destroyed by the vandals of modern commerce....
+
+This yard was fifty-three feet long, measuring from Mrs. Stott's back
+door to the door of the coal-shed, which marked the alley's extreme
+limit. This measurement, an apparently negligible trifle, had an
+important effect upon Stott's career. For it was in this yard that he
+taught himself to bowl, and the shortness of the pitch precluded his
+taking any run. From those long studious hours of practice he emerged
+with a characteristic that was--and still remains--unique. Stott never
+took more than two steps before delivering the ball; frequently he
+bowled from a standing position, and batsmen have confessed that of all
+Stott's puzzling mannerisms, this was the one to which they never became
+accustomed. S. R. L. Maturin, the finest bat Australia ever sent to this
+country, has told me that to this peculiarity of delivery he attributed
+his failure ever to score freely against Stott. It completely upset
+one's habit of play, he said: one had no time to prepare for the flight
+of the ball; it came at one so suddenly. Other bowlers have since
+attempted some imitation of this method without success. They had not
+Stott's physical advantages.
+
+Nevertheless, the shortness of that alley threw Stott back for two
+years. When he first emerged to try conclusions on the field, he found
+his length on the longer pitch utterly unreliable, and the effort
+necessary to throw the ball another six yards, at first upset his slowly
+acquired methods.
+
+It was not until he was twenty years old that Ginger Stott played in his
+first Colts' match.
+
+The three years that had intervened had not been prosperous years for
+Hampdenshire. Their team was a one-man team. Bobby Maisefield was
+developing into a fine bat (and other counties were throwing out
+inducements to him, trying to persuade him to qualify for first-class
+cricket), but he found no support, and Hampdenshire was never looked
+upon as a coming county. The best of the minor counties in those years
+were Staffordshire and Norfolk.
+
+In the Colts' match Stott's analysis ran:
+
+    overs    maidens    runs    wickets
+    11·3        7        16        7
+
+and reference to the score-sheet, which is still preserved among the
+records of the County Club, shows that six of the seven wickets were
+clean bowled. The Eleven had no second innings; the match was drawn,
+owing to rain. Stott has told me that the Eleven had to bat on a dry
+wicket, but after making all allowances, the performance was certainly
+remarkable.
+
+After this match Stott was, of course, played regularly. That year
+Hampdenshire rose once more to their old position at the head of the
+minor counties, and Maisefield, who had been seriously considering
+Surrey's offer of a place in their Eleven after two years' qualification
+by residence, decided to remain with the county which had given him his
+first chance.
+
+During that season Stott did not record any performance so remarkable as
+his feat in the Colts' match, but his record for the year was
+eighty-seven wickets with an average of 9·31; and it is worthy of notice
+that Yorkshire made overtures to him, as he was qualified by birth to
+play for the northern county.
+
+I think there must have been a wonderful _esprit de corps_ among the
+members of that early Hampdenshire Eleven. There are other evidences
+beside this refusal of its two most prominent members to join the ranks
+of first-class cricket. Lord R----, the president of the H.C.C.C., has
+told me that this spirit was quite as marked as in the earlier case of
+Kent. He himself certainly did much to promote it, and his generosity in
+making good the deficits of the balance sheet, had a great influence on
+the acceleration of Hampdenshire's triumph.
+
+In his second year, though Hampdenshire were again champions of the
+second-class counties, Stott had not such a fine average as in the
+preceding season. Sixty-one wickets for eight hundred and sixty-eight
+(average 14·23) seems to show a decline in his powers, but that was a
+wonderful year for batsmen (Maisefield scored seven hundred and
+forty-two runs, with an average of forty-two) and, moreover, that was
+the year in which Stott was privately practising his new theory.
+
+It was in this year that three very promising recruits, all since become
+famous, joined the Eleven, viz.: P. H. Evans, St. John Townley, and
+Flower the fast bowler. With these five cricketers Hampdenshire fully
+deserved their elevation into the list of first-class counties.
+Curiously enough, they took the place of the old champions,
+Gloucestershire, who, with Somerset, fell back into the obscurity of the
+second-class that season.
+
+
+IV
+
+I must turn aside for a moment at this point in order to explain the
+"new theory" of Stott's, to which I have referred, a theory which became
+in practice one of the elements of his most astounding successes.
+
+Ginger Stott was not a tall man. He stood only 5 ft. 5¼ in. in his
+socks, but he was tremendously solid; he had what is known as a "stocky"
+figure, broad and deep-chested. That was where his muscular power lay,
+for his abnormally long arms were rather thin, though his huge hands
+were powerful enough.
+
+Even without his "new theory," Stott would have been an exceptional
+bowler. His thoroughness would have assured his success. He studied his
+art diligently, and practised regularly in a barn through the winter.
+His physique, too, was a magnificent instrument. That long, muscular
+body was superbly steady on the short, thick legs. It gave him a
+fulcrum, firm, apparently immovable. And those weirdly long, thin arms
+could move with lightning rapidity. He always stood with his hands
+behind him, and then--as often as not without even one preliminary
+step--the long arm would flash round and the ball be delivered, without
+giving the batsman any opportunity of watching his hand; you could never
+tell which way he was going to break. It was astonishing, too, the pace
+he could get without any run. Poor Wallis used to call him the "human
+catapult"; Wallis was always trying to find new phrases.
+
+The theory first came to Stott when he was practising at the nets. It
+was a windy morning, and he noticed that several times the balls he
+bowled swerved in the air. When those swerving balls came they were
+almost unplayable.
+
+Stott made no remark to any one--he was bowling to the groundsman--but
+the ambition to bowl "swerves,"[1] as they were afterwards called, took
+possession of him from that morning. It is true that he never mastered
+the theory completely; on a perfectly calm day he could never depend
+upon obtaining any swerve at all, but, within limits, he developed his
+theory until he had any batsman practically at his mercy.
+
+He might have mastered the theory completely, had it not been for his
+accident--we must remember that he had only three seasons of first-class
+cricket--and, personally, I believe he would have achieved that complete
+mastery. But I do not believe, as Stott did, that he could have taught
+his method to another man. That belief became an obsession with him, and
+will be dealt with later.
+
+My own reasons for doubting that Stott's "swerve" could have been
+taught, is that it would have been necessary for the pupil to have had
+Stott's peculiarities, not only of method, but of physique. He used to
+spin the ball with a twist of his middle finger and thumb, just as you
+may see a billiard professional spin a billiard ball. To do this in his
+manner, it is absolutely necessary not only to have a very large and
+muscular hand, but to have very lithe and flexible arm muscles, for the
+arm is moving rapidly while the twist is given, and there must be no
+antagonistic muscular action. Further, I believe that part of the secret
+was due to the fact that Stott bowled from a standing position. Given
+these things, the rest is merely a question of long and assiduous
+practice. The human mechanism is marvellously adaptable. I have seen
+Stott throw a cricket ball half across the room with sufficient spin on
+the ball to make it shoot back to him along the carpet.
+
+I have mentioned the wind as a factor in obtaining the swerve. It was a
+head-wind that Stott required. I have seen him, for sport, toss a
+cricket ball into the teeth of a gale, and make it describe the
+trajectory of a badly sliced golf-ball. This is why the big pavilion at
+Ailesworth is set at such a curious angle to the ground. It was built in
+the winter following Hampdenshire's second season of first-class
+cricket, and it was so placed that when the wickets were pitched in a
+line with it, they might lie south-west and north-east, or in the
+direction of the prevailing winds.
+
+
+V
+
+The first time I ever saw Ginger Stott, was on the occasion of the
+historic encounter with Surrey; Hampdenshire's second engagement in
+first-class cricket. The match with Notts, played at Trent Bridge a few
+days earlier, had not foreshadowed any startling results. The truth of
+the matter is that Stott had been kept, deliberately, in the background;
+and as matters turned out his services were only required to finish off
+Notts' second innings. Stott was even then a marked man, and the
+Hampdenshire captain did not wish to advertise his methods too freely
+before the Surrey match. Neither Archie Findlater, who was captaining
+the team that year, nor any other person, had the least conception of
+how unnecessary such a reservation was to prove. In his third year, when
+Stott had been studied by every English, Australian, and South African
+batsman of any note, he was still as unplayable as when he made his
+début in first-class cricket.
+
+I was reporting the Surrey match for two papers, and in company with
+poor Wallis interviewed Stott before the first innings.
+
+His appearance made a great impression on me. I have, of course, met
+him, and talked with him many times since then, but my most vivid
+memory of him is the picture recorded in the inadequate professional
+dressing-room of the old Ailesworth pavilion.
+
+I have turned up the account of my interview in an old press-cutting
+book, and I do not know that I can do better than quote that part of it
+which describes Stott's personal appearance. I wrote the account on the
+off chance of being able to get it taken. It was one of my lucky hits.
+After that match, finished in a single day, my interview afforded copy
+that any paper would have paid heavily for, and gladly.
+
+Here is the description:
+
+    "Stott--he is known to every one in Ailesworth as 'Ginger' Stott--is
+    a short, thick-set young man, with abnormally long arms that are
+    tanned a rich red up to the elbow. The tan does not, however,
+    obliterate the golden freckles with which arm and face are richly
+    speckled. There is no need to speculate as to the _raison d'être_ of
+    his nickname. The hair of his head, a close, short crop, is a pale
+    russet, and the hair on his hands and arms is a yellower shade of
+    the same colour. 'Ginger' is, indeed, a perfectly apt description.
+    He has a square chin and a thin-lipped, determined mouth. His eyes
+    are a clear, but rather light blue, his forehead is good, broad,
+    and high, and he has a well-proportioned head. One might have put
+    him down as an engineer, essentially intelligent, purposeful, and
+    reserved."
+
+The description is journalistic, but I do not know that I could improve
+upon the detail of it. I can see those queer, freckled, hairy arms of
+his as I write--the combination of colours in them produced an effect
+that was almost orange. It struck one as unusual....
+
+Surrey had the choice of innings, and decided to bat, despite the fact
+that the wicket was drying after rain, under the influence of a steady
+south-west wind and occasional bursts of sunshine. Would any captain in
+Stott's second year have dared to take first innings under such
+conditions? The question is farcical now, but not a single member of the
+Hampdenshire Eleven had the least conception that the Surrey captain was
+deliberately throwing away his chances on that eventful day.
+
+Wallis and I were sitting together in the reporters' box. There were
+only four of us; two specials,--Wallis and myself,--a news-agency
+reporter, and a local man.
+
+"Stott takes first over," remarked Wallis, sharpening his pencil and
+arranging his watch and score-sheet--he was very meticulous in his
+methods. "They've put him to bowl against the wind. He's medium right,
+isn't he?"
+
+"Haven't the least idea," I said. "He volunteered no information;
+Hampdenshire have been keeping him dark."
+
+Wallis sneered. "Think they've got a find, eh?" he said. "We'll wait and
+see what he can do against first-class batting."
+
+We did not have to wait long.
+
+As usual, Thorpe and Harrison were first wicket for Surrey, and Thorpe
+took the first ball.
+
+It bowled him. It made his wicket look as untidy as any wicket I have
+ever seen. The off stump was out of the ground, and the other two were
+markedly divergent.
+
+"Damn it, I wasn't ready for him," we heard Thorpe say in the
+professionals' room. Thorpe always had some excuse, but on this occasion
+it was justified.
+
+C. V. Punshon was the next comer, and he got his first ball through the
+slips for four, but Wallis looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
+
+"Punshon didn't know a lot about that," he said, and then he added, "I
+say, what a queer delivery the chap has. He stands and shoots 'em out.
+It's uncanny. He's a kind of human catapult." He made a note of the
+phrase on his pad.
+
+Punshon succeeded in hitting the next ball, also, but it simply ran up
+his bat into the hands of short slip.
+
+"Well, that's a sitter, if you like," said Wallis. "What's the matter
+with 'em?"
+
+I was beginning to grow enthusiastic.
+
+"Look here, Wallis," I said, "this chap's going to break records."
+
+Wallis was still doubtful.
+
+He was convinced before the innings was over.
+
+There must be many who remember the startling poster that heralded the
+early editions of the evening papers:
+
+       SURREY
+
+      ALL OUT
+
+    FOR 13 RUNS.
+
+For once sub-editors did not hesitate to give the score on the contents
+bill. That was a proclamation which would sell. Inside, the headlines
+were rich and varied. I have an old paper by me, yellow now, and
+brittle, that may serve as a type for the rest. The headlines are as
+follows:--
+
+      SURREY AND HAMPDENSHIRE.
+
+       EXTRAORDINARY BOWLING
+           PERFORMANCE.
+
+         DOUBLE HAT-TRICK.
+
+    SURREY ALL OUT IN 35 MINUTES
+           FOR 13 RUNS.
+
+    STOTT TAKES 10 WICKETS FOR 5.
+
+The "double hat-trick" was six consecutive wickets, the last six, all
+clean bowled.
+
+"Good God!" Wallis said, when the last wicket fell, and he looked at me
+with something like fear in his eyes. "This man will have to be barred;
+it means the end of cricket."
+
+
+VI
+
+Stott's accident came during the high flood of Hampdenshire success. For
+two years they held undisputed place as champion county, a place which
+could not be upset by the most ingenious methods of calculating points.
+They three times defeated Australia, and played four men in the test
+matches. As a team they were capable of beating any Eleven opposed to
+them. Not even the newspaper critics denied that.
+
+The accident appeared insignificant at the time. The match was against
+Notts on the Trent Bridge ground. I was reporting for three papers;
+Wallis was not there.
+
+Stott had been taken off. Notts were a poor lot that year and I think
+Findlater did not wish to make their defeat appear too ignominious.
+Flower was bowling; it was a fast, true wicket, and Stott, who was a
+safe field, was at cover-point.
+
+G. L. Mallinson was batting and making good use of his opportunity; he
+was, it will be remembered, a magnificent though erratic hitter. Flower
+bowled him a short-pitched, fast ball, rather wide of the off-stump.
+Many men might have left it alone, for the ball was rising, and the
+slips were crowded, but Mallinson timed the ball splendidly, and drove
+it with all his force. He could not keep it on the ground, however, and
+Stott had a possible chance. He leaped for it and just touched the ball
+with his right hand. The ball jumped the ring at its first bound, and
+Mallinson never even attempted to run. There was a big round of applause
+from the Trent Bridge crowd.
+
+I noticed that Stott had tied a handkerchief round his finger, but I
+forgot the incident until I saw Findlater beckon to his best bowler, a
+few overs later. Notts had made enough runs for decency; it was time to
+get them out.
+
+I saw Stott walk up to Findlater and shake his head, and through my
+glasses I saw him whip the handkerchief from his finger and display his
+hand. Findlater frowned, said something and looked towards the pavilion,
+but Stott shook his head. He evidently disagreed with Findlater's
+proposal. Then Mallinson came up, and the great bulk of his back hid the
+faces of the other two. The crowd was beginning to grow excited at the
+interruption. Every one had guessed that something was wrong. All round
+the ring men were standing up, trying to make out what was going on.
+
+I drew my inferences from Mallinson's face, for when he turned round and
+strolled back to his wicket, he was wearing a broad smile. Through my
+field glasses I could see that he was licking his lower lip with his
+tongue. His shoulders were humped and his whole expression one of barely
+controlled glee. (I always see that picture framed in a circle; a
+bioscopic presentation.) He could hardly refrain from dancing. Then
+little Beale, who was Mallinson's partner, came up and spoke to him, and
+I saw Mallinson hug himself with delight as he explained the situation.
+
+When Stott unwillingly came back to the pavilion, a low murmur ran round
+the ring, like the buzz of a great crowd of disturbed blue flies. In
+that murmur I could distinctly trace the signs of mixed feelings. No
+doubt the crowd had come there to witness the performances of the new
+phenomenon--the abnormal of every kind has a wonderful attraction for
+us--but, on the other hand, the majority wanted to see their own county
+win. Moreover, Mallinson was giving them a taste of his abnormal powers
+of hitting, and the batsman appeals to the spectacular, more than the
+bowler.
+
+I ran down hurriedly to meet Stott.
+
+"Only a split finger, sir," he said carelessly, in answer to my
+question; "but Mr. Findlater says I must see to it."
+
+I examined the finger, and it certainly did not seem to call for
+surgical aid. Evidently it had been caught by the seam of the new ball;
+there was a fairly clean cut about half an inch long on the fleshy
+underside of the second joint of the middle finger.
+
+"Better have it seen to," I said. "We can't afford to lose you, you
+know, Stott."
+
+Stott gave a laugh that was more nearly a snarl. "Ain't the first time
+I've 'ad a cut finger," he said scornfully.
+
+He had the finger bound up when I saw him again, but it had been done by
+an amateur. I learnt afterwards that no antiseptic had been used. That
+was at lunch time, and Notts had made a hundred and sixty-eight for one
+wicket; Mallinson was not out, a hundred and three. I saw that the Notts
+Eleven were in magnificent spirits.
+
+But after lunch Stott came out and took the first over. I don't know
+what had passed between him and Findlater, but the captain had evidently
+been over-persuaded.
+
+We must not blame Findlater. The cut certainly appeared trifling, it was
+not bad enough to prevent Stott from bowling, and Hampdenshire seemed
+powerless on that wicket without him. It is very easy to distribute
+blame after the event, but most people would have done what Findlater
+did in those circumstances.
+
+The cut did not appear to inconvenience Stott in the least degree. He
+bowled Mallinson with his second ball, and the innings was finished up
+in another fifty-seven minutes for the addition of thirty-eight runs.
+
+Hampdenshire made two hundred and thirty-seven for three wickets before
+the drawing of stumps, and that was the end of the match, for the
+weather changed during the night and rain prevented any further play.
+
+I, of course, stayed on in Nottingham to await results. I saw Stott on
+the next day, Friday, and asked him about his finger. He made light of
+it, but that evening Findlater told me over the bridge-table that he was
+not happy about it. He had seen the finger, and thought it showed a
+tendency to inflammation. "I shall take him to Gregory in the morning if
+it's not all right," he said. Gregory was a well-known surgeon in
+Nottingham.
+
+Again one sees, now, that the visit to Gregory should not have been
+postponed, but at the time one does not take extraordinary precautions
+in such a case as this. A split finger is such an everyday thing, and
+one is guided by the average of experience. After all, if one were
+constantly to make preparation for the abnormal; ordinary life could not
+go on....
+
+I heard that Gregory pursed his lips over that finger when he had
+learned the name of his famous patient. "You'll have to be very careful
+of this, young man," was Findlater's report of Gregory's advice. It was
+not sufficient. I often wonder now whether Gregory might not have saved
+the finger. If he had performed some small operation at once, cut away
+the poison, it seems to me that the tragedy might have been averted. I
+am, I admit, a mere layman in these matters, but it seems to me that
+something might have been done.
+
+I left Nottingham on Saturday after lunch--the weather was hopeless--and
+I did not make use of the information I had for the purposes of my
+paper. I was never a good journalist. But I went down to Ailesworth on
+Monday morning, and found that Findlater and Stott had already gone to
+Harley Street to see Graves, the King's surgeon.
+
+I followed them, and arrived at Graves's house while Stott was in the
+consulting-room. I hocussed the butler and waited with the patients.
+Among the papers, I came upon the famous caricature of Stott in the
+current number of _Punch_--the "Stand-and-Deliver" caricature, in which
+Stott is represented with an arm about ten feet long, and the batsman is
+looking wildly over his shoulder to square leg, bewildered, with no
+conception from what direction the ball is coming. Underneath is written
+"Stott's New Theory--the Ricochet. Real Ginger." While I was laughing
+over the cartoon, the butler came in and nodded to me. I followed him
+out of the room and met Findlater and Stott in the hall.
+
+Findlater was in a state of profanity. I could not get a sensible word
+out of him. He was in a white heat of pure rage. The butler, who seemed
+as anxious as I to learn the verdict, was positively frightened.
+
+"Well, for God's sake tell me what Graves said," I protested.
+
+Findlater's answer is unprintable, and told me nothing.
+
+Stott, however, quite calm and self-possessed, volunteered the
+information. "Finger's got to come off, sir," he said quietly. "Doctor
+says if it ain't off to-day or to-morrer, he won't answer for my 'and."
+
+This was the news I had to give to England. It was a great coup from the
+journalistic point of view, but I made up my three columns with a heavy
+heart, and the congratulations of my editor only sickened me. I had some
+luck, but I should never have become a good journalist.
+
+The operation was performed successfully that evening, and Stott's
+career was closed.
+
+
+VII
+
+I did not see Stott again till August, and then I had a long talk with
+him on the Ailesworth County Ground, as together we watched the progress
+of Hampdenshire's defeat by Lancashire.
+
+"Oh! I can't learn him _nothing_," he broke out, as Flower was hit to
+the four corners of the ground, "'alf vollies and long 'ops and then a
+full pitch--'e's a disgrace."
+
+"They've knocked him off his length," I protested. "On a wicket like
+this ..."
+
+Stott shook his head. "I've been trying to learn 'im," he said, "but he
+can't never learn. 'E's got 'abits what you can't break 'im of."
+
+"I suppose it _is_ difficult," I said vaguely.
+
+"Same with me," went on Stott, "I've been trying to learn myself to bowl
+without my finger"--he held up his mutilated hand--"or left-'anded; but
+I can't. If I'd started that way ... No! I'm always feeling for that
+finger as is gone. A second-class bowler I might be in time, not better
+nor that."
+
+"It's early days yet," I ventured, intending encouragement, but Stott
+frowned and shook his head.
+
+"I'm not going to kid myself," he said, "I know. But I'm going to find a
+youngster and learn 'im. On'y he must be young.
+
+"No 'abits, you know," he explained.
+
+The next time I met Stott was in November. I ran up against him,
+literally, one Friday afternoon in Ailesworth.
+
+When he recognised me he asked me if I would care to walk out to
+Stoke-Underhill with him. "I've took a cottage there," he explained,
+"I'm to be married in a fortnight's time."
+
+His circumstances certainly warranted such a venture. The proceeds of
+matinée and benefit, invested for him by the Committee of the County
+Club, produced an income of nearly two pounds a week, and in addition to
+this he had his salary as groundsman. I tendered my congratulations.
+
+"Oh! well, as to that, better wait a bit," said Stott.
+
+He walked with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground. He
+had the air of a man brooding over some project.
+
+"It _is_ a lottery, of course ..." I began, but he interrupted me.
+
+"Oh that!" he said, and kicked a stone into the ditch; "take my chances
+of that. It's the kid I'm thinking on."
+
+"The kid?" I repeated, doubtful whether he spoke of his fiancée, or
+whether his nuptials pointed an act of reparation.
+
+"What, else 'ud I tie myself up for?" asked Stott. "I must 'ave a kid of
+my own and learn 'im from his cradle. It's come to that."
+
+"Oh! I understand," I said; "teach him to bowl."
+
+"Ah!" replied Stott as an affirmative. "Learn 'im from his cradle;
+before 'e's got 'abits. When I started I'd never bowled a ball in my
+life, and by good luck I started right. But I can't find another kid
+over seven years old in England as ain't never bowled a ball o' some
+sort and started 'abits. I've tried ..."
+
+"And you hope with your own boys...?" I said.
+
+"Not 'ope, it's a cert," said Stott. "I'll see no boy of mine touches a
+ball afore he's fourteen, and then 'e'll learn from me; and learn
+right. From the first go off." He was silent for a few seconds, and then
+he broke out in a kind of ecstasy. "My Gawd, 'e'll be a bowler such as
+'as never been, never in this world. He'll start where I left orf.
+He'll ..." Words failed him, he fell back on the expletive he had used,
+repeating it with an awed fervour. "My Gawd!"
+
+I had never seen Stott in this mood before. It was a revelation to me of
+the latent potentialities of the man, the remarkable depth and quality
+of his ambitions....
+
+
+VIII
+
+I intended to be present at Stott's wedding, but I was not in England
+when it took place; indeed, for the next two years and a half I was
+never in England for more than a few days at a time. I sent him a
+wedding-present, an inkstand in the guise of a cricket ball, with a
+pen-rack that was built of little silver wickets. They were still
+advertised that Christmas as "Stott inkstands."
+
+Two years and a half of American life broke up many of my old habits of
+thought. When I first returned to London I found that the cricket news
+no longer held the same interest for me, and this may account for the
+fact that I did not trouble for some time to look up my old friend
+Stott.
+
+In July, however, affairs took me to Ailesworth, and the associations of
+the place naturally led me to wonder how Stott's marriage had turned
+out, and whether the much-desired son had been born to him. When my
+business in Ailesworth was done, I decided to walk out to
+Stoke-Underhill.
+
+The road passes the County Ground, and a match was in progress, but I
+walked by without stopping. I was wool-gathering. I was not thinking of
+the man I was going to see, or I should have turned in at the County
+Ground, where he would inevitably have been found. Instead, I was
+thinking of the abnormal child I had seen in the train that day;
+uselessly speculating and wondering.
+
+When I reached Stoke-Underhill I found the cottage which Stott had shown
+me. I had by then so far recovered my wits as to know that I should not
+find Stott himself there, but from the look of the cottage I judged that
+it was untenanted, so I made inquiries at the post-office.
+
+"No; he don't live here, now, sir," said the postmistress; "he lives at
+Pym, now, sir, and rides into Ailesworth on his bike." She was evidently
+about to furnish me with other particulars, but I did not care to hear
+them. I was moody and distrait. I was wondering why I should bother my
+head about so insignificant a person as this Stott.
+
+"You'll be sure to find Mr. Stott at the cricket ground," the
+postmistress called after me.
+
+Another two months of English life induced a return to my old habits of
+thought. I found myself reverting to old tastes and interests. The
+reversion was a pleasant one. In the States I had been forced out of my
+groove, compelled to work, to strive, to think desperately if I would
+maintain any standing among my contemporaries. But when the perpetual
+stimulus was removed, I soon fell back to the less strenuous methods of
+my own country. I had time, once more, for the calm reflection that is
+so unlike the urgent, forced, inventive thought of the American
+journalist. I was braced by that thirty months' experience, perhaps
+hardened a little, but by September my American life was fading into the
+background; I had begun to take an interest in cricket again.
+
+With the revival of my old interests, revived also my curiosity as to
+Ginger Stott, and one Sunday in late September I decided to go down to
+Pym.
+
+It was a perfect day, and I thoroughly enjoyed my four-mile walk from
+Great Hittenden Station.
+
+Pym is a tiny hamlet made up of three farms and a dozen scattered
+cottages. Perched on one of the highest summits of the Hampden Hills and
+lost in the thick cover of beech woods, without a post-office or a
+shop, Pym is the most perfectly isolated village within a reasonable
+distance of London. As I sauntered up the mile-long lane that climbs the
+steep hill, and is the only connection between Pym and anything
+approaching a decent road, I thought that this was the place to which I
+should like to retire for a year, in order to write the book I had so
+often contemplated, and never found time to begin. This, I reflected,
+was a place of peace, of freedom from all distraction, the place for
+calm, contemplative meditation.
+
+I met no one in the lane, and there was no sign of life when I reached
+what I must call the village, though the word conveys a wrong idea, for
+there is no street, merely a cottage here and there, dropped haphazard,
+and situated without regard to its aspect. These cottages lie all on
+one's left hand; to the right a stretch of grass soon merges into
+bracken and bush, and then the beech woods enclose both, and surge down
+into the valley and rise up again beyond, a great wave of green; as I
+saw it then, not yet touched with the first flame of autumn.
+
+I inquired at the first cottage and received my direction to Stott's
+dwelling. It lay up a little lane, the further of two cottages joined
+together.
+
+The door stood open, and after a moment's hesitation and a light knock,
+I peered in.
+
+Sitting in a rocking-chair was a woman with black, untidy eyebrows, and
+on her knee, held with rigid attention, was the remarkable baby I had
+seen in the train two months before. As I stood, doubtful and, I will
+confess it, intimidated, suddenly cold and nervous, the child opened his
+eyes and honoured me with a cold stare. Then he nodded, a reflective,
+recognisable nod.
+
+"'E remembers seein' you in the train, sir," said the woman, "'e never
+forgets any one. Did you want to see my 'usband? 'E's upstairs."
+
+So _this_ was the boy who was designed by Stott to become the greatest
+bowler the world had ever seen....
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] A relatively easy task for the baseball thrower, but one very
+difficult of accomplishment for the English bowler, who is not permitted
+by the laws of cricket to bend his elbow in delivering the ball.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF GINGER STOTT
+
+
+I
+
+Stott maintained an obstinate silence as we walked together up to the
+Common, a stretch of comparatively open ground on the plateau of the
+hill. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down, as he
+had walked out from Ailesworth with me nearly three years before, but
+his mood was changed. I was conscious that he was gloomy, depressed,
+perhaps a little unstrung. I was burning with curiosity. Now that I was
+released from the thrall of the child's presence, I was eager to hear
+all there was to tell of its history.
+
+Presently we sat down under an ash-tree, one of three that guarded a
+shallow, muddy pond skimmed with weed. Stott accepted my offer of a
+cigarette, but seemed disinclined to break the silence.
+
+I found nothing better to say than a repetition of the old phrase.
+"That's a very remarkable baby of yours, Stott," I said.
+
+"Ah!" he replied, his usual substitute for "yes," and he picked up a
+piece of dead wood and threw it into the little pond.
+
+"How old is he?" I asked.
+
+"Nearly two year."
+
+"Can he ..." I paused; my imagination was reconstructing the scene of
+the railway carriage, and I felt a reflex of the hesitation shown by the
+rubicund man when he had asked the same question. "Can he ... can he
+talk?" It seemed so absurd a question to ask, yet it was essentially a
+natural question in the circumstances.
+
+"He can, but he won't."
+
+This was startling enough, and I pressed my enquiry.
+
+"How do you know? Are you sure he can?"
+
+"Ah!" Only that irritating, monosyllabic assent.
+
+"Look here, Stott," I said, "don't you want to talk about the child?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and threw more wood into the pond with a
+strained attentiveness as though he were peculiarly anxious to hit some
+particular wafer of the vivid, floating weed. For a full five minutes we
+maintained silence. I was trying to subdue my impatience and my temper.
+I knew Stott well enough to know that if I displayed signs of either, I
+should get no information from him. My self-control was rewarded at
+last.
+
+"I've 'eard 'im speak," he said, "speak proper, too, not like a baby."
+
+He paused, and I grunted to show that I was listening, but as he
+volunteered no further remark, I said: "What did you hear him say?"
+
+"I dunno," replied Stott, "somethin' about learnin' and talkin'. I
+didn't get the rights of it, but the missus near fainted--_she_ thinks
+'e's Gawd A'mighty or suthing."
+
+"But why don't you make him speak?" I asked deliberately.
+
+"Make 'im!" said Stott, with a curl of his lip, "_make_ 'im! You try it
+on!"
+
+I knew I was acting a part, but I wanted to provoke more information.
+"Well! Why not?" I said.
+
+"'Cos 'e'd look at you--that's why not," replied Stott, "and you can't
+no more face 'im than a dog can face a man. I shan't stand it much
+longer."
+
+"Curious," I said, "very curious."
+
+"Oh! he's a blarsted freak, that's what 'e is," said Stott, getting to
+his feet and beginning to pace moodily up and down.
+
+I did not interrupt him. I was thinking of this man who had drawn huge
+crowds from every part of England, who had been a national hero, and
+who, now, was unable to face his own child. Presently Stott broke out
+again.
+
+"To think of all the trouble I took when 'e was comin'," he said,
+stopping in front of me. "There was nothin' the missus fancied as I
+wouldn't get. We was livin' in Stoke then." He made a movement of his
+head in the direction of Ailesworth. "Not as she was difficult," he went
+on thoughtfully. "She used to say 'I mussent get 'abits, George.' Caught
+that from me; I was always on about that--then. You know, thinkin' of
+learnin' 'im bowlin'. Things was different then; afore _'e_ came." He
+paused again, evidently thinking of his troubles.
+
+Sympathetically, I was wondering how far the child had separated husband
+and wife. There was the making of a tragedy here, I thought; but when
+Stott, after another period of pacing up and down, began to speak again
+I found that his tragedy was of another kind.
+
+"Learn _'im_ bowling!" he said, and laughed a mirthless laugh. "My Gawd!
+it 'ud take something. No fear; that little game's off. And I could a'
+done it if he'd been a decent or'nery child, 'stead of a blarsted freak.
+There won't never be another, neither. This one pretty near killed the
+missus. Doctor said it'd be 'er last.... With an 'ead like that, whacher
+expect?"
+
+"Can he walk?" I asked.
+
+"Ah! Gets about easy enough for all 'is body and legs is so small. When
+the missus tries to stop 'im--she's afraid 'e'll go over--'e just looks
+at 'er and she 'as to let 'im 'ave 'is own way."
+
+
+II
+
+Later, I reverted to that speech of the child's, that intelligent,
+illuminating speech that seemed to prove that there was indeed a
+powerful, thoughtful mind behind those profoundly speculative eyes.
+
+"That time he spoke, Stott," I said, "was he alone?"
+
+"Ah!" assented Stott. "In the garden, practisin' walkin' all by
+'imself."
+
+"Was that the only time?"
+
+"Only time _I've_ 'eard 'im."
+
+"Was it lately?"
+
+"'Bout six weeks ago."
+
+"And he has never made a sound otherwise, cried, laughed?"
+
+"'Ardly. 'E gives a sort o' grunt sometimes, when 'e wants anything--and
+points."
+
+"He's very intelligent."
+
+"Worse than that, 'e's a freak, I tell you."
+
+With the repetition of this damning description, Stott fell back into
+his moody pacing, and this time I failed to rouse him from his gloom.
+"Oh! forget it," he broke out once, when I asked him another question,
+and I saw that he was not likely to give me any more information that
+day.
+
+We walked back together, and I said good-bye to him at the end of the
+lane which led up to his cottage.
+
+"Not comin' up?" he asked, with a nod of his head towards his home.
+
+"Well! I have to catch that train ..." I prevaricated, looking at my
+watch. I did not wish to see that child again; my distaste was even
+stronger than my curiosity.
+
+Stott grinned. "We don't 'ave many visitors," he said. "Well, I'll come
+a bit farther with you."
+
+He came to the bottom of the hill, and after he left me he took the road
+that goes over the hill to Wenderby. It would be about seven miles back
+to Pym by that road....
+
+
+III
+
+I spent the next afternoon in the Reading Room of the British Museum. I
+was searching for a precedent, and at last I found one in the story of
+Christian Heinrich Heinecken,[2] who was born at Lubeck on February 6,
+1721. There were marked points of difference between the development of
+Heinecken and that of Stott's child. Heinecken was physically feeble; at
+the age of three he was still being fed at the breast. The Stott
+precocity appeared to be physically strong; his body looked small and
+undeveloped, it is true, but this was partly an illusion produced by the
+abnormal size of the head. Again Heinecken learned to speak very early;
+at ten months old he was asking intelligent questions, at eighteen
+months he was studying history, geography, Latin and anatomy; whereas
+the Stott child had only once been heard to speak at the age of two
+years, and had not, apparently, begun any study at all.
+
+From this comparison it might seem at first that the balance of
+precocity lay in the Heinecken scale. I drew another inference. I argued
+that the genius of the Stott child far outweighed the genius of
+Christian Heinecken.
+
+Little Heinecken in his four years of life suffered the mental
+experience--with certain necessary limitations--of a developed brain. He
+gathered knowledge as an ordinary child gathers knowledge, the only
+difference being that his rate of assimilation was as ten to one.
+
+But little Stott had gathered no knowledge from books. He had been born
+of ignorant parents, he was being brought up among uneducated people.
+Yet he had wonderful intellectual gifts; surely he must have one above
+all others--the gift of reason. His brain must be constructive, logical;
+he must have the power of deduction. He must even at an extraordinarily
+early age, say six months, have developed some theory of life. He must
+be withholding his energy, deliberately; declining to exhibit his
+powers, holding his marvellous faculties in reserve. Here was surely a
+case of genius which, comparable in some respects to the genius of
+Heinecken, yet far exceeded it.
+
+As I developed my theory, my eagerness grew. And then suddenly an
+inspiration came to me. In my excitement I spoke aloud and smacked the
+desk in front of me with my open hand. "Why, of course!" I said. "That
+is the key."
+
+An old man in the next seat scowled fiercely. The attendants in the
+central circular desk all looked up. Other readers turned round and
+stared at me. I had violated the sacred laws of the Reading Room. I saw
+one of the librarians make a sign to an attendant and point to me.
+
+I gathered up my books quickly and returned them at the central desk. My
+self-consciousness had returned, and I was anxious to be away from the
+observation of the many dilettante readers who found my appearance more
+engrossing than the books with which they were dallying on some pretext
+or another.
+
+Yet, curiously, when I reached the street, the theory which had come to
+me in the Museum with the force and vividness of an illuminating dream
+had lost some of its glamour. Nevertheless, I set it out as it then
+shaped itself in my mind.
+
+The great restraining force in the evolution of man, so I thought, has
+been the restriction imposed by habit. What we call instinct is a
+hereditary habit. This is the first guiding principle in the life of the
+human infant. Upon this instinct we immediately superimpose the habits
+of reason, all the bodily and intellectual conventions that have been
+handed down from generation to generation. We learn everything we know
+as children by the hereditary, simian habit of imitation. The child of
+intellectual, cultured parents, born into savage surroundings, becomes
+the slave of this inherited habit--call it tendency, if you will, the
+intention is the same. I elaborated the theory by instance and
+introspection, and found no flaw in it....
+
+And here, by some freak of nature, was a child born without these
+habits. During the period of gestation, one thought had dominated the
+minds of both parents--the desire to have a son born without habits. It
+does not seriously affect the theory that the desire had a peculiar end
+in view; the wish, the urgent, controlling, omnipotent will had been
+there, and the result included far more than the specific intention.
+
+Already some of my distaste for the Stott child had vanished. It was
+accountable, and therefore no longer fearful. The child was supernormal,
+a cause of fear to the normal man, as all truly supernormal things are
+to our primitive, animal instincts. This is the fear of the wild thing;
+when we can explain and give reasons, the horror vanishes. We are men
+again.
+
+I did not quite recover the glow of my first inspiration, but the theory
+remained with me; I decided to make a study of the child, to submit
+knowledge to his reason. I would stand between him and the delimiting
+training of the pedagogue, I thought.
+
+Then I reached home, and my life was changed.
+
+This story is not of my own life, and I have no wish to enter into the
+curious and saddening experiences which stood between me and the child
+of Ginger Stott for nearly six years. In that time my thoughts strayed
+now and again to that cottage in the little hamlet on those wooded
+hills. Often I thought "When I have time I will go and see that child
+again if he is alive." But as the years passed, the memory of him grew
+dim, even the memory of his father was blurred over by a thousand new
+impressions. So it chanced that for nearly six years I heard no word of
+Stott and his supernormal infant, and then chance again intervened. My
+long period of sorrow came to an end almost as suddenly as it had begun,
+and by a coincidence I was once more entangled in the strange web of the
+abnormal.
+
+In this story of Victor Stott I have bridged these six years in the
+pages that follow. In doing this I have been compelled to draw to a
+certain extent on my imagination, but the main facts are true. They have
+been gathered from first-hand authority only, from Henry Challis, from
+Mrs. Stott, and from her husband; though none, I must confess, has been
+checked by that soundest of all authorities, Victor Stott himself, who
+might have given me every particular in accurate detail, had it not been
+for those peculiarities of his which will be explained fully in the
+proper place.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] See the Teutsche Bibliothek and Schoneich's account of the child of
+Lubeck.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE MANNER OF HIS BIRTH
+
+
+I
+
+Stoke-Underhill lies in the flat of the valley that separates the
+Hampden from the Quainton Hills. The main road from London to Ailesworth
+does not pass through Stoke, but from the highway you can see the ascent
+of the bridge over the railway, down the vista of a straight mile of
+side road; and, beyond, a glimpse of scattered cottages. That is all,
+and as a matter of fact, no one who is not keeping a sharp look-out
+would ever notice the village, for the eye is drawn to admire the bluff
+of Deane Hill, the highest point of the Hampdens, which lowers over the
+little hamlet of Stoke and gives it a second name; and to the church
+tower of Chilborough Beacon, away to the right, another landmark.
+
+The attraction which Stoke-Underhill held for Stott, lay not in its
+seclusion or its picturesqueness but in its nearness to the County
+Ground. Stott could ride the two flat miles which separated him from the
+scene of his work in ten minutes, and Ailesworth station is only a mile
+beyond. So when he found that there was a suitable cottage to let in
+Stoke, he looked no farther for a home; he was completely satisfied.
+
+Stott's absorption in any matter that was occupying his mind made him
+exceedingly careless about the detail of his affairs. He took the first
+cottage that offered when he looked for a home, he took the first woman
+who offered when he looked for a wife.
+
+Stott was not an attractive man to women. He was short and plain, and he
+had an appearance of being slightly deformed, a "monkeyish" look, due to
+his build and his long arms. Still, he was famous, and might, doubtless,
+have been accepted by a dozen comely young women for that reason, even
+after his accident. But if Stott was unattractive to women, women were
+even more unattractive to Stott. "No opinion of women?" he used to say.
+"Ever seen a gel try to throw a cricket ball? You 'ave? Well, ain't that
+enough to put you off women?" That was Stott's intellectual standard;
+physically, he had never felt drawn to women.
+
+Ellen Mary Jakes exhibited no superiority over her sisters in the matter
+of throwing a cricket ball. She was a friend of Ginger's mother, and
+she was a woman of forty-two, who had long since been relegated to some
+remote shelf of the matrimonial exchange. But her physical disadvantages
+were outbalanced by her mental qualities. Ellen Mary was not a
+book-worm, she read nothing but the evening and Sunday papers, but she
+had a reasoning and intelligent mind.
+
+She had often contemplated the state of matrimony, and had made more
+than one tentative essay in that direction. She had walked out with
+three or four sprigs of the Ailesworth bourgeoisie in her time, and the
+shadow of middle-age had crept upon her before she realised that however
+pliant her disposition, her lack of physical charm put her at the mercy
+of the first bright-eyed rival. At thirty-five Ellen had decided, with
+admirable philosophy, that marriage was not for her, and had assumed,
+with apparent complacency, the outward evidences of a dignified
+spinsterhood. She had discarded gay hats and ribbons, imitation
+jewellery, unreliable cheap shoes, and chill diaphanous stockings, and
+had found some solace for her singleness in more comfortable and
+suitable apparel.
+
+When Ellen, a declared spinster of seven years' standing, was first
+taken into the confidence of Ginger Stott's mother, the scheme which she
+afterwards elaborated immediately presented itself to her mind. This
+fact is a curious instance of Ellen Mary's mobility of intellect, and
+the student of heredity may here find matter for careful thought.[3]
+
+The confidence in question was Ginger's declared intention of becoming
+the father of the world's greatest bowler. Mrs. Stott was a dark,
+garrulous, rather deaf little woman, with a keen eye for the main
+chance; she might have become a successful woman of business if she had
+not been by nature both stingy and a cheat. When her son presented his
+determination, her first thought was to find some woman who would not
+dissipate her son's substance, and in her opinion--not expressed to
+Ginger--the advertised purpose of the contemplated marriage evidenced a
+wasteful disposition.
+
+Mrs. Stott did not think of Ellen Mary as a possible daughter-in-law,
+but she did hold forth for an hour and three-quarters on the
+contemptible qualities of the young maidens, first of Ailesworth, and
+then with a wider swoop that was not justified by her limited
+experience, of the girls of England, Scotland, and Ireland at large.
+
+It required the flexible reasoning powers of Ellen Mary to find a
+solution of the problem. Any ordinary, average woman of forty-two, a
+declared spinster of seven years' standing, who had lived all her life
+in a provincial town, would have been mentally unable to realise the
+possibilities of the situation. Such a representative of the decaying
+sexual instinct would have needed the stimulus of courtship, at the
+least of some hint of preference displayed by the suitor. Ruled by the
+conventions which hold her sex in bondage, she would have deemed it
+unwomanly to make advances by any means other than innuendo, the subtle
+suggestions which are the instruments of her sex, but which are often
+too delicate to pierce the understanding of the obtuse and slow-witted
+male.
+
+Ellen Mary stood outside the ruck that determines the destinies of all
+such typical representatives. She considered the idea presented to her
+by Mrs. Stott with an open and mobile intelligence. She weighed the
+character of Ginger, the possibilities of rejection, and the influence
+of Mrs. Stott; and she gave no thought to the conventions, nor to the
+criticisms of Ailesworth society. When she had decided that such chances
+as she could calculate were in her favour, Ellen made up her mind,
+walked out to the County Ground one windy October forenoon, and
+discovered Ginger experimenting with grass seed in a shed off the
+pavilion.
+
+In this shed she offered herself, while Ginger worked on, attentive but
+unresponsive. Perhaps she did not make an offer so much as state a case.
+A masterly case, without question; for who can doubt that Stott, however
+procrastinating and unwilling to make a definite overture, must already
+have had some type of womanhood in his mind; some conception, the seed
+of an ideal.
+
+I find a quality of romance in this courageous and unusual wooing of
+Ellen Mary's; but more, I find evidences of the remarkable quality of
+her intelligence. In other circumstances the name of Ellen Mary Jakes
+might have stood for individual achievement; instead of that, she is
+remembered as a common woman who _happened_ to be the mother of Victor
+Stott. But when the facts are examined, can we say that chance entered?
+If ever the birth of a child was deliberately designed by both parents,
+it was in the case under consideration. And in what a strange setting
+was the inception first displayed.
+
+Ellen Mary, a gaunt, tall, somewhat untidy woman, stood at the narrow
+door of the little shed off the Ailesworth pavilion; with one hand,
+shoulder-high, she steadied herself against the door frame, with the
+other she continually pushed forward the rusty bonnet which had been
+loosened during her walk by the equinoctial gale that now tore at the
+door of the shed, and necessitated the employment of a wary foot to keep
+the door from slamming. With all these distractions she still made good
+her case, though she had to raise her voice above the multitudinous
+sounds of the wind, and though she had to address the unresponsive
+shoulders of a man who bent over shallow trays of earth set on a trestle
+table under the small and dirty window. It is heroic, but she had her
+reward in full measure. Presently her voice ceased, and she waited in
+silence for the answer that should decide her destiny. There was an
+interval broken only by the tireless passion of the wind, and then
+Ginger Stott, the best-known man in England, looked up and stared
+through the incrusted pane of glass before him at the dim vision of
+stooping grass and swaying hedge. Unconsciously his hand strayed to his
+pockets, and then he said in a low, thoughtful voice: "Well! I dunno why
+not."
+
+
+II
+
+Dr. O'Connell's face was white and drawn, and the redness of his eyelids
+more pronounced than ever as he faced Stott in the pale October dawn. He
+clutched at his beard with a nervous, combing movement, as he shook his
+head decidedly in answer to the question put to him.
+
+"If it's not dead, now, 'twill be in very few hours," he said.
+
+Stott was shaken by the feeble passion of a man who has spent many weary
+hours of suspense. His anger thrilled out in a feeble stream of
+hackneyed profanities.
+
+O'Connell looked down on him with contempt. At sunrise, after a
+sleepless night, a man is a creature of unrealised emotions.
+
+"Damn it, control yourself, man!" growled O'Connell, himself
+uncontrolled, "your wife'll pull through with care, though she'll never
+have another child." O'Connell did not understand; he was an Irishman,
+and no cricketer; he had been called in because he had a reputation for
+his skill in obstetrics.
+
+Stott stared at him fiercely. The two men seemed as if about to grapple
+desperately for life in the windy, grey twilight.
+
+O'Connell recovered his self-control first, and began again to claw
+nervously at his beard. "Don't be a fool," he said, "it's only what you
+could expect. Her first child, and her a woman of near fifty." He
+returned to the upstairs room; Stott seized his cap and went out into
+the chill world of sunrise.
+
+"She'll do, if there are no complications," said O'Connell to the
+nurse, as he bent over the still, exhausted figure of Mrs. Stott. "She's
+a wonderful woman to have delivered such a child alive."
+
+The nurse shivered, and avoiding any glance at the huddle that lay on an
+improvised sofa-bed, she said: "It can't live, can it?"
+
+O'Connell, still intent on his first patient, shook his head. "Never
+cried after delivery," he muttered--"the worst sign." He was silent for
+a moment and then he added: "But, to be sure, it's a freak of some
+kind." His scientific curiosity led him to make a further investigation.
+He left the bed and began to examine the huddle on the sofa-couch.
+Victor Stott owed his life, in the first instance, to this scientific
+curiosity of O'Connell's.
+
+The nurse, a capable, but sentimental woman, turned to the window and
+looked out at the watery trickle of feeble sunlight that now illumined
+the wilderness of Stott's garden.
+
+"Nurse!" The imperative call startled her; she turned nervously.
+
+"Yes, doctor?" she said, making no movement towards him.
+
+"Come here!" O'Connell was kneeling by the sofa. "There seems to be
+complete paralysis of all the motor centres," he went on; "but the
+child's not dead. We'll try artificial respiration."
+
+The nurse overcame her repugnance by a visible effort. "Is it ... is it
+worth while?" she asked, regarding the flaccid, tumbled, wax-like thing,
+with its bloated, white globe of a skull. Every muscle of it was relaxed
+and limp, its eyes shut, its tiny jaw hanging. "Wouldn't it be better to
+let it die...?"
+
+O'Connell did not seem to hear her. He waved an impatient hand for her
+assistance. "Outside my experience," he muttered, "no heart-beat
+discernible, no breath ... yet it is indubitably alive." He depressed
+the soft, plastic ribs and gave the feeble heart a gentle squeeze.
+
+"It's beating," he ejaculated, after a pause, with an ear close to the
+little chest, "but still no breath! Come!"
+
+The diminutive lungs were as readily open to suggestion as the wee
+heart: a few movements of the twigs they called arms, and the breath
+came. O'Connell closed the mouth and it remained closed, adjusted the
+limbs, and they stayed in the positions in which they were placed. At
+last he gently lifted the lids of the eyes.
+
+The nurse shivered and drew back. Even O'Connell was startled, for the
+eyes that stared into his own seemed to be heavy with a brooding
+intelligence....
+
+Stott came back at ten o'clock, after a morose trudge through the misty
+rain. He found the nurse in the sitting-room.
+
+"Doctor gone?" he asked.
+
+The nurse nodded.
+
+"Dead, I suppose?" Stott gave an upward twist of his head towards the
+room above.
+
+The nurse shook her head.
+
+"Can't live though?" There was a note of faint hope in his voice.
+
+The nurse drew herself together and sighed deeply. "Yes! we believe
+it'll live, Mr. Stott," she said. "But ... it's a very remarkable baby."
+
+How that phrase always recurred!
+
+
+III
+
+There were no complications, but Mrs. Stott's recovery was not rapid. It
+was considered advisable that she should not see the child. She thought
+that they were lying to her, that the child was dead and, so, resigned
+herself. But her husband saw it.
+
+He had never seen so young an infant before, and, just for one moment,
+he believed that it was a normal child.
+
+"What an 'ead!" was his first ejaculation, and then he realised the
+significance of that sign. Fear came into his eyes, and his mouth fell
+open. "'Ere, I say, nurse, it's ... it's a wrong 'un, ain't it?" he
+gasped.
+
+"I'm _sure_ I can't tell you, Mr. Stott," broke out the nurse
+hysterically. She had been tending that curious baby for three hours,
+and she was on the verge of a break-down. There was no wet-nurse to be
+had, but a woman from the village had been sent for. She was expected
+every moment.
+
+"More like a tadpole than anything," mused the unhappy father.
+
+"Oh! Mr. Stott, for goodness' sake, _don't_," cried the nurse. "If you
+only knew...."
+
+"Knew what?" questioned Stott, still staring at the motionless figure of
+his son, who lay with closed eyes, apparently unconscious.
+
+"There's something--I don't know," began the nurse, and then after a
+pause, during which she seemed to struggle for some means of expression,
+she continued with a sigh of utter weariness, "You'll know when it opens
+its eyes. Oh! Why doesn't that woman come, the woman you sent for?"
+
+"She'll be 'ere directly," replied Stott. "What d'you mean about there
+bein' something ... something what?"
+
+"Uncanny," said the nurse without conviction. "I do wish that woman
+would come. I've been up the best part of the night, and now ..."
+
+"Uncanny? As how?" persisted Stott.
+
+"Not normal," explained the nurse. "I can't tell you more than that."
+
+"But 'ow? What way?"
+
+He did not receive an answer then, for the long expected relief came at
+last, a great hulk of a woman, who became voluble when she saw the child
+she had come to nurse.
+
+"Oh! dear, oh! dear," the stream began. "How unforchnit, and 'er first,
+too. It'll be a idjit, I'm afraid. Mrs. 'Arrison's third was the very
+spit of it...."
+
+The stream ran on, but Stott heard no more. An idiot! He had fathered an
+idiot! That was the end of his dreams and ambitions! He had had an
+hour's sleep on the sitting-room sofa. He went out to his work at the
+County Ground with a heart full of blasphemy.
+
+When he returned at four o'clock he met the stout woman on the doorstep.
+She put up a hand to her rolling breast, closed her eyes tightly, and
+gasped as though completely overcome by this trifling rencounter.
+
+"'Ow is it?" questioned the obsessed Stott.
+
+"Oh dear! Oh dear!" panted the stout woman, "the leas' thing upsets me
+this afternoon...." She wandered away into irrelevant fluency, but Stott
+was autocratic; his insistent questions overcame the inertia of even
+Mrs. Reade at last. The substance of her information, freed from
+extraneous matter, was as follows:
+
+"Oh! 'ealthy? It'll live, I've no doubt, if that's what you mean; but
+'elpless...! There, 'elpless is no word.... Learn 'im to open his mouth,
+learn 'im to close 'is 'ands, learn 'im to go to sleep, learn 'im
+everythink. I've never seen nothink like it, never in all my days, and
+I've 'elped to bring a few into the world.... I can't begin to tell you
+about it, Mr. Stott, and that's the solemn truth. When 'e first looked
+at me, I near 'ad a faint. A old-fashioned, wise sort of look as 'e
+might 'a been a 'undred. 'Lord 'elp us, nurse,' I says, 'Lord 'elp us.'
+I was that opset, I didn't rightly know what I was a-saying...."
+
+Stott pushed past the agitated Mrs. Reade, and went into the
+sitting-room. He had had neither breakfast nor lunch; there was no sign
+of any preparation for his tea, and the fireplace was grey with the
+cinders of last night's fire. For some minutes he sat in deep
+despondency, a hero faced with the uncompromising detail of domestic
+neglect. Then he rose and called to the nurse.
+
+She appeared at the head of the steep, narrow staircase. "Sh!" she
+warned, with a finger to her lips.
+
+"I'm goin' out again," said Stott in a slightly modulated voice.
+
+"Mrs. Reade's coming back presently," replied the nurse, and looked over
+her shoulder.
+
+"Want me to wait?" asked Stott.
+
+The nurse came down a few steps. "It's only in case any one was wanted,"
+she began, "I've got two of 'em on my hands, you see. They're both doing
+well as far as that goes. Only ..." She broke off and drifted into small
+talk. Ever and again she stopped and listened intently, and looked back
+towards the half-open door of the upstairs room.
+
+Stott fidgeted, and then, as the flow of conversation gave no sign of
+running dry, he dammed it abruptly. "Look 'ere, miss," he said, "I've
+'ad nothing to eat since last night."
+
+"Oh! dear!" ejaculated the nurse. "If--perhaps, if you'd just stay here
+and listen, I could get you something." She seemed relieved to have some
+excuse for coming down.
+
+While she bustled about the kitchen, Stott, half-way upstairs, stayed
+and listened. The house was very silent, the only sound was the hushed
+clatter made by the nurse in the kitchen. There was an atmosphere of
+wariness about the place that affected even so callous a person as
+Stott. He listened with strained attention, his eyes fixed on the
+half-open door. He was not an imaginative man, but he was beset with
+apprehension as to what lay behind that door. He looked for something
+inhuman that might come crawling through the aperture, something
+grotesque, preternaturally wise and threatening--something horribly
+unnatural.
+
+The window of the upstairs room was evidently open, and now and again
+the door creaked faintly. When that happened Stott gripped the handrail,
+and grew damp and hot. He looked always at the shadows under the door.
+If it crawled ...
+
+The nurse stood at the door of the sitting-room while Stott ate, and
+presently Mrs. Reade came grunting and panting up the brick path.
+
+"I'm going out, now," said Stott resolutely, and he rose to his feet,
+though his meal was barely finished.
+
+"You'll be back before Mrs. Reade goes?" asked the nurse, and passed a
+hand over her tired eyes. "She'll be here till ten o'clock. I'm going to
+lie down."
+
+"I'll be back by ten," Stott assured her as he went out.
+
+He did come back at ten o'clock, but he was stupidly drunk.
+
+
+IV
+
+The Stotts' cottage was no place to live in during the next few days,
+but the nurse made one stipulation: Mr. Stott must come home to sleep.
+He slept on an improvised bed in the sitting-room, and during the night
+the nurse came down many times and listened to the sound of his snores.
+She would put her ear against the door, and rest her nerves with the
+thought of human companionship. Sometimes she opened the door quietly
+and watched him as he slept. Except at night, when he was rarely quite
+sober, Stott only visited his cottage once a day, at lunch time; from
+seven in the morning till ten at night he remained in Ailesworth save
+for this one call of inquiry.
+
+It was such a still house. Ellen Mary only spoke when speech was
+absolutely required, and then her words were the fewest possible, and
+were spoken in a whisper. The child made no sound of any kind. Even Mrs.
+Reade tried to subdue her stertorous breathing, to move with less
+ponderous quakings. The neighbours told her she looked thinner.
+
+Little wonder that during the long night vigil the nurse, moving
+silently between the two upstairs rooms, should pause on the landing and
+lean over the handrail; little wonder that she should give a long sigh
+of relief when she heard the music of Stott's snore ascend from the
+sitting-room.
+
+O'Connell called twice every day during the first week, not because it
+was necessary for him to visit his two patients, but because the infant
+fascinated him. He would wait for it to open its eyes, and then he
+would get up and leave the room hurriedly. Always he intended to return
+the infant's stare, but when the opportunity was given to him, he always
+rose and left the room--no matter how long and deliberately he had
+braced himself to another course of action.
+
+It was on a Thursday that the baby was born, and it was on the following
+Thursday that the circumstance of the household was reshaped.
+
+O'Connell came in the morning, full of resolution. After he had
+pronounced Mrs. Stott well on the way to recovery, he paid the usual
+visit to his younger patient. The child lay, relaxed, at full length, in
+the little cot which had been provided for him. His eyes were, as usual,
+closed, and he had all the appearance of the ordinary hydrocephalic
+idiot.
+
+O'Connell sat down by the cot, listened to the child's breathing and
+heart-beat, lifted and let fall again the lax wrist, turned back the
+eyelid, revealing only the white of the upturned eyeball, and then
+composed himself to await the natural waking of the child, if it were
+asleep--always a matter of uncertainty.
+
+The nurse stood near him, silent, but she looked away from the cot.
+
+"Hydrocephalus!" murmured O'Connell, staring at his tiny patient,
+"hydrocephalus, without a doubt. Eh? nurse!"
+
+"Yes, perhaps! I don't know, doctor."
+
+"Oh, not a doubt of it, not a doubt," repeated O'Connell, and then came
+a flicker of the child's eyelids and a weak crumpling of the tiny hand.
+
+O'Connell caught his breath and clawed at his beard. "Hydrocephalus," he
+muttered with set jaw and drawn eyebrows.
+
+The tiny hand straightened with a movement that suggested the recovery
+of crushed grass, the mouth opened in a microscopic yawn, and then the
+eyelids were slowly raised and a steady unwavering stare of profoundest
+intelligence met O'Connell's gaze.
+
+He clenched his hands, shifted in his chair, and then rose abruptly and
+turned to the window.
+
+"I--it won't be necessary for me to come again, nurse," he said curtly;
+"they are both doing perfectly well."
+
+"Not come again?" There was dismay in the nurse's question.
+
+"No! No! It's unnecessary ..." He broke off, and made for the door
+without another glance in the direction of the cot.
+
+Nurse followed him downstairs.
+
+"If I'm wanted--you can easily send for me," said O'Connell, as he went
+out. As he moved away he dragged at his beard and murmured:
+"Hydrocephalus, not a doubt of it."
+
+Following his departure, Mrs. Reade heard curious and most unwonted
+laughter, and cautiously blundered downstairs to investigate. She found
+the nurse in an advanced condition of hysteria, laughing, gurgling,
+weeping, and intermittently crying in a shrill voice: "Oh! Lord have
+mercy; Lord ha' mercy!"
+
+"Now, see you 'ere, my dear," said Mrs. Reade, when nurse had been
+recovered to a red-eyed sanity, "it's time she was told. I've never 'eld
+with keepin' it from 'er, myself, and I've 'ad more experience than
+many...." Mrs. Reade argued with abundant recourse to parenthesis.
+
+"Is she strog edough?" asked the nurse, still with tears in her voice;
+"cad she bear the sight of hib?" She blew her nose vigorously, and then
+continued with greater clearness: "I'm afraid it may turn her head."
+
+Out of her deep store of wisdom, Mrs. Reade produced a fact which she
+elaborated and confirmed by apt illustration, adducing more particularly
+the instance of Mrs. Harrison's third. "She's 'is mother," was the
+essence of her argument, a fact of deep and strange significance.
+
+The nurse yielded, and so the circumstance of Stott's household was
+changed, and Stott himself was once more able to come home to meals.
+
+The nurse, wisely, left all diplomacy to the capable Mrs. Reade, a woman
+specially fitted by nature for the breaking of news. She delivered a
+long, a record-breaking circumlocution, and it seemed that Ellen Mary,
+who lay with closed eyes, gathered no hint of its import. But when the
+impressive harangue was slowly rustling to collapse like an exhausted
+balloon, she opened her eyes and said quite clearly,
+
+"What's wrong with 'im, then?"
+
+The question had the effect of reinflation, but at last the child itself
+was brought, and it was open-eyed.
+
+The supreme ambition of all great women--and have not all women the
+potentialities of greatness?--is to give birth to a god. That ambition
+it is which is marred by the disappointing birth of a female child--when
+the man-child is born, there is always hope, and slow is the realisation
+of failure. That realisation never came to Ellen Mary. She accepted her
+child with the fear that is adoration. When she dropped her eyes before
+her god's searching glance, she did it in reverence. She hid her faith
+from the world, but in her heart she believed that she was blessed above
+all women. In secret, she worshipped the inscrutable wonder that had
+used her as the instrument of his incarnation. Perhaps she was
+right....
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] A study of genius shows that in a percentage of cases so large as to
+exclude the possibility of coincidence, the exceptional man, whether in
+the world of action, of art, or of letters, seems to inherit his
+magnificent powers through the female line. Sir Francis Galton, it is
+true, did not make a great point of this curious observation, but the
+tendency of more recent analyses is all in the direction of confirming
+the hypothesis; and it would seem to hold good in the converse
+proposition, namely, that the exceptional woman inherits her qualities
+from her father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HIS DEPARTURE FROM STOKE-UNDERHILL
+
+
+I
+
+The village of Stoke was no whit intimidated by the news that Mrs. Reade
+sowed abroad. The women exclaimed and chattered, the men gaped and shook
+their heads, the children hung about the ruinous gate that shut them out
+from the twenty-yard strip of garden which led up to Stott's cottage.
+Curiosity was the dominant emotion. Any excuse was good enough to make
+friendly overtures, but the baby remained invisible to all save Mrs.
+Reade; and the village community kept open ears while the lust of its
+eyes remained, perforce, unsatisfied. If Stott's gate slammed in the
+wind, every door that commanded a view of that gate was opened, and
+heads appeared, and bare arms--the indications of women who nodded to
+each other, shook their heads, pursed their lips and withdrew for the
+time to attend the pressure of household duty. Later, even that gate
+slamming would reinvigorate the gossip of backyards and front doorways.
+
+The first stranger to force an entry was the rector. He was an Oxford
+man who, in his youth, had been an ardent disciple of the school that
+attempts the reconciliation of Religion and Science. He had been
+ambitious, but nature had predetermined his career by giving him a head
+of the wrong shape. At Oxford his limitations had not been clearly
+defined, and on the strength of a certain speech at the Union, he crept
+into a London west-end curacy. There he attempted to demonstrate the
+principle of reconciliation from the pulpit, but his vicar and his
+bishop soon recognised that excellent as were his intentions, he was
+doing better service to agnosticism than to his own religion. As a
+result of this clerical intrigue he was vilely marooned on the savage
+island of Stoke-Underhill, where he might preach as much science as he
+would to the natives, for there was no fear of their comprehending him.
+Fifteen years of Stoke had brought about a reaction. Nature had made him
+a feeble fanatic, and he was now as ardent an opponent of science as he
+had once been a defender. In his little mind he believed that his early
+reading had enabled him to understand all the weaknesses of the
+scientific position. His name was Percy Crashaw.
+
+Mrs. Stott could not deny her rector the right of entry, and he insisted
+on seeing the infant, who was not yet baptised--a shameful neglect,
+according to Crashaw, for the child was nearly six weeks old. Nor had
+Mrs. Stott been "churched." Crashaw had good excuse for pressing his
+call.
+
+Mrs. Stott refused to face the village. She knew that the place was all
+agape, eager to stare at what they considered some "new kind of idiot."
+Let them wait, was Ellen Mary's attitude. Her pride was a later
+development. In those early weeks she feared criticism.
+
+But she granted Crashaw's request to see the child, and after the
+interview (the term is precise) the rector gave way on the question of a
+private ceremony, though he had indignantly opposed the scheme when it
+was first mooted. It may be that he conceived an image of himself with
+that child in his arms, the cynosure of a packed congregation....
+
+Crashaw was one of the influences that hastened the Stotts' departure
+from Stoke. He was so indiscreet. After the christening he would talk.
+His attitude is quite comprehensible. He, the lawgiver of Stoke, had
+been thwarted. He had to find apology for the private baptism he had
+denied to many a sickly infant. Moreover, the Stotts had broken another
+of his ordinances, for father and mother had stood as godparents to
+their own child, and Crashaw himself had been the second godfather
+ordained as necessary by the rubric. He had given way on these important
+points so weakly; he had to find excuse, and he talked himself into a
+false belief with regard to the child he had baptised.
+
+He began with his wife. "I would allow more latitude to medical men," he
+said. "In such a case as this child of the Stotts, for instance; it
+becomes a burden on the community, I might say a danger, yes, a positive
+danger. I am not sure whether I was right in administering the holy
+sacrament of baptism...."
+
+"Oh! Percy! Surely ..." began Mrs. Crashaw.
+
+"One moment, my dear," protested the rector, "I have not fully explained
+the circumstances of the case." And as he warmed to his theme the image
+of Victor Stott grew to a fearful grotesqueness. It loomed as a threat
+over the community and the church. Crashaw quoted, inaccurately,
+statistics of the growth of lunacy, and then went off at a tangent into
+the theory of possession by evil spirits. Since his rejection of
+science, he had lapsed into certain forms of mediævalism, and he now
+began to dally with the theory of a malign incarnation which he
+elaborated until it became an article of his faith.
+
+To his poorer parishioners he spoke in vague terms, but he changed their
+attitude; he filled them with overawed terror. They were intensely
+curious still, but, now, when the gate was slammed, one saw a face
+pressed to the window, the door remained fast; and the children no
+longer clustered round that gate, but dared each other to run past it;
+which they did, the girls with a scream, the boys with a jeering
+"Yah--ah!" a boast of intrepidity.
+
+This change of temper was soon understood by the persons most concerned.
+Stott grumbled and grew more morose. He had never been intimate with the
+villagers, and now he avoided any intercourse with them. His wife kept
+herself aloof, and her child sheltered from profane observation.
+Naturally, this attitude of the Stotts fostered suspicion. Even the
+hardiest sceptic in the taproom of the Challis Arms began to shake his
+head, to concede that there "moight be soomething in it."
+
+Yet the departure from Stoke might have been postponed indefinitely, if
+it had not been for another intrusion. Both Stott and his wife were
+ready to take up a new idea, but they were slow to conceive it.
+
+
+II
+
+The intruder was the local magnate, the landlord of Stoke, Wenderby,
+Chilborough, a greater part of Ailesworth, two or three minor parishes,
+and, incidentally, of Pym.
+
+This magnate, Henry Challis, was a man of some scholarship, whose
+ambition had been crushed by the weight of his possessions. He had a
+remarkably fine library at Challis Court, but he made little use of it,
+for he spent the greater part of his time in travel. In appearance he
+was rather an ungainly man; his great head and the bulk of his big
+shoulders were something too heavy for his legs.
+
+Crashaw regarded his patron with mixed feelings. For Challis, the man of
+property, the man of high connections, of intimate associations with the
+world of science and letters, Crashaw had a feeling of awed respect; but
+in private he inveighed against the wickedness of Challis, the agnostic,
+the decadent.
+
+When Victor Stott was nearly three months old, the rector met his patron
+one day on the road between Chilborough and Stoke. It was three years
+since their last meeting, and Crashaw noticed that in the interval
+Challis's pointed beard had become streaked with grey.
+
+"Hallo! How d'ye do, Crashaw?" was the squire's casual greeting. "How is
+the Stoke microcosm?"
+
+Crashaw smiled subserviently; he was never quite at his ease in
+Challis's presence. "Rari nantes in gurgite vasto," was the tag he found
+in answer to the question put. However great his contempt for Challis's
+way of life, in his presence Crashaw was often oppressed with a feeling
+of inferiority, a feeling which he fought against but could not subdue.
+The Latin tag was an attempt to win appreciation, it represented a boast
+of equality.
+
+Challis correctly evaluated the rector's attitude; it was with something
+of pity in his mind that he turned and walked beside him.
+
+There was but one item of news from Stoke, and it soon came to the
+surface. Crashaw phrased his description of Victor Stott in terms other
+than those he used in speaking to his wife or to his parishioners; but
+the undercurrent of his virulent superstition did not escape Challis,
+and the attitude of the villagers was made perfectly plain.
+
+"Hm!" was Challis's comment, when the flow of words ceased, "nigroque
+simillima cygno, eh?"
+
+"Ah! of course, you sneer at our petty affairs," said Crashaw.
+
+"By no means. I should like to see this black swan of Stoke," replied
+Challis. "Anything so exceptional interests me."
+
+"No doubt Mrs. Stott would be proud to exhibit the horror," said
+Crashaw. He had a gleam of satisfaction in the thought that even the
+great Henry Challis might be scared. That would, indeed, be a triumph.
+
+"If Mrs. Stott has no objection, of course," said Challis. "Shall we go
+there, now?"
+
+
+III
+
+The visit of Henry Challis marked the first advent of Ellen Mary's pride
+in the exhibition of her wonder. After the King and the Royal
+Family--superhuman beings, infinitely remote--the great landlord of the
+neighbourhood stood as a symbol of temporal power to the whole district.
+The budding socialist of the taproom might sneer, and make threat that
+the time was coming when he, the boaster, and Challis, the landlord,
+would have equal rights; but in public the socialist kow-towed to his
+master with a submission no less obsequious than that of the humblest
+conservative on the estate.
+
+Mrs. Stott dropped a deep curtsy when, opening the door to the
+autocratic summons of Crashaw's rat-a-tat, she saw the great man of the
+district at her threshold. Challis raised his hat. Crashaw did not
+imitate his example; he was all officiousness, he had the air of a chief
+superintendent of police.
+
+"Oh! Mrs. Stott, we should like to come in for a few minutes. Mr.
+Challis would like to see your child."
+
+"Damn the fool!" was Challis's thought, but he gave it less abrupt
+expression. "That is, of course, if it is quite convenient to you, Mrs.
+Stott. I can come at some other time...."
+
+"Please walk in, sir," replied Mrs. Stott, and curtsied again as she
+stood aside.
+
+Superintendent Crashaw led the way....
+
+Challis called again next day, by himself this time; and the day after
+he dropped in at six o'clock while Mr. and Mrs. Stott were at tea. He
+put them at their ease by some magic of his personality, and insisted
+that they should continue their meal while he sat among the collapsed
+springs of the horsehair armchair. He leaned forward, swinging his stick
+as a pendulum between his knees, and shot out questions as to the
+Stotts' relations with the neighbours. And always he had an attentive
+eye on the cradle that stood near the fire.
+
+"The neighbours are not highly intelligent, I suspect," said Challis.
+"Even Mr. Crashaw, I fancy, does not appreciate the--peculiarities of
+the situation."
+
+"He's worse than any," interpolated Stott. Ellen Mary sat in the shadow;
+there was a new light in her eyes, a foretaste of glory.
+
+"Ah! a little narrow, a little dogmatic, no doubt," replied Challis. "I
+was going to propose that you might prefer to live at Pym."
+
+"Much farther for me," muttered Stott. He had mixed with nobility on the
+cricket field, and was not overawed.
+
+"No doubt; but you have other interests to consider, interests of far
+greater importance." Challis shifted his gaze from the cradle, and
+looked Stott in the face. "I understand that Mrs. Stott does not care to
+take her child out in the village. Isn't that so?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Ellen, to whom this question was addressed. "I don't
+care to make an exhibition of 'im."
+
+"Quite right, quite right," went on Challis, "but it is very necessary
+that the child should have air. I consider it very necessary, a matter
+of the first importance that the child should have air," he repeated.
+His gaze had shifted back to the cradle again. The child lay with open
+eyes, staring up at the ceiling.
+
+"Now, there is an excellent cottage at Pym which I will have put in
+repair for you at once," continued Challis. "It is one of two together,
+but next door there are only old Metcalfe and his wife and daughter, who
+will give you no trouble. And really, Mrs. Stott," he tore his regard
+from the cradle for a moment, "there is no reason in the world why you
+should fear the attention of your neighbours. Here, in Stoke, I admit,
+they have been under a complete misapprehension, but I fancy that there
+were special reasons for that. In Pym you will have few neighbours, and
+you need not, I'm sure, fear their criticism."
+
+"They got one idiot there, already," Stott remarked somewhat sulkily.
+
+"You surely do not regard your own child as likely to develop into an
+idiot, Stott!" Challis's tone was one of rebuke.
+
+Stott shifted in his chair and his eyes flickered uncertainly in the
+direction of the cradle. "Dr. O'Connell says 'twill," he said.
+
+"When did he see the child last?" asked Challis.
+
+"Not since 'twere a week old, sir," replied Ellen.
+
+"In that case his authority goes for nothing, and, then, by the way, I
+suppose the child has not been vaccinated?"
+
+"Not yet, sir."
+
+"Better have that done. Get Walters. I'll make myself responsible. I'll
+get him to come."
+
+Before Challis left, it was decided that the Stotts should move to Pym
+in February.
+
+When the great landowner had gone, Mrs. Stott looked wistfully at her
+husband.
+
+"You ain't fair to the child, George," she said. "There's more than you
+or any one sees, more than Mr. Challis, even."
+
+Stott stared moodily into the fire.
+
+"And it won't be so out of the way far for you, at Pym, with your bike,"
+she continued; "and we _can't_ stop 'ere."
+
+"We might 'a took a place in Ailesworth," said Stott.
+
+"But it'll be so much 'ealthier for 'im up at Pym," protested Ellen.
+"It'll be fine air up there for 'im."
+
+"Oh! _'im_. Yes, all right for _'im_," said Stott, and spat into the
+fire. Then he took his cap and went out. He kept his eyes away from the
+cradle.
+
+
+IV
+
+Harvey Walters lived in Wenderby, but his consulting-rooms were in
+Harley Street, and he did not practise in his own neighbourhood;
+nevertheless he vaccinated Victor Stott to oblige Challis.
+
+"Well?" asked Challis a few days later, "what do you make of him,
+Walters? No clichés, now, and no professional jargon."
+
+"Candidly, I don't know," replied Walters, after a thoughtful interval.
+
+"How many times have you seen him?"
+
+"Four, altogether."
+
+"Good patient? Healthy flesh and that sort of thing?"
+
+"Splendid."
+
+"Did he look you in the eyes?"
+
+"Once, only once, the first time I visited the house."
+
+Challis nodded. "My own experience, exactly. And did you return that
+look of his?"
+
+"Not willingly. It was, I confess, not altogether a pleasant
+experience."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Challis was silent for a few moments, and it was Walters who took up the
+interrogatory.
+
+"Challis!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Have you, now, some feeling of, shall I say, distaste for the child? Do
+you feel that you have no wish to see it again?"
+
+"Is it that exactly?" parried Challis.
+
+"If not, what is it?" asked Walters.
+
+"In my own case," said Challis, "I can find an analogy only in my
+attitude towards my 'head' at school. In his presence I was always
+intimidated by my consciousness of his superior learning. I felt
+unpleasantly ignorant, small, negligible. Curiously enough, I see
+something of the same expression of feeling in the attitude of that
+feeble Crashaw to myself. Well, one makes an attempt at self-assertion,
+a kind of futile bragging; and one knows the futility of it--at the
+time. But, afterwards, one finds excuse and seeks to belittle the
+personality and attainment of the person one feared. At school we did
+not love the 'head,' and, as schoolboys will, we were always trying to
+run him down. 'Next time he rags me, I'll cheek him,' was our usual
+boast--but we never did. Let's be honest, Walters, are not you and I
+exhibiting much the same attitude towards this extraordinary child?
+Didn't he produce the effect upon you that I've described? Didn't you
+have a little of the 'fifth form' feeling,--a boy under examination?"
+
+Walters smiled and screwed his mouth on one side. "The thing is so
+absurd," he said.
+
+"That is what we used to say at school," replied Challis.
+
+
+V
+
+The Stotts' move to Pym was not marked by any incident. Mrs. Stott and
+her boy were not unduly stared upon as they left Stoke--the children
+were in school--and their entry into the new cottage was uneventful.
+
+They moved on a Thursday. On Sunday morning they had their first
+visitor.
+
+He came mooning round the fence that guarded the Stotts' garden from the
+little lane--it was hardly more than a footpath. He had a great
+shapeless head that waggled heavily on his shoulders, his eyes were
+lustreless, and his mouth hung open, frequently his tongue lagged out.
+He made strange, inhuman noises. "A-ba-ba," was his nearest approach to
+speech.
+
+"Now, George," called Mrs. Stott, "look at that. It's Mrs. 'Arrison's
+boy what Mrs. Reade's spoke about. Now, is 'e anythink like ..." she
+paused, "anythink like 'im?" and she indicated the cradle in the
+sitting-room.
+
+"What's 'e want, 'angin' round 'ere?" replied Stott, disregarding the
+comparison. "'Ere, get off," he called, and he went into the garden and
+picked up a stick.
+
+The idiot shambled away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HIS FATHER'S DESERTION
+
+
+I
+
+The strongest of all habits is that of acquiescence. It is this habit of
+submission that explains the admired patience and long-suffering of the
+abjectly poor. The lower the individual falls, the more unconquerable
+becomes the inertia of mind which interferes between him and revolt
+against his condition. All the miseries of the flesh, even starvation,
+seem preferable to the making of an effort great enough to break this
+habit of submission.
+
+Ginger Stott was not poor. For a man in his station of life he was
+unusually well provided for, but in him the habit of acquiescence was
+strongly rooted. Before his son was a year old, Stott had grown to
+loathe his home, to dread his return to it, yet it did not occur to him
+until another year had passed that he could, if he would, set up another
+establishment on his own account; that he could, for instance, take a
+room in Ailesworth, and leave his wife and child in the cottage. For two
+years he did not begin to think of this idea, and then it was suddenly
+forced upon him.
+
+Ever since they had overheard those strangely intelligent
+self-communings, the Stotts had been perfectly aware that their
+wonderful child could talk if he would. Ellen Mary, pondering that
+single expression, had read a world of meaning into her son's murmurs of
+"learning." In her simple mind she understood that his deliberate
+withholding of speech was a reserve against some strange manifestation.
+
+The manifestation, when it came, was as remarkable as it was unexpected.
+
+The armchair in which Henry Challis had once sat was a valued
+possession, dedicated by custom to the sole use of George Stott. Ever
+since he had been married, Stott had enjoyed the full and undisputed use
+of that chair. Except at his meals, he never sat in any other, and he
+had formed a fixed habit of throwing himself into that chair immediately
+on his return from his work at the County Ground.
+
+One evening in November, however, when his son was just over two years
+old, Stott found his sacred chair occupied. He hesitated a moment, and
+then went in to the kitchen to find his wife.
+
+"That child's in my chair," he said.
+
+Ellen was setting the tray for her husband's tea. "Yes ... I know," she
+replied. "I--I did mention it, but 'e 'asn't moved."
+
+"Well, take 'im out," ordered Stott, but he dropped his voice.
+
+"Does it matter?" asked his wife. "Tea's just ready. Time that's done
+'e'll be ready for 'is bath."
+
+"Why can't you move 'im?" persisted Stott gloomily. "'E knows it's my
+chair."
+
+"There! kettle's boilin', come in and 'ave your tea," equivocated the
+diplomatic Ellen.
+
+During the progress of the meal, the child still sat quietly in his
+father's chair, his little hands resting on his knees, his eyes wide
+open, their gaze abstracted, as usual, from all earthly concerns.
+
+But after tea Stott was heroic. He had reached the limit of his
+endurance. One of his deep-seated habits was being broken, and with it
+snapped his habit of acquiescence. He rose to his feet and faced his son
+with determination, and Stott had a bull-dog quality about him that was
+not easily defeated.
+
+"Look 'ere! Get out!" he said. "That's _my_ chair!"
+
+The child very deliberately withdrew his attention from infinity and
+regarded the dogged face and set jaw of his father. Stott returned the
+stare for the fraction of a second, and then his eyes wavered and
+dropped, but he maintained his resolution.
+
+"You got to get out," he said, "or I'll make you."
+
+Ellen Mary gripped the edge of the table, but she made no attempt to
+interfere.
+
+There was a tense, strained silence. Then Stott began to breathe
+heavily. He lifted his long arms for a moment and raised his eyes, he
+even made a tentative step towards the usurped throne.
+
+The child sat calm, motionless; his eyes were fixed upon his father's
+face with a sublime, undeviating confidence.
+
+Stott's arms fell to his sides again, he shuffled his feet. One more
+effort he made, a sudden, vicious jerk, as though he would do the thing
+quickly and be finished with it; then he shivered, his resolution broke,
+and he shambled evasively to the door.
+
+"God damn," he muttered. At the door he turned for an instant, swore
+again in the same words, and went out into the night.
+
+To Stott, moodily pacing the Common, this thing was incomprehensible,
+some horrible infraction of the law of normal life, something to be
+condemned; altered, if possible. It was unprecedented, and it was,
+therefore, wrong, unnatural, diabolic, a violation of the sound
+principles which uphold human society.
+
+To Ellen Mary it was merely a miracle, the foreshadowing of greater
+miracles to come. And to her was manifested, also, a minor miracle, for
+when his father had gone, the child looked at his mother and gave out
+his first recorded utterance.
+
+"'Oo _is_ God?" he said.
+
+Ellen Mary tried to explain, but before she had stammered out many
+words, her son abstracted his gaze, climbed down out of the chair, and
+intimated with his usual grunt that he desired his bath and his bed.
+
+
+II
+
+The depths of Stott were stirred that night. He had often said that "he
+wouldn't stand it much longer," but the words were a mere formula: he
+had never even weighed their intention. As he paced the Common, he
+muttered them again to the night, with new meaning; he saw new
+possibilities, and saw that they were practicable. "I've 'ad enough,"
+was his new phrase, and he added another that gave evidence of a new
+attitude. "Why not?" he said again and again. "And why not?"
+
+Stott's mind was not analytical. He did not examine his problem, weigh
+this and that and draw a balanced deduction. He merely saw a picture of
+peace and quiet, in a room at Ailesworth, in convenient proximity to his
+work (he made an admirable groundsman and umpire, his work absorbed him)
+and, perhaps, he conceived some dim ideal of pleasant evenings spent in
+the companionship of those who thought in the same terms as himself;
+who shared in his one interest; whose speech was of form, averages, the
+preparation of wickets, and all the detail of cricket.
+
+Stott's ambition to have a son and to teach him the mysteries of his
+father's success had been dwindling for some time past. On this night it
+was finally put aside. Stott's "I've 'ad enough" may be taken to include
+that frustrated ideal. No more experiments for him, was the
+pronouncement that summed up his decision.
+
+Still there were difficulties. Economically he was free, he could allow
+his wife thirty shillings a week, more than enough for her support and
+that of her child; but--what would she say, how would she take his
+determination? A determination it was, not a proposal. And the
+neighbours, what would they say? Stott anticipated a fuss. "She'll say
+I've married 'er, and it's my duty to stay by 'er," was his anticipation
+of his wife's attitude. He did not profess to understand the ways of the
+sex, but some rumours of misunderstandings between husbands and wives of
+his own class had filtered through his absorption in cricket.
+
+He stumbled home with a mind prepared for dissension.
+
+He found his wife stitching by the fire. The door at the foot of the
+stairs was closed. The room presented an aspect of cleanly, cheerful
+comfort; but Stott entered with dread, not because he feared to meet his
+wife, but because there was a terror sleeping in that house.
+
+His armchair was empty now, but he hesitated before he sat down in it.
+He took off his cap and rubbed the seat and back of the chair
+vigorously: a child of evil had polluted it, the chair might still hold
+enchantment....
+
+"I've 'ad enough," was his preface, and there was no need for any
+further explanation.
+
+Ellen Mary let her hands fall into her lap, and stared dreamily at the
+fire.
+
+"I'm sorry it's come to this, George," she said, "but it 'asn't been my
+fault no more'n it's been your'n. Of course I've seen it a-comin', and I
+knowed it _'ad_ to be, some time; but I don't think there need be any
+'ard words over it. I don't expec' you to understand 'im, no more'n I do
+myself--it isn't in nature as you should, but all said and done, there's
+no bones broke, and if we 'ave to part, there's no reason as we
+shouldn't part peaceable."
+
+That speech said nearly everything. Afterwards it was only a question of
+making arrangements, and in that there was no difficulty.
+
+Another man might have felt a little hurt, a little neglected by the
+absence of any show of feeling on his wife's part, but Stott passed it
+by. He was singularly free from all sentimentality; certain primitive,
+human emotions seem to have played no part in his character. At this
+moment he certainly had no thought that he was being carelessly treated;
+he wanted to be free from the oppression of that horror upstairs--so he
+figured it--and the way was made easy for him.
+
+He nodded approval, and made no sign of any feeling.
+
+"I shall go to-morrer," he said, and then, "I'll sleep down 'ere
+to-night." He indicated the sofa upon which he had slept for so many
+nights at Stoke, after his tragedy had been born to him.
+
+Ellen Mary had said nearly everything, but when she had made up a bed
+for her husband in the sitting-room, she paused, candle in hand, before
+she bade him good-night.
+
+"Don't wish 'im 'arm, George," she said. "'E's different from us, and we
+don't understand 'im proper, but some day----"
+
+"I don't wish 'im no 'arm," replied Stott, and shuddered. "I don't wish
+'im no 'arm," he repeated, as he kicked off the boot he had been
+unlacing.
+
+"You mayn't never see 'im again," added Ellen Mary.
+
+Stott stood upright. In his socks, he looked noticeably shorter than his
+wife. "I suppose not," he said, and gave a deep sigh of relief. "Well,
+thank Gawd for that, anyway."
+
+Ellen Mary drew her lips together. For some dim, unrealised reason, she
+wished her husband to leave the cottage with a feeling of goodwill
+towards the child, but she saw that her wish was little likely to be
+fulfilled.
+
+"Well, good-night, George," she said, after a few seconds of silence,
+and she added pathetically, as she turned at the foot of the stairs:
+"Don't wish 'im no harm."
+
+"I won't," was all the assurance she received.
+
+When she had gone, and the door was closed behind her, Stott padded
+silently to the window and looked out. A young moon was dipping into a
+bank of cloud, and against the feeble brightness he could see an
+uncertain outline of bare trees. He pulled the curtain across the
+window, and turned back to the warm cheerfulness of the room.
+
+"Shan't never see 'im again," he murmured, "thank Gawd!" He undressed
+quietly, blew out the lamp and got between the sheets of his improvised
+bed. For some minutes he stared at the leaping shadows on the ceiling.
+He was wondering why he had ever been afraid of the child. "After all,
+'e's only a blarsted freak," was the last thought in his mind before he
+fell asleep.
+
+And with that pronouncement Stott passes out of the history of the
+Hampdenshire Wonder. He was in many ways an exceptional man, and his
+name will always be associated with the splendid successes of
+Hampdenshire cricket, both before and after the accident that destroyed
+his career as a bowler. He was not spoiled by his triumphs: those two
+years of celebrity never made Stott conceited, and there are undoubtedly
+many traits in his character which call for our admiration. He is still
+in his prime, an active agent in finding talent for his county, and in
+developing that talent when found. Hampdenshire has never come into the
+field with weak bowling, and all the credit belongs to Ginger Stott.
+
+One sees that he was not able to appreciate the wonderful gifts of his
+own son, but Stott was an ignorant man, and men of intellectual
+attainment failed even as Stott failed in this respect. Ginger Stott was
+a success in his own walk of life, and that fact should command our
+admiration. It is not for us to judge whether his attainments were more
+or less noble than the attainments of his son.
+
+
+III
+
+One morning, two days after Stott had left the cottage, Ellen Mary was
+startled by the sudden entrance of her child into the sitting-room. He
+toddled in hastily from the garden, and pointed with excitement through
+the window.
+
+Ellen Mary was frightened; she had never seen her child other than
+deliberate, calm, judicial, in all his movements. In a sudden spasm of
+motherly love she bent to pick him up, to caress him.
+
+"No," said the Wonder, with something that approached disgust in his
+tone and attitude. "No," he repeated. "What's 'e want 'angin' round
+'ere? Send 'im off." He pointed again to the window.
+
+Ellen Mary looked out and saw a grinning, slobbering obscenity at the
+gate. Stott had scared the idiot away, but in some curious, inexplicable
+manner he had learned that his persecutor and enemy had gone, and he had
+returned, and had made overtures to the child that walked so sedately up
+and down the path of the little garden.
+
+Ellen Mary went out. "You be off," she said.
+
+"A-ba, a-ba-ba," bleated the idiot, and pointed at the house.
+
+"Be off, I tell you!" said Ellen Mary fiercely. But still the idiot
+babbled and pointed.
+
+Ellen Mary stooped to pick up a stick. The idiot blenched; he understood
+that movement well enough, though it was a stone he anticipated, not a
+stick; with a foolish cry he dropped his arms and slouched away down the
+lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HIS DEBT TO HENRY CHALLIS
+
+
+I
+
+Challis was out of England for more than three years after that one
+brief intrusion of his into the affairs of Mr. and Mrs. Stott. During
+the interval he was engaged upon those investigations, the results of
+which are embodied in his monograph on the primitive peoples of the
+Melanesian Archipelago. It may be remembered that he followed Dr. W. H.
+R. Rivers' and Dr. C. G. Seligmann's inquiry into the practice and
+theory of native customs. Challis developed his study more particularly
+with reference to the earlier evolution of Totemism, and he was able by
+his patient work among the Polynesians of Tikopia and Ontong Java, and
+his comparisons of those sporadic tribes with the Papuasians of Eastern
+New Guinea, to correct some of the inferences with regard to the origins
+of exogamy made by Dr. J. G. Frazer in his great work on that subject,
+published some years before. A summary of Challis's argument may be
+found in vol. li. of the _Journal of the Royal Anthropological
+Institute_.
+
+When he returned to England, Challis shut himself up at Chilborough. He
+had engaged a young Cambridge man, Gregory Lewes, as his secretary and
+librarian, and the two devoted all their time to planning, writing, and
+preparing the monograph referred to.
+
+In such circumstances it is hardly remarkable that Challis should have
+completely forgotten the existence of the curious child which had
+intrigued his interest nearly four years earlier, and it was not until
+he had been back at Challis Court for more than eight months, that the
+incursion of Percy Crashaw revived his memory of the phenomenon.
+
+The library at Challis Court occupies a suite of three rooms. The first
+and largest of the three is part of the original structure of the house.
+Its primitive use had been that of a chapel, a one-storey building
+jutting out from the west wing. This Challis had converted into a very
+practicable library with a continuous gallery running round at a height
+of seven feet from the floor, and in it he had succeeded in arranging
+some 20,000 volumes. But as his store of books grew--and at one period
+it had grown very rapidly--he had been forced to build, and so he had
+added first one and then the other of the two additional rooms which
+became necessary. Outside, the wing had the appearance of an unduly
+elongated chapel, as he had continued the original roof over his
+addition, and copied the style of the old chapel architecture. The only
+external alteration he had made had been the lowering of the sills of
+the windows.
+
+It was in the furthest of these three rooms that Challis and his
+secretary worked, and it was from here that they saw the gloomy figure
+of the Rev. Percy Crashaw coming up the drive.
+
+This was the third time he had called. His two former visits had been
+unrewarded, but that morning a letter had come from him, couched in
+careful phrases, the purport of which had been a request for an
+interview on a "matter of some moment."
+
+Challis frowned, and rose from among an ordered litter of manuscripts.
+
+"I shall have to see this man," he said to Lewes, and strode hastily out
+of the library.
+
+Crashaw was perfunctorily apologetic, and Challis, looking somewhat out
+of place, smoking a heavy wooden pipe in the disused, bleak
+drawing-room, waited, almost silent, until his visitor should come to
+the point.
+
+"... and the--er--matter of some moment, I mentioned," Crashaw mumbled
+on, "is, I should say, not altogether irrelevant to the work you are at
+present engaged upon."
+
+"Indeed!" commented Challis, with a lift of his thick eyebrows, "no
+Polynesians come to settle in Stoke, I trust?"
+
+"On broad lines, relevant on broad, anthropological lines, I mean," said
+Crashaw.
+
+Challis grunted. "Go on!" he said.
+
+"You may remember that curious--er--abnormal child of the Stotts?" asked
+Crashaw.
+
+"Stotts? Wait a minute. Yes! Curious infant with an abnormally
+intelligent expression and the head of a hydrocephalic?"
+
+Crashaw nodded. "Its development has upset me in a most unusual way," he
+continued. "I must confess that I am entirely at a loss, and I really
+believe that you are the only person who can give me any intelligent
+assistance in the matter."
+
+"Very good of you," murmured Challis.
+
+"You see," said Crashaw, warming to his subject and interlacing his
+fingers, "I happen, by the merest accident, I may say, to be the child's
+godfather."
+
+"Ah! you have responsibilities!" commented Challis, with the first glint
+of amusement in his eyes.
+
+"I have," said Crashaw, "undoubtedly I have." He leaned forward with his
+hands still clasped together, and rested his forearms on his thighs. As
+he talked he worked his hands up and down from the wrists, by way of
+emphasis. "I am aware," he went on, "that on one point I can expect
+little sympathy from you, but I make an appeal to you, nevertheless, as
+a man of science and--and a magistrate; for ... for assistance."
+
+He paused and looked up at Challis, received a nod of encouragement and
+developed his grievance.
+
+"I want to have the child certified as an idiot, and sent to an asylum."
+
+"On what grounds?"
+
+"He is undoubtedly lacking mentally," said Crashaw, "and his influence
+is, or may be, malignant."
+
+"Explain," suggested Challis.
+
+For a few seconds Crashaw paused, intent on the pattern of the carpet,
+and worked his hands slowly. Challis saw that the man's knuckles were
+white, that he was straining his hands together.
+
+"He has denied God," he said at last with great solemnity.
+
+Challis rose abruptly, and went over to the window; the next words were
+spoken to his back.
+
+"I have, myself, heard this infant of four years use the most abhorrent
+blasphemy."
+
+Challis had composed himself. "Oh! I say; that's bad," he said as he
+turned towards the room again.
+
+Crashaw's head was still bowed. "And whatever may be your own
+philosophic doubts," he said, "I think you will agree with me that in
+such a case as this, something should be done. To me it is horrible,
+most horrible."
+
+"Couldn't you give me any details?" asked Challis.
+
+"They are most repugnant to me," answered Crashaw.
+
+"Quite, quite! I understand. But if you want any assistance.... Or do
+you expect me to investigate?"
+
+"I thought it my duty, as his godfather, to see to the child's spiritual
+welfare," said Crashaw, ignoring the question put to him, "although he
+is not, now, one of my parishioners. I first went to Pym some few months
+ago, but the mother interposed between me and the child. I was not
+permitted to see him. It was not until a few weeks back that I met
+him--on the Common, alone. Of course, I recognised him at once. He is
+quite unmistakable."
+
+"And then?" prompted Challis.
+
+"I spoke to him, and he replied with, with--an abstracted air, without
+looking at me. He has not the appearance in any way of a normal child. I
+made a few ordinary remarks to him, and then I asked him if he knew his
+catechism. He replied that he did not know the word 'catechism.' I may
+mention that he speaks the dialect of the common people, but he has a
+much larger vocabulary. His mother has taught him to read, it appears."
+
+"He seems to have a curiously apt intelligence," interpolated Challis.
+
+Crashaw wrung his clasped hands and put the comment on one side. "I
+then spoke to him of some of the broad principles of the Church's
+teaching," he continued. "He listened quietly, without interruption, and
+when I stopped, he prompted me with questions."
+
+"One minute!" said Challis. "Tell me; what sort of questions? That is
+most important."
+
+"I do not remember precisely," returned Crashaw, "but one, I think, was
+as to the sources of the Bible. I did not read anything beyond simple
+and somewhat unusual curiosity into those questions, I may say.... I
+talked to him for some considerable time--I dare say for more than an
+hour...."
+
+"No signs of idiocy, apparently, during all this?"
+
+"I consider it less a case of idiocy than one of possession, maleficent
+possession," replied Crashaw. He did not see his host's grim smile.
+
+"Well, and the blasphemy?" prompted Challis.
+
+"At the end of my instruction, the child, still looking away from me,
+shook his head and said that what I had told him was not true. I confess
+that I was staggered. Possibly I lost my temper, somewhat. I may have
+grown rather warm in my speech. And at last ..." Crashaw clenched his
+hands and spoke in such a low voice that Challis could hardly hear him.
+"At last he turned to me and said things which I could not possibly
+repeat, which I pray that I may never hear again from the mouth of any
+living being."
+
+"Profanities, obscenities, er--swear-words," suggested Challis.
+
+"Blasphemy, _blasphemy_," cried Crashaw. "Oh! I wonder that I did not
+injure the child."
+
+Challis moved over to the window again. For more than a minute there was
+silence in that big, neglected-looking room. Then Crashaw's feelings
+began to find vent in words, in a long stream of insistent
+asseverations, pitched on a rising note that swelled into a diapason of
+indignation. He spoke of the position and power of his Church, of its
+influence for good among the uneducated, agricultural population among
+which he worked. He enlarged on the profound necessity for a living
+religion among the poorer classes; and on the revolutionary tendency
+towards socialism, which would be encouraged if the great restraining
+power of a creed that enforced subservience to temporal power was once
+shaken. And, at last, he brought his arguments to a head by saying that
+the example of a child of four years old, openly defying a minister of
+the Church, and repudiating the very conception of the Deity, was an
+example which might produce a profound effect upon the minds of a
+slow-thinking people; that such an example might be the leaven which
+would leaven the whole lump; and that for the welfare of the whole
+neighbourhood it was an instant necessity that the child should be put
+under restraint, his tongue bridled, and any opportunity to proclaim his
+blasphemous doctrines forcibly denied to him. Long before he had
+concluded, Crashaw was on his feet, pacing the room, declaiming, waving
+his arms.
+
+Challis stood, unanswering, by the window. He did not seem to hear; he
+did not even shrug his shoulders. Not till Crashaw had brought his
+argument to a culmination, and boomed into a dramatic silence, did
+Challis turn and look at him.
+
+"But you cannot confine a child in an asylum on those grounds," he said;
+"the law does not permit it."
+
+"The Church is above the law," replied Crashaw.
+
+"Not in these days," said Challis; "it is by law established!"
+
+Crashaw began to speak again, but Challis waved him down. "Quite, quite.
+I see your point," he said, "but I must see this child myself. Believe
+me, I will see what can be done. I will, at least, try to prevent his
+spreading his opinions among the yokels." He smiled grimly. "I quite
+agree with you that that is a consummation which is not to be desired."
+
+"You will see him soon?" asked Crashaw.
+
+"To-day," returned Challis.
+
+"And you will let me see you again, afterwards?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Crashaw still hesitated for a moment. "I might, perhaps, come with you,"
+he ventured.
+
+"On no account," said Challis.
+
+
+II
+
+Gregory Lewes was astonished at the long absence of his chief; he was
+more astonished when his chief returned.
+
+"I want you to come up with me to Pym, Lewes," said Challis; "one of my
+tenants has been confounding the rector of Stoke. It is a matter that
+must be attended to."
+
+Lewes was a fair-haired, hard-working young man, with a bent for science
+in general that had not yet crystallised into any special study. He had
+a curious sense of humour, that proved something of an obstacle in the
+way of specialisation. He did not take Challis's speech seriously.
+
+"Are you going as a magistrate?" he asked; "or is it a matter for
+scientific investigation?"
+
+"Both," said Challis. "Come along!"
+
+"Are you serious, sir?" Lewes still doubted.
+
+"Intensely. I'll explain as we go," said Challis.
+
+It is not more than a mile and a half from Challis Court to Pym. The
+nearest way is by a cart track through the beech woods, that winds up
+the hill to the Common. In winter this track is almost impassable, over
+boot-top in heavy mud; but the early spring had been fairly dry, and
+Challis chose this route.
+
+As they walked, Challis went through the early history of Victor Stott,
+so far as it was known to him. "I had forgotten the child," he said; "I
+thought it would die. You see, it is by way of being an extraordinary
+freak of nature. It has, or had, a curious look of intelligence. You
+must remember that when I saw it, it was only a few months old. But even
+then it conveyed in some inexplicable way a sense of power. Every one
+felt it. There was Harvey Walters, for instance--he vaccinated it; I
+made him confess that the child made him feel like a school-boy. Only,
+you understand, it had not spoken then----"
+
+"What conveyed that sense of power?" asked Lewes.
+
+"The way it had of looking at you, staring you out of countenance,
+sizing you up and rejecting you. It did that, I give you my word; it did
+all that at a few months old, and without the power of speech. Only, you
+see, I thought it was merely a freak of some kind, some abnormality that
+disgusted one in an unanalysed way. And I thought it would die. I
+certainly thought it would die. I am most eager to see this new
+development."
+
+"I haven't heard. It confounded Crashaw, you say? And it cannot be more
+than four or five years old now?"
+
+"Four; four and a half," returned Challis, and then the conversation was
+interrupted by the necessity of skirting a tiny morass of wet leaf-mould
+that lay in a hollow.
+
+"Confounded Crashaw? I should think so," Challis went on, when they had
+found firm going again. "The good man would not soil his devoted tongue
+by any condescension to oratio recta, but I gathered that the child had
+made light of his divine authority."
+
+"Great Cæsar!" ejaculated Lewes; "but that is immense. What did Crashaw
+do--shake him?"
+
+"No; he certainly did not lay hands on him at all. His own expression
+was that he did not know how it was he did not do the child an injury.
+That is one of the things that interest me enormously. That power I
+spoke of must have been retained. Crashaw must have been blue with
+anger; he could hardly repeat the story to me, he was so agitated. It
+would have surprised me less if he had told me he had murdered the
+child. That I could have understood, perfectly."
+
+"It is, of course, quite incomprehensible to me, as yet," commented
+Lewes.
+
+When they came out of the woods on to the stretch of common from which
+you can see the great swelling undulations of the Hampden Hills, Challis
+stopped. A spear of April sunshine had pierced the load of cloud towards
+the west, and the bank of wood behind them gave shelter from the cold
+wind that had blown fiercely all the afternoon.
+
+"It is a fine prospect," said Challis, with a sweep of his hand. "I
+sometimes feel, Lewes, that we are over-intent on our own little narrow
+interests. Here are you and I, busying ourselves in an attempt to throw
+some little light--a very little it must be--on some petty problems of
+the origin of our race. We are looking downwards, downwards always;
+digging in old muck-heaps; raking up all kinds of unsavoury rubbish to
+prove that we are born out of the dirt. And we have never a thought for
+the future in all our work,--a future that may be glorious, who knows?
+Here, perhaps in this village, insignificant from most points of view,
+but set in a country that should teach us to raise our eyes from the
+ground; here, in this tiny hamlet, is living a child who may become a
+greater than Socrates or Shakespeare, a child who may revolutionise our
+conceptions of time and space. There have been great men in the past who
+have done that, Lewes; there is no reason for us to doubt that still
+greater men may succeed them."
+
+"No; there is no reason for us to doubt that," said Lewes, and they
+walked on in silence towards the Stotts' cottage.
+
+
+III
+
+Challis knocked and walked in. They found Ellen Mary and her son at the
+tea-table.
+
+The mother rose to her feet and dropped a respectful curtsy. The boy
+glanced once at Gregory Lewes and then continued his meal as if he were
+unaware of any strange presence in the room.
+
+"I'm sorry. I am afraid we are interrupting you," Challis apologised.
+"Pray sit down, Mrs. Stott, and go on with your tea."
+
+"Thank you, sir. I'd just finished, sir," said Ellen Mary, and remained
+standing with an air of quiet deference.
+
+Challis took the celebrated armchair, and motioned Lewes to the
+window-sill, the nearest available seat for him. "Please sit down, Mrs.
+Stott," he said, and Ellen Mary sat, apologetically.
+
+The boy pushed his cup towards his mother, and pointed to the teapot; he
+made a grunting sound to attract her attention.
+
+"You'll excuse me, sir," murmured Ellen Mary, and she refilled the cup
+and passed it back to her son, who received it without any
+acknowledgment. Challis and Lewes were observing the boy intently, but
+he took not the least notice of their scrutiny. He discovered no trace
+of self-consciousness; Henry Challis and Gregory Lewes appeared to have
+no place in the world of his abstraction.
+
+The figure the child presented to his two observers was worthy of
+careful scrutiny.
+
+At the age of four and a half years, the Wonder was bald, save for a few
+straggling wisps of reddish hair above the ears and at the base of the
+skull, and a weak, sparse down, of the same colour, on the top of his
+head. The eyebrows, too, were not marked by any line of hair, but the
+eyelashes were thick, though short, and several shades darker than the
+hair on the skull.
+
+The face is not so easily described. The mouth and chin were relatively
+small, overshadowed by that broad cliff of forehead, but they were firm,
+the chin well moulded, the lips thin and compressed. The nose was
+unusual when seen in profile. There was no sign of a bony bridge, but it
+was markedly curved and jutted out at a curious angle from the line of
+the face. The nostrils were wide and open. None of these features
+produced any effect of childishness; but this effect was partly achieved
+by the contours of the cheeks, and by the fact that there was no
+indication of any lines on the face.
+
+The eyes nearly always wore their usual expression of abstraction. It
+was very rarely that the Wonder allowed his intelligence to be exhibited
+by that medium. When he did, the effect was strangely disconcerting,
+blinding. One received an impression of extraordinary concentration: it
+was as though for an instant the boy was able to give one a glimpse of
+the wonderful force of his intellect. When he looked one in the face
+with intention, and suddenly allowed one to realise, as it were, all the
+dominating power of his brain, one shrank into insignificance, one felt
+as an ignorant, intelligent man may feel when confronted with some
+elaborate theorem of the higher mathematics. "Is it possible that any
+one can really understand these things?" such a man might think with
+awe, and in the same way one apprehended some vast, inconceivable
+possibilities of mind-function when the Wonder looked at one with, as I
+have said, intention.
+
+He was dressed in a little jacket-suit, and wore a linen collar; the
+knickerbockers, loose and badly cut, fell a little below the knees. His
+stockings were of worsted, his boots clumsy and thick-soled, though
+relatively tiny. One had the impression always that his body was fragile
+and small, but as a matter of fact the body and limbs were, if anything,
+slightly better developed than those of the average child of four and a
+half years.
+
+Challis had ample opportunity to make these observations at various
+periods. He began them as he sat in the Stotts' cottage. At first he did
+not address the boy directly.
+
+"I hear your son has been having a religious controversy with Mr.
+Crashaw," was his introduction to the object of his visit.
+
+"Indeed, sir!" Plainly this was not news to Mrs. Stott.
+
+"Your son told you?" suggested Challis.
+
+"Oh! no, sir, 'e never told me," replied Mrs. Stott, "'twas Mr. Crashaw.
+'E's been 'ere several times lately."
+
+Challis looked sharply at the boy, but he gave no sign that he heard
+what was passing.
+
+"Yes; Mr. Crashaw seems rather upset about it."
+
+"I'm sorry, sir, but----"
+
+"Yes; speak plainly," prompted Challis. "I assure you that you will have
+no cause to regret any confidence you may make to me."
+
+"I can't see as it's any business of Mr. Crashaw's, sir, if you'll
+forgive me for sayin' so."
+
+"He has been worrying you?"
+
+"'E 'as, sir, but 'e ..." she glanced at her son--she laid a stress on
+the pronoun always when she spoke of him that differentiated its
+significance--"'e 'asn't seen Mr. Crashaw again, sir."
+
+Challis turned to the boy. "You are not interested in Mr. Crashaw, I
+suppose?" he asked.
+
+The boy took no notice of the question.
+
+Challis was piqued. If this extraordinary child really had an
+intelligence, surely it must be possible to appeal to that intelligence
+in some way. He made another effort, addressing Mrs. Stott.
+
+"I think we must forgive Mr. Crashaw, you know, Mrs. Stott. As I
+understand it, your boy at the age of four years and a half has
+defied--his cloth, if I may say so." He paused, and as he received no
+answer, continued: "But I hope that matter may be easily arranged."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Mrs. Stott. "It's very kind of you. I'm sure, I'm
+greatly obliged to you, sir."
+
+"That's only one reason of my visit to you, however," Challis hesitated.
+"I've been wondering whether I might not be able to help you and your
+son in some other way. I understand that he has unusual power of--of
+intelligence."
+
+"Indeed 'e 'as, sir," responded Mrs. Stott.
+
+"And he can read, can't he?"
+
+"I've learned 'im what I could, sir: it isn't much."
+
+"Well, perhaps I could lend him a few books."
+
+Challis made a significant pause, and again he looked at the boy; but as
+there was no response, he continued: "Tell me what he has read."
+
+"We've no books, sir, and we never 'ardly see a paper now. All we 'ave
+in the 'ouse is a Bible and two copies of Lillywhite's cricket annual as
+my 'usband left be'ind."
+
+Challis smiled. "Has he read those?" he asked.
+
+"The Bible 'e 'as, I believe," replied Mrs. Stott.
+
+It was a conversation curious in its impersonality. Challis was
+conscious of the anomaly that he was speaking in the boy's presence,
+crediting him with a remarkable intelligence, and yet addressing a
+frankly ignorant woman as though the boy was not in the room. Yet how
+could he break that deliberate silence? It seemed to him as though there
+must, after all, be some mistake; yet how account for Crashaw's story if
+the boy were indeed an idiot?
+
+With a slight show of temper he turned to the Wonder.
+
+"Do you want to read?" he asked. "I have between forty and fifty
+thousand books in my library. I think it possible that you might find
+one or two which would interest you."
+
+The Wonder lifted his hand as though to ask for silence. For a minute,
+perhaps, no one spoke. All waited, expectant; Challis and Lewes with
+intent eyes fixed on the detached expression of the child's face, Ellen
+Mary with bent head. It was a strange, yet very logical question that
+came at last:
+
+"What should I learn out of all them books?" asked the Wonder. He did
+not look at Challis as he spoke.
+
+
+IV
+
+Challis drew a deep breath and turned towards Lewes. "A difficult
+question, that, Lewes," he said.
+
+Lewes lifted his eyebrows and pulled at his fair moustache. "If you take
+the question literally," he muttered.
+
+"You might learn--the essential part ... of all the knowledge that has
+been ... discovered by mankind," said Challis. He phrased his sentence
+carefully, as though he were afraid of being trapped.
+
+"Should I learn what I am?" asked the Wonder.
+
+Challis understood the question in its metaphysical acceptation. He had
+the sense of a powerful but undirected intelligence working from the
+simple premisses of experience; of a cloistered mind that had functioned
+profoundly; a mind unbound by the tradition of all the speculations and
+discoveries of man, the essential conclusions of which were contained in
+that library at Challis Court.
+
+"No!" said Challis, after a perceptible interval, "that you will not
+learn from any books in my possession, but you will find grounds for
+speculation."
+
+"Grounds for speculation?" questioned the Wonder. He repeated the words
+quite clearly.
+
+"Material--matter from which you can--er--formulate theories of your
+own," explained Challis.
+
+The Wonder shook his head. It was evident that Challis's sentence
+conveyed little or no meaning to him.
+
+He got down from his chair and took up an old cricket cap of his
+father's, a cap which his mother had let out by the addition of another
+gore of cloth that did not match the original material. He pulled this
+cap carefully over his bald head, and then made for the door.
+
+At the threshold the strange child paused, and without looking at any
+one present said: "I'll coom to your library," and went out.
+
+Challis joined Lewes at the window, and they watched the boy make his
+deliberate way along the garden path and up the lane towards the fields
+beyond.
+
+"You let him go out by himself?" asked Challis.
+
+"He likes to be in the air, sir," replied Ellen Mary.
+
+"I suppose you have to let him go his own way?"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir."
+
+"I will send the governess cart up for him to-morrow morning," said
+Challis, "at ten o'clock. That is, of course, if you have no objection
+to his coming."
+
+"'E said 'e'd coom, sir," replied Ellen Mary. Her tone implied that
+there was no appeal possible against her son's statement of his wishes.
+
+
+V
+
+"His methods do not lack terseness," remarked Lewes, when he and Challis
+were out of earshot of the cottage.
+
+"His methods and manners are damnable," said Challis, "but----"
+
+"You were going to say?" prompted Lewes.
+
+"Well, what is your opinion?"
+
+"I am not convinced, as yet," said Lewes.
+
+"Oh, surely," expostulated Challis.
+
+"Not from objective, personal evidence. Let us put Crashaw out of our
+minds for the moment."
+
+"Very well; go on, state your case."
+
+"He has, so far, made four remarks in our presence," said Lewes,
+gesticulating with his walking stick. "Two of them can be neglected; his
+repetition of your words, which he did not understand, and his
+condescending promise to study your library."
+
+"Yes; I'm with you, so far."
+
+"Now, putting aside the preconception with which we entered the cottage,
+was there really anything in the other two remarks? Were they not the
+type of simple, unreasoning questions which one may often hear from the
+mouth of a child of that age? 'What shall I learn from your books?'
+Well, it is the natural question of the ignorant child, who has no
+conception of the contents of books, no experience which would furnish
+material for his imagination."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The second remark is more explicable still. It is a remark we all make
+in childhood, in some form or another. I remember quite well at the age
+of six or seven asking my mother: 'Which is me, my soul or my body?' I
+was brought up on the Church catechism. But you at once accepted these
+questions--which, I maintain, were questions possible in the mouth of a
+simple, ignorant child--in some deep, metaphysical acceptation. Don't
+you think, sir, we should wait for further evidence before we attribute
+any phenomenal intelligence to this child?"
+
+"Quite the right attitude to take, Lewes--the scientific attitude,"
+replied Challis. "Let's go by the lane," he added, as they reached the
+entrance to the wood.
+
+For some few minutes they walked in silence; Challis with his head down,
+his heavy shoulders humped. His hands were clasped behind him, dragging
+his stick as it were a tail, which he occasionally cocked. He walked
+with a little stumble now and again, his eyes on the ground. Lewes
+strode with a sure foot, his head up, and he slashed at the tangle of
+last year's growth on the bank whenever he passed some tempting butt for
+the sword-play of his stick.
+
+"Do you think, then," said Challis at last, "that much of the
+atmosphere--you must have marked the atmosphere--of the child's
+personality, was a creation of our own minds, due to our
+preconceptions?"
+
+"Yes, I think so," Lewes replied, a touch of defiance in his tone.
+
+"Isn't that what you _want_ to believe?" asked Challis.
+
+Lewes hit at a flag of dead bracken and missed. "You mean...?" he
+prevaricated.
+
+"I mean that that is a much stronger influence than any preconception,
+my dear Lewes. I'm no pragmatist, as you know; but there can be no doubt
+that with the majority of us the wish to believe a thing is true
+constitutes the truth of that thing for us. And that is, in my opinion,
+the wrong attitude for either scientist or philosopher. Now, in the case
+we are discussing, I suppose at bottom I should like to agree with you.
+One does not like to feel that a child of four and a half has greater
+intellectual powers than oneself. Candidly, I do not like it at all."
+
+"Of course not! But I can't think that----"
+
+"You can if you try; you would at once if you wished to," returned
+Challis, anticipating the completion of Lewes's sentence.
+
+"I'll admit that there are some remarkable facts in the case of this
+child," said Lewes, "but I do not see why we should, as yet, take the
+whole proposition for granted."
+
+"No! I am with you there," returned Challis. And no more was said until
+they were nearly home.
+
+Just before they turned into the drive, however, Challis stopped. "Do
+you know, Lewes," he said, "I am not sure that I am doing a wise thing
+in bringing that child here!"
+
+Lewes did not understand. "No, sir? Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Why, think of the possibilities of that child, if he has all the powers
+I credit him with," said Challis. "Think of his possibilities for
+original thought if he is kept away from all the traditions of this
+futile learning." He waved an arm in the direction of the elongated
+chapel.
+
+"Oh! but surely," remonstrated Lewes, "that is a necessary groundwork.
+Knowledge is built up step by step."
+
+"Is it? I wonder. I sometimes doubt," said Challis. "Yes, I sometimes
+doubt whether we have ever learned anything at all that is worth
+knowing. And, perhaps, this child, if he were kept away from books....
+However, the thing is done now, and in any case he would never have been
+able to dodge the School attendance officer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HIS FIRST VISIT TO CHALLIS COURT
+
+
+I
+
+"Shall you be able to help me in collating your notes of the Tikopia
+observations to-day, sir?" Lewes asked next morning. He rose from the
+breakfast-table and lit a cigarette. There was no ceremony between
+Challis and his secretary.
+
+"You forget our engagement for ten o'clock," said Challis.
+
+"Need that distract us?"
+
+"It need not, but doesn't it seem to you that it may furnish us with
+valuable material?"
+
+"Hardly pertinent, sir, is it?"
+
+"What line do you think of taking up, Lewes?" asked Challis with
+apparent irrelevance.
+
+"With regard to this--this phenomenon?"
+
+"No, no. I was speaking of your own ambitions." Challis had sauntered
+over to the window; he stood, with his back to Lewes, looking out at the
+blue and white of the April sky.
+
+Lewes frowned. He did not understand the gist of the question. "I
+suppose there is a year's work on this book before me yet," he said.
+
+"Quite, quite," replied Challis, watching a cloud shadow swarm up the
+slope of Deane Hill. "Yes, certainly a year's work. I was thinking of
+the future."
+
+"I have thought of laboratory work in connection with psychology," said
+Lewes, still puzzled.
+
+"I thought I remembered your saying something of the kind," murmured
+Challis absently. "We are going to have more rain. It will be a late
+spring this year."
+
+"Had the question any bearing on our engagement of this morning?" Lewes
+was a little anxious, uncertain whether this inquiry as to his future
+had not some particular significance; a hint, perhaps, that his services
+would not be required much longer.
+
+"Yes; I think it had," said Challis. "I saw the governess cart go up the
+road a few minutes since."
+
+"I suppose the boy will be here in a quarter of an hour?" said Lewes by
+way of keeping up the conversation. He was puzzled; he did not know
+Challis in this mood. He did not conceive it possible that Challis could
+be nervous about the arrival of so insignificant a person as this Stott
+child.
+
+"It's all very ridiculous," broke out Challis suddenly; and he turned
+away from the window, and joined Lewes by the fire. "Don't you think
+so?"
+
+"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
+
+Challis laughed. "I'm not surprised," he said; "I was a trifle
+inconsecutive. But I wish you were more interested in this child, Lewes.
+The thought of him engrosses me, and yet I don't want to meet him. I
+should be relieved to hear that he wasn't coming. Surely you, as a
+student of psychology ..." he broke off with a lift of his heavy
+shoulders.
+
+"Oh! Yes! I _am_ interested, certainly, as you say, as a student of
+psychology. We ought to take some measurements. The configuration of the
+skull is not abnormal otherwise than in its relation to the development
+of the rest of his body, but ..." Lewes meandered off into somewhat
+abstruse speculation with regard to the significance of craniology.
+
+Challis nodded his head and murmured: "Quite, quite," occasionally. He
+seemed glad that Lewes should continue to talk.
+
+The lecture was interrupted by the appearance of the governess cart.
+
+"By Jove, he _has_ come," ejaculated Challis in the middle of one of
+Lewes's periods. "You'll have to see me through this, my boy. I'm damned
+if I know how to take the child."
+
+Lewes flushed, annoyed at the interruption of his lecture. He had
+believed that he had been interesting. "Curse the kid," was the thought
+in his mind as he followed Challis to the window.
+
+
+II
+
+Jessop, the groom deputed to fetch the Wonder from Pym, looked a little
+uneasy, perhaps a little scared. When he drew up at the porch, the child
+pointed to the door of the cart and indicated that it was to be opened
+for him. He was evidently used to being waited upon. When this command
+had been obeyed, he descended deliberately and then pointed to the front
+door.
+
+"Open!" he said clearly, as Jessop hesitated. The Wonder knew nothing of
+bells or ceremony.
+
+Jessop came down from the cart and rang.
+
+The butler opened the door. He was an old servant and accustomed to his
+master's eccentricities, but he was not prepared for the vision of that
+strange little figure, with a large head in a parti-coloured
+cricket-cap, an apparition that immediately walked straight by him into
+the hall, and pointed to the first door he came to.
+
+"Oh, dear! Well, to be sure," gasped Heathcote. "Why, whatever----"
+
+"Open!" commanded the Wonder, and Heathcote obeyed, weak-kneed.
+
+The door chanced to be the right one, the door of the breakfast-room,
+and the Wonder walked in, still wearing his cap.
+
+Challis came forward to meet him with a conventional greeting. "I'm
+glad you were able to come ..." he began, but the child took no notice;
+he looked rapidly round the room, and not finding what he wanted,
+signified his desire by a single word.
+
+"Books," he said, and looked at Challis.
+
+Heathcote stood at the door, hesitating between amazement and
+disapproval. "I've never seen the like," was how he phrased his
+astonishment later, in the servants' hall, "never in all my born days.
+To see that melon-'eaded himp in a cricket-cap hordering the master
+about. Well, there----"
+
+"Jessop says he fair got the creeps drivin' 'im over," said the cook.
+"'E says the child's not right in 'is 'ead."
+
+Much embroidery followed in the servants' hall.
+
+
+
+
+INTERLUDE
+
+
+This brief history of the Hampdenshire Wonder is marked by a stereotyped
+division into three parts, an arbitrary arrangement dependent on the
+experience of the writer. The true division becomes manifest at this
+point. The life of Victor Stott was cut into two distinct sections,
+between which there is no correlation. The first part should tell the
+story of his mind during the life of experience, the time occupied in
+observation of the phenomena of life presented to him in fact, without
+any specific teaching on the theories of existence and progress, or on
+the speculation as to ultimate destiny. The second part should deal with
+his entry into the world of books; into that account of a long series of
+collated experiments and partly verified hypotheses we call science;
+into the imperfectly developed system of inductive and deductive logic
+which determines mathematics and philosophy; into the long, inaccurate
+and largely unverifiable account of human blindness and error known as
+history; and into the realm of idealism, symbol, and pitiful pride we
+find in the story of poetry, letters, and religion.
+
+I will confess that I once contemplated the writing of such a history.
+It was Challis who, in his courtly, gentle way, pointed out to me that
+no man living had the intellectual capacity to undertake so profound a
+work.
+
+For some three months before I had this conversation with Challis, I had
+been wrapped in solitude, dreaming, speculating. I had been uplifted in
+thought, I had come to believe myself inspired as a result of my
+separation from the world of men, and of the deep introspection and
+meditation in which I had been plunged. I had arrived at a point,
+perhaps not far removed from madness, at which I thought myself capable
+of setting out the true history of Victor Stott.
+
+Challis broke the spell. He cleared away the false glamour which was
+blinding and intoxicating me and brought me back to a condition of
+open-eyed sanity. To Challis I owe a great debt.
+
+Yet at the moment I was sunk in depression. All the glory of my vision
+had faded; the afterglow was quenched in the blackness of a night that
+drew out of the east and fell from the zenith as a curtain of utter
+darkness.
+
+Again Challis came to my rescue. He brought me a great sheaf of notes.
+
+"Look here," he said, "if you can't write a true history of that strange
+child, I see no reason why you should not write his story as it is
+known to you, as it impinges on your own life. After all, you, in many
+ways, know more of him than any one. You came nearest to receiving his
+confidence."
+
+"But only during the last few months," I said.
+
+"Does that matter?" said Challis with an upheaval of his
+shoulders--"shrug" is far too insignificant a word for that mountainous
+humping. "Is any biography founded on better material than you have at
+command?"
+
+He unfolded his bundle of notes. "See here," he said, "here is some
+magnificent material for you--first-hand observations made at the time.
+Can't you construct a story from that?"
+
+Even then I began to cast my story in a slightly biographical form. I
+wrote half a dozen chapters, and read them to Challis.
+
+"Magnificent, my dear fellow," was his comment, "magnificent; but no one
+will believe it."
+
+I had been carried away by my own prose, and with the natural vanity of
+the author, I resented intensely his criticism.
+
+For some weeks I did not see Challis again, and I persisted in my futile
+endeavour, but always as I wrote that killing suggestion insinuated
+itself: "No one will believe you." At times I felt as a man may feel who
+has spent many years in a lunatic asylum; and after his release is for
+ever engaged in a struggle to allay the doubts of a leering suspicion.
+
+I gave up the hopeless task at last, and sought out Challis again.
+
+"Write it as a story," he suggested, "and give up the attempt to carry
+conviction."
+
+And in that spirit, adopting the form of a story, I did begin, and in
+that form I hope to finish.
+
+But here as I reach the great division, the determining factor of Victor
+Stott's life, I am constrained to pause and apologise. I have become
+uncomfortably conscious of my own limitations, and the feeble, ephemeral
+methods I am using. I am trifling with a wonderful story, embroidering
+my facts with the tawdry detail of my own imagining.
+
+I saw--I see--no other way.
+
+This is, indeed, a preface, yet I prefer to put it in this place, since
+it was at this time I wrote it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the Common a faint green is coming again like a mist among the
+ash-trees, while the oak is still dead and bare. Last year the oak came
+first.
+
+They say we shall have a wet summer.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO (_Continued_)
+
+THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO (_Continued_)
+
+THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+HIS PASSAGE THROUGH THE PRISON OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+
+I
+
+Challis led the way to the library; Lewes, petulant and mutinous, hung
+in the rear.
+
+The Wonder toddled forward, unabashed, to enter his new world. On the
+threshold, however, he paused. His comprehensive stare took in a
+sweeping picture of enclosing walls of books, and beyond was a vista of
+further rooms, of more walls all lined from floor to ceiling with
+records of human discovery, endeavour, doubt, and hope.
+
+The Wonder stayed and stared. Then he took two faltering steps into the
+room and stopped again, and, finally, he looked up at Challis with doubt
+and question; his gaze no longer quelling and authoritative, but
+hesitating, compliant, perhaps a little child-like.
+
+"'Ave you read all these?" he asked.
+
+It was a curious picture. The tall figure of Challis, stooping, as
+always, slightly forward; Challis, with his seaman's eyes and scholar's
+head, his hands loosely clasped together behind his back, paying such
+scrupulous attention to that grotesque representative of a higher
+intellectuality, clothed in the dress of a villager, a patched
+cricket-cap drawn down over his globular skull, his little arms hanging
+loosely at his sides; who, nevertheless, even in this new, strange
+aspect of unwonted humility bore on his face the promise of some
+ultimate development which differentiated him from all other humanity,
+as the face of humanity is differentiated from the face of its
+prognathous ancestor.
+
+The scene is set in a world of books, and in the background lingers the
+athletic figure and fair head of Lewes, the young Cambridge
+undergraduate, the disciple of science, hardly yet across the threshold
+which divides him from the knowledge of his own ignorance.
+
+"'Ave you read all these?" asked the Wonder.
+
+"A greater part of them--in effect," replied Challis. "There is much
+repetition, you understand, and much record of experiment which becomes,
+in a sense, worthless when the conclusions are either finally accepted
+or rejected."
+
+The eyes of the Wonder shifted and their expression became abstracted;
+he seemed to lose consciousness of the outer world; he wore the look
+which you may see in the eyes of Jakob Schlesinger's portrait of the
+mature Hegel, a look of profound introspection and analysis.
+
+There was an interval of silence, and then the Wonder unknowingly gave
+expression to a quotation from Hamlet. "Words," he whispered
+reflectively, and then again "words."
+
+
+II
+
+Challis understood him. "You have not yet learned the meaning of words?"
+he asked.
+
+The brief period--the only one recorded--of amazement and submission was
+over. It may be that he had doubted during those few minutes of time
+whether he was well advised to enter into that world of books, whether
+he would not by so doing stunt his own mental growth. It may be that the
+decision of so momentous a question should have been postponed for a
+year--two years; to a time when his mind should have had further
+possibilities for unlettered expansion. However that may be, he decided
+now and finally. He walked to the table and climbed up on a chair.
+
+"Books about words," he commanded, and pointed at Challis and Lewes.
+
+They brought him the latest production of the twentieth century in many
+volumes, the work of a dozen eminent authorities on the etymology of the
+English language, and they seated him on eight volumes of the
+_Encyclopædia Britannica_ (India paper edition) in order that he might
+reach the level of the table.
+
+At first they tried to show him how his wonderful dictionary should be
+used, but he pushed them on one side, neither then nor at any future
+time would he consent to be taught--the process was too tedious for him,
+his mind worked more fluently, rapidly, and comprehensively than the
+mind of the most gifted teacher that could have been found for him.
+
+So Challis and Lewes stood on one side and watched him, and he was no
+more embarrassed by their presence than if they had been in another
+world, as, possibly, they were.
+
+He began with volume one, and he read the title page and the
+introduction, the list of abbreviations, and all the preliminary matter
+in due order.
+
+Challis noted that when the Wonder began to read, he read no faster than
+the average educated man, but that he acquired facility at a most
+astounding rate, and that when he had been reading for a few days his
+eye swept down the column, as it were at a single glance.
+
+Challis and Lewes watched him for, perhaps, half an hour, and then,
+seeing that their presence was of an entirely negligible value to the
+Wonder, they left him and went into the farther room.
+
+"Well?" asked Challis, "what do you make of him?"
+
+"Is he reading or pretending to read?" parried Lewes. "Do you think it
+possible that he could read so fast? Moreover, remember that he has
+admitted that he knows few words of the English language, yet he does
+not refer from volume to volume; he does not look up the meanings of the
+many unknown words which must occur even in the introduction."
+
+"I know. I had noticed that."
+
+"Then you think he _is_ humbugging--pretending to read?"
+
+"No; that solution seems to me altogether unlikely. He could not, for
+one thing, simulate that look of attention. Remember, Lewes, the child
+is not yet five years old."
+
+"What is your explanation, then?"
+
+"I am wondering whether the child has not a memory beside which the
+memory of a Macaulay would appear insignificant."
+
+Lewes did not grasp Challis's intention. "Even so ..." he began.
+
+"And," continued Challis, "I am wondering whether, if that is the case,
+he is, in effect, prepared to learn the whole dictionary by heart, and,
+so to speak, collate its contents later, in his mind."
+
+"Oh! Sir!" Lewes smiled. The supposition was too outrageous to be taken
+seriously. "Surely, you can't mean that." There was something in Lewes's
+tone which carried a hint of contempt for so far-fetched a hypothesis.
+
+Challis was pacing up and down the library, his hands clasped behind
+him. "Yes, I mean it," he said, without looking up. "I put it forward as
+a serious theory, worthy of full consideration."
+
+Lewes sneered. "Oh, surely not, sir," he said.
+
+Challis stopped and faced him. "Why not, Lewes; why not?" he asked, with
+a kindly smile. "Think of the gap which separates your intellectual
+powers from those of a Polynesian savage. Why, after all, should it be
+impossible that this child's powers should equally transcend our own? A
+freak, if you will, an abnormality, a curious effect of nature's, like
+the giant puff-ball--but still----"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir, I grant you the thing is not impossible from a
+theoretical point of view," argued Lewes, "but I think you are
+theorising on altogether insufficient evidence. I am willing to admit
+that such a freak is theoretically possible, but I have not yet found
+the indications of such a power in the child."
+
+Challis resumed his pacing. "Quite, quite," he assented; "your method
+is perfectly correct--perfectly correct. We must wait."
+
+At twelve o'clock Challis brought a glass of milk and some biscuits, and
+set them beside the Wonder--he was apparently making excellent progress
+with the letter "A."
+
+"Well, how are you getting on?" asked Challis.
+
+The Wonder took not the least notice of the question, but he stretched
+out a little hand and took a biscuit and ate it, without looking up from
+his reading.
+
+"I wish he'd answer questions," Challis remarked to Lewes, later.
+
+"I should prescribe a sound shaking," returned Lewes.
+
+Challis smiled. "Well, see here, Lewes," he said, "I'll take the
+responsibility; you go and experiment; go and shake him."
+
+Lewes looked through the folding doors at the picture of the Wonder,
+intent on his study of the great dictionary. "Since you've franked me,"
+he said, "I'll do it--but not now. I'll wait till he gives me some
+occasion."
+
+"Good," replied Challis, "my offer holds ... and, by the way, I have no
+doubt that an occasion will present itself. Doesn't it strike you as
+likely, Lewes, that we shall see a good deal of the child here?"
+
+They stood for some minutes, watching the picture of that intent
+student, framed in the written thoughts of his predecessors.
+
+
+III
+
+The Wonder ignored an invitation to lunch; he ignored, also, the tray
+that was sent in to him. He read on steadily till a quarter to six, by
+which time he was at the end of "B," and then he climbed down from his
+Encyclopædia, and made for the door. Challis, working in the farther
+room, saw him and came out to open the door.
+
+"Are you going now?" he asked.
+
+The child nodded.
+
+"I will order the cart for you, if you will wait ten minutes," said
+Challis.
+
+The child shook his head. "It's very necessary to have air," he said.
+
+Something in the tone and pronunciation struck Challis, and awoke a long
+dormant memory. The sentence spoken, suddenly conjured up a vision of
+the Stotts' cottage at Stoke, of the Stotts at tea, of a cradle in the
+shadow, and of himself, sitting in an uncomfortable armchair and
+swinging his stick between his knees. When the child had gone--walking
+deliberately, and evidently regarding the mile-and-a-half walk through
+the twilight wood and over the deserted Common as a trivial incident in
+the day's business--Challis set himself to analyse that curious
+association.
+
+As he strolled back across the hall to the library, he tried to
+reconstruct the scene of the cottage at Stoke, and to recall the outline
+of the conversation he had had with the Stotts.
+
+"Lewes!" he said, when he reached the room in which his secretary was
+working. "Lewes, this is curious," and he described the associations
+called up by the child's speech. "The curious thing is," he continued,
+"that I had gone to advise Mrs. Stott to take a cottage at Pym, because
+the Stoke villagers were hostile, in some way, and she did not care to
+take the child out in the street. It is more than probable that I used
+just those words, 'It is very necessary to have air,' very probable.
+Now, what about my memory theory? The child was only six months old at
+that time."
+
+Lewes appeared unconvinced. "There is nothing very unusual in the
+sentence," he said.
+
+"Forgive me," replied Challis, "I don't agree with you. It is not
+phrased as a villager would phrase it, and, as I tell you, it was not
+spoken with the local accent."
+
+"You may have spoken the sentence to-day," suggested Lewes.
+
+"I may, of course, though I don't remember saying anything of the sort,
+but that would not account for the curiously vivid association which was
+conjured up."
+
+Lewes pursed his lips. "No, no, no," he said. "But that is hardly ground
+for argument, is it?"
+
+"I suppose not," returned Challis thoughtfully; "but when you take up
+psychology, Lewes, I should much like you to specialise on a careful
+inquiry into association in connection with memory. I feel certain that
+if one can reproduce, as nearly as may be, any complex sensation one has
+experienced, no matter how long ago, one will stimulate what I may call
+an abnormal memory of all the associations connected with that
+experience. Just now I saw the interior of that room in the Stotts'
+cottage so clearly that I had an image of a dreadful oleograph of
+Disraeli hanging on the wall. But, now, I cannot for the life of me
+remember whether there was such an oleograph or not. I do not remember
+noticing it at the time."
+
+"Yes, that's very interesting," replied Lewes. "There is certainly a
+wide field for research in that direction."
+
+"You might throw much light on our mental processes," replied Challis.
+
+(It was as the outcome of this conversation that Gregory Lewes did, two
+years afterwards, take up this line of study. The only result up to the
+present time is his little brochure _Reflexive Associations_, which has
+added little to our knowledge of the subject.)
+
+
+IV
+
+Challis's anticipation that he and Lewes would be greatly favoured by
+the Wonder's company was fully realised.
+
+The child put in an appearance at half-past nine the next morning, just
+as the governess cart was starting out to fetch him. When he was
+admitted he went straight to the library, climbed on to the chair, upon
+which the volumes of the Encyclopædia still remained, and continued his
+reading where he had left off on the previous evening.
+
+He read steadily throughout the day without giving utterance to speech
+of any kind.
+
+Challis and Lewes went out in the afternoon, and left the child deep in
+study. They came in at six o'clock, and went to the library. The Wonder,
+however, was not there.
+
+Challis rang the bell.
+
+"Has little Stott gone?" he asked when Heathcote came.
+
+"I 'aven't seen 'im, sir," said Heathcote.
+
+"Just find out if any one opened the door for him, will you?" said
+Challis. "He couldn't possibly have opened that door for himself."
+
+"No one 'asn't let Master Stott hout, sir," Heathcote reported on his
+return.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Quite sure, sir. I've made full hinquiries," said Heathcote with
+dignity.
+
+"Well, we'd better find him," said Challis.
+
+"The window is open," suggested Lewes.
+
+"He would hardly ..." began Challis, walking over to the low sill of the
+open window, but he broke off in his sentence and continued, "By Jove,
+he did, though; look here!"
+
+It was, indeed, quite obvious that the Wonder had made his exit by the
+window; the tiny prints of his feet were clearly marked in the mould of
+the flower-bed; he had, moreover, disregarded all results of early
+spring floriculture.
+
+"See how he has smashed those daffodils," said Lewes. "What an
+infernally cheeky little brute he is!"
+
+"What interests me is the logic of the child," returned Challis. "I
+would venture to guess that he wasted no time in trying to attract
+attention. The door was closed, so he just got out of the window. I
+rather admire the spirit; there is something Napoleonic about him. Don't
+you think so?"
+
+Lewes shrugged his shoulders. Heathcote's expression was quite
+non-committal.
+
+"You'd better send Jessop up to Pym, Heathcote," said Challis. "Let him
+find out whether the child is safe at home."
+
+Jessop reported an hour afterwards that Master Stott had arrived home
+quite safely, and Mrs. Stott was much obliged.
+
+
+V
+
+Altogether the Wonder spent five days, or about forty hours, on his
+study of the dictionary, and in the evening of his last day's work he
+left again by the open window. Challis, however, had been keeping him
+under fairly close observation, and knew that the preliminary task was
+finished.
+
+"What can I give that child to read to-day?" he asked at breakfast next
+morning.
+
+"I should reverse the arrangement; let him sit on the Dictionary and
+read the Encyclopædia." Lewes always approached the subject of the
+Wonder with a certain supercilious contempt.
+
+"You are not convinced yet that he isn't humbugging?"
+
+"No! Frankly, I'm not."
+
+"Well, well, we must wait for more evidence, before we argue about it,"
+said Challis, but they sat on over the breakfast-table, waiting for the
+child to put in an appearance, and their conversation hovered over the
+topic of his intelligence.
+
+"Half-past ten?" Challis ejaculated at last, with surprise. "We are
+getting into slack habits, Lewes." He rose and rang the bell.
+
+"Apparently the Stott infant has had enough of it," suggested Lewes.
+"Perhaps he has exhausted the interest of dictionary illustrations."
+
+"We shall see," replied Challis, and then to a deferentially appearing
+Heathcote he said: "Has Master Stott come this morning?"
+
+"No, sir. Leastways, no one 'asn't let 'im in, sir."
+
+"It may be that he is mentally collating the results of the past two
+days' reading," said Challis, as he and Lewes made their way to the
+library.
+
+"Oh!" was all Lewes's reply, but it conveyed much of impatient contempt
+for his employer's attitude.
+
+Challis only smiled.
+
+When they entered the library they found the Wonder hard at work, and he
+had, of his own initiative, adopted the plan ironically suggested by
+Lewes, for he had succeeded in transferring the Dictionary volumes to
+the chair, and he was deep in volume one, of the eleventh edition of the
+_Encyclopædia Britannica_.
+
+The library was never cleared up by any one except Challis or his
+deputy, but an early housemaid had been sent to dust, and she had left
+the casement of one of the lower lights of the window open. The means
+of the Wonder's entrance was thus clearly in evidence.
+
+"It's Napoleonic," murmured Challis.
+
+"It's most infernal cheek," returned Lewes in a loud voice, "I should
+not be at all surprised if that promised shaking were not administered
+to-day."
+
+The Wonder took no notice. Challis says that on that morning his eyes
+were travelling down the page at about the rate at which one could count
+the lines.
+
+"He isn't reading," said Lewes. "No one could read as fast as that, and
+most certainly not a child of four and a half."
+
+"If he would only answer questions ..." hesitated Challis.
+
+"Oh! of course he won't do that," said Lewes. "He's clever enough not to
+give himself away."
+
+The two men went over to the table and looked down over the child's
+shoulder. He was in the middle of the article on "Aberration"--a
+technical treatise on optical physics.
+
+Lewes made a gesture. "Now do you believe he's humbugging?" he asked
+confidently, and made no effort to modulate his voice.
+
+Challis drew his eyebrows together. "My boy," he said, and laid his hand
+lightly on Victor Stott's shoulder, "can you understand what you are
+reading there?"
+
+But no answer was vouchsafed. Challis sighed. "Come along, Lewes," he
+said; "we must waste no more time."
+
+Lewes wore a look of smug triumph as they went to the farther room, but
+he was clever enough to refrain from expressing his triumph in speech.
+
+
+VI
+
+Challis gave directions that the window which the Wonder had found to be
+his most convenient method of entry and exit should be kept open, except
+at night; and a stool was placed under the sill inside the room, and a
+low bench was fixed outside to facilitate the child's goings and
+comings. Also, a little path was made across the flower-bed.
+
+The Wonder gave no trouble. He arrived at nine o'clock every morning,
+Sunday included, and left at a quarter to six in the evening. On wet
+days he was provided with a waterproof which had evidently been made by
+his mother out of a larger garment. This he took off when he entered the
+room and left on the stool under the window.
+
+He was given a glass of milk and a plate of bread-and-butter at twelve
+o'clock; and except for this he demanded and received no attention.
+
+For three weeks he devoted himself exclusively to the study of the
+Encyclopædia.
+
+Lewes was puzzled.
+
+Challis spoke little of the child during these three weeks, but he often
+stood at the entrance to the farther rooms and watched the Wonder's eyes
+travelling so rapidly yet so intently down the page. That sight had a
+curious fascination for him; he returned to his own work by an effort,
+and an hour afterwards he would be back again at the door of the larger
+room. Sometimes Lewes would hear him mutter: "If he would only answer a
+few questions...." There was always one hope in Challis's mind. He hoped
+that some sort of climax might be reached when the Encyclopædia was
+finished. The child must, at least, ask then for another book. Even if
+he chose one for himself, his choice might furnish some sort of a test.
+
+So Challis waited and said little; and Lewes was puzzled, because he was
+beginning to doubt whether it were possible that the child could sustain
+a pose so long. That, in itself, would be evidence of extraordinary
+abnormality. Lewes fumbled in his mind for another hypothesis.
+
+This reading craze may be symptomatic of some form of idiocy, he
+thought; "and I don't believe he does read," was his illogical
+deduction.
+
+Mrs. Stott usually came to meet her son, and sometimes she would come
+early in the afternoon and stand at the window watching him at his work;
+but neither Challis nor Lewes ever saw the Wonder display by any sign
+that he was aware of his mother's presence.
+
+During those three weeks the Wonder held himself completely detached
+from any intercourse with the world of men. At the end of that period he
+once more manifested his awareness of the human factor in existence.
+
+Challis, if he spoke little to Lewes of the Wonder during this time,
+maintained a strict observation of the child's doings.
+
+The Wonder began his last volume of the Encyclopædia one Wednesday
+afternoon soon after lunch, and on Thursday morning, Challis was
+continually in and out of the room watching the child's progress, and
+noting his nearness to the end of the colossal task he had undertaken.
+
+At a quarter to twelve he took up his old position in the doorway, and
+with his hands clasped behind his back he watched the reading of the
+last forty pages.
+
+There was no slackening and no quickening in the Wonder's rate of
+progress. He read the articles under "Z" with the same attention he had
+given to the remainder of the work, and then, arrived at the last page,
+he closed the volume and took up the Index.
+
+Challis suffered a qualm; not so much on account of the possible
+postponement of the crisis he was awaiting, as because he saw that the
+reading of the Index could only be taken as a sign that the whole study
+had been unintelligent. No one could conceivably have any purpose in
+reading through an index.
+
+And at this moment Lewes joined him in the doorway.
+
+"What volume has he got to now?" asked Lewes.
+
+"The Index," returned Challis.
+
+Lewes was no less quick in drawing his inference than Challis had been.
+
+"Well, that settles it, I should think," was Lewes's comment.
+
+"Wait, wait," returned Challis.
+
+The Wonder turned a dozen pages at once, glanced at the new opening,
+made a further brief examination of two or three headings near the end
+of the volume, closed the book, and looked up.
+
+"Have you finished?" asked Challis.
+
+The Wonder shook his head. "All this," he said--he indicated with a
+small and dirty hand the pile of volumes that were massed round
+him--"all this ..." he repeated, hesitated for a word, and again shook
+his head with that solemn, deliberate impressiveness which marked all
+his actions.
+
+Challis came towards the child, leaned over the table for a moment, and
+then sat down opposite to him. Between the two protagonists hovered
+Lewes, sceptical, inclined towards aggression.
+
+"I am most interested," said Challis. "Will you try to tell me, my boy,
+what you think of--all this?"
+
+"So elementary ... inchoate ... a disjunctive ... patchwork," replied
+the Wonder. His abstracted eyes were blind to the objective world of our
+reality; he seemed to be profoundly analysing the very elements of
+thought.
+
+
+VII
+
+Then that almost voiceless child found words. Heathcote's announcement
+of lunch was waved aside, the long afternoon waned, and still that thin
+trickle of sound flowed on.
+
+The Wonder spoke in odd, pedantic phrases; he used the technicalities of
+every science; he constructed his sentences in unusual ways, and often
+he paused for a word and gave up the search, admitting that his meaning
+could not be expressed through the medium of any language known to him.
+
+Occasionally Challis would interrupt him fiercely, would even rise from
+his chair and pace the room, arguing, stating a point of view, combating
+some suggestion that underlay the trend of that pitiless wisdom which in
+the end bore him down with its unanswerable insistence.
+
+During those long hours much was stated by that small, thin voice which
+was utterly beyond the comprehension of the two listeners; indeed, it is
+doubtful whether even Challis understood a tithe of the theory that was
+actually expressed in words.
+
+As for Lewes, though he was at the time non-plussed, quelled, he was in
+the outcome impressed rather by the marvellous powers of memory
+exhibited than by the far finer powers shown in the superhuman logic of
+the synthesis.
+
+One sees that Lewes entered upon the interview with a mind predisposed
+to criticise, to destroy. There can be no doubt that as he listened his
+uninformed mind was endeavouring to analyse, to weigh, and to oppose;
+and this antagonism and his own thoughts continually interposed between
+him and the thought of the speaker. Lewes's account of what was spoken
+on that afternoon is utterly worthless.
+
+Challis's failure to comprehend was not, at the outset, due to his
+antagonistic attitude. He began with an earnest wish to understand: he
+failed only because the thing spoken was beyond the scope of his
+intellectual powers. But he did, nevertheless, understand the trend of
+that analysis of progress; he did in some half-realised way apprehend
+the gist of that terrible deduction of a final adjustment.
+
+He must have apprehended, in part, for he fiercely combated the
+argument, only to quaver, at last, into a silence which permitted again
+that trickle of hesitating, pedantic speech, which was yet so
+overwhelming, so conclusive.
+
+As the afternoon wore on, however, Challis's attitude must have changed;
+he must have assumed an armour of mental resistance not unlike the
+resistance of Lewes. Challis perceived, however dimly, that life would
+hold no further pleasure for him if he accepted that theory of origin,
+evolution, and final adjustment; he found in this cosmogony no place for
+his own idealism; and he feared to be convinced even by that fraction of
+the whole argument which he could understand.
+
+We see that Challis, with all his apparent devotion to science, was
+never more than a dilettante. He had another stake in the world which,
+at the last analysis, he valued more highly than the acquisition of
+knowledge. Those means of ease, of comfort, of liberty, of opportunity
+to choose his work among various interests, were the ruling influence of
+his life. With it all Challis was an idealist, and unpractical. His
+genial charity, his refinement of mind, his unthinking generosity,
+indicate the bias of a character which inclined always towards a
+picturesque optimism. It is not difficult to understand that he dared
+not allow himself to be convinced by Victor Stott's appalling
+synthesis.
+
+At last, when the twilight was deepening into night, the voice ceased,
+the child's story had been told, and it had not been understood. The
+Wonder never again spoke of his theory of life. He realised from that
+time that no one could comprehend him.
+
+As he rose to go, he asked one question that, simple as was its
+expression, had a deep and wonderful significance.
+
+"Is there none of my kind?" he said. "Is this," and he laid a hand on
+the pile of books before him, "is this all?"
+
+"There is none of your kind," replied Challis; and the little figure
+born into a world that could not understand him, that was not ready to
+receive him, walked to the window and climbed out into the darkness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+(Henry Challis is the only man who could ever have given any account of
+that extraordinary analysis of life, and he made no effort to recall the
+fundamental basis of the argument, and so allowed his memory of the
+essential part to fade. Moreover, he had a marked disinclination to
+speak of that afternoon or of anything that was said by Victor Stott
+during those six momentous hours of expression. It is evident that
+Challis's attitude to Victor Stott was not unlike the attitude of
+Captain Wallis to Victor Stott's father on the occasion of
+Hampdenshire's historic match with Surrey. "This man will have to be
+barred," Wallis said. "It means the end of cricket." Challis, in effect,
+thought that if Victor Stott were encouraged, it would mean the end of
+research, philosophy, all the mystery, idealism, and joy of life. Once,
+and once only, did Challis give me any idea of what he had learned
+during that afternoon's colloquy, and the substance of what Challis then
+told me will be found at the end of this volume.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HIS PASTORS AND MASTERS
+
+
+I
+
+For many months after that long afternoon in the library, Challis was
+affected with a fever of restlessness, and his work on the book stood
+still. He was in Rome during May, and in June he was seized by a sudden
+whim and went to China by the Trans-Siberian railway. Lewes did not
+accompany him. Challis preferred, one imagines, to have no intercourse
+with Lewes while the memory of certain pronouncements was still fresh.
+He might have been tempted to discuss that interview, and if, as was
+practically certain, Lewes attempted to pour contempt on the whole
+affair, Challis might have been drawn into a defence which would have
+revived many memories he wished to obliterate.
+
+He came back to London in September--he made the return journey by
+steamer--and found his secretary still working at the monograph on the
+primitive peoples of Melanesia.
+
+Lewes had spent the whole summer in Challis's town house in Eaton
+Square, whither all the material had been removed two days after that
+momentous afternoon in the library of Challis Court.
+
+"I have been wanting your help badly for some time, sir," Lewes said on
+the evening of Challis's return. "Are you proposing to take up the work
+again? If not ..." Gregory Lewes thought he was wasting valuable time.
+
+"Yes, yes, of course; I am ready to begin again now, if you care to go
+on with me," said Challis. He talked for a few minutes of the book
+without any great show of interest. Presently they came to a pause, and
+Lewes suggested that he should give some account of how his time had
+been spent.
+
+"To-morrow," replied Challis, "to-morrow will be time enough. I shall
+settle down again in a few days." He hesitated a moment, and then said:
+"Any news from Chilborough?"
+
+"N-no, I don't think so," returned Lewes. He was occupied with his own
+interests; he doubted Challis's intention to continue his work on the
+book--the announcement had been so half-hearted.
+
+"What about that child?" asked Challis.
+
+"That child?" Lewes appeared to have forgotten the existence of Victor
+Stott.
+
+"That abnormal child of Stott's?" prompted Challis.
+
+"Oh! Of course, yes. I believe he still goes nearly every day to the
+library. I have been down there two or three times, and found him
+reading. He has learned the use of the index-catalogue. He can get any
+book he wants. He uses the steps."
+
+"Do you know what he reads?"
+
+"No; I can't say I do."
+
+"What do you think will become of him?"
+
+"Oh! these infant prodigies, you know," said Lewes with a large air of
+authority, "they all go the same way. Most of them die young, of course,
+the others develop into ordinary commonplace men rather under than over
+the normal ability. After all, it is what one would expect. Nature
+always maintains her average by some means or another. If a child like
+this with his abnormal memory were to go on developing, there would be
+no place for him in the world's economy. The idea is inconceivable."
+
+"Quite, quite," murmured Challis, and after a short silence he added:
+"You think he will deteriorate, that his faculties will decay
+prematurely?"
+
+"I should say there could be no doubt of it," replied Lewes.
+
+"Ah! well. I'll go down and have a look at him, one day next week," said
+Challis; but he did not go till the middle of October.
+
+The immediate cause of his going was a letter from Crashaw, who offered
+to come up to town, as the matter was one of "really peculiar urgency."
+
+"I wonder if young Stott has been blaspheming again," Challis remarked
+to Lewes. "Wire the man that I'll go down and see him this afternoon. I
+shall motor. Say I'll be at Stoke about half-past three."
+
+
+II
+
+Challis was ushered into Crashaw's study on his arrival, and found the
+rector in company with another man--introduced as Mr. Forman--a
+jolly-looking, high-complexioned man of sixty or so, with a great
+quantity of white hair on his head and face; he was wearing an
+old-fashioned morning-coat and grey trousers that were noticeably too
+short for him.
+
+Crashaw lost no time in introducing the subject of "really peculiar
+urgency," but he rambled in his introduction.
+
+"You have probably forgotten," he said, "that last spring I had to bring
+a most horrible charge against a child called Victor Stott, who has
+since been living, practically, as I may say, under your ægis, that is,
+he has, at least, spent a greater part of his day, er--playing in your
+library at Challis Court."
+
+"Quite, quite; I remember perfectly," said Challis. "I made myself
+responsible for him up to a certain point. I gave him an occupation. It
+was intended, was it not, to divert his mind from speaking against
+religion to the yokels?"
+
+"Quite a character, if I may say so," put in Mr. Forman cheerfully.
+
+Crashaw was seated at his study table; the affair had something the
+effect of an examining magistrate taking the evidence of witnesses.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said testily; "I did ask your help, Mr. Challis, and I
+did, in a way, receive some assistance from you. That is, the child has
+to some extent been isolated by spending so much of his time at your
+house."
+
+"Has he broken out again?" asked Challis.
+
+"If I understand you to mean has the child been speaking openly on any
+subject connected with religion, I must say 'No,'" said Crashaw. "But he
+never attends any Sunday school, or place of worship; he has received no
+instruction in--er--any sacred subject, though I understand he is able
+to read; and his time is spent among books which, pardon me, would not,
+I suppose, be likely to give a serious turn to his thoughts."
+
+"Serious?" questioned Challis.
+
+"Perhaps I should say 'religious,'" replied Crashaw. "To me the two
+words are synonymous."
+
+Mr. Forman bowed his head slightly with an air of reverence, and nodded
+two or three times to express his perfect approval of the rector's
+sentiments.
+
+"You think the child's mind is being perverted by his intercourse with
+the books in the library where he--he--'plays' was your word, I
+believe?"
+
+"No, not altogether," replied Crashaw, drawing his eyebrows together.
+"We can hardly suppose that he is able at so tender an age to read, much
+less to understand, those works of philosophy and science which would
+produce an evil effect on his mind. I am willing to admit, since I, too,
+have had some training in scientific reading, that writers on those
+subjects are not easily understood even by the mature intelligence."
+
+"Then why, exactly, do you wish me to prohibit the child from coming to
+Challis Court?"
+
+"Possibly you have not realised that the child is now five years old?"
+said Crashaw with an air of conferring illumination.
+
+"Indeed! Yes. An age of some discretion, no doubt," returned Challis.
+
+"An age at which the State requires that he should receive the elements
+of education," continued Crashaw.
+
+"Eh?" said Challis.
+
+"Time he went to school," explained Mr. Forman. "I've been after him,
+you know. I'm the attendance officer for this district."
+
+Challis for once committed a breach of good manners. The import of the
+thing suddenly appealed to his sense of humour: he began to chuckle and
+then he laughed out a great, hearty laugh, such as had not been stirred
+in him for twenty years.
+
+"Oh! forgive me, forgive me," he said, when he had recovered his
+self-control. "But you don't know; you can't conceive the utter,
+childish absurdity of setting that child to recite the multiplication
+table with village infants of his own age. Oh! believe me, if you could
+only guess, you would laugh with me. It's so funny, so inimitably
+funny."
+
+"I fail to see, Mr. Challis," said Crashaw, "that there is anything in
+any way absurd or--or unusual in the proposition."
+
+"Five is the age fixed by the State," said Mr. Forman. He had relaxed
+into a broad smile in sympathy with Challis's laugh, but he had now
+relapsed into a fair imitation of Crashaw's intense seriousness.
+
+"Oh! How can I explain?" said Challis. "Let me take an instance. You
+propose to teach him, among other things, the elements of arithmetic?"
+
+"It is a part of the curriculum," replied Mr. Forman.
+
+"I have only had one conversation with this child," went on Challis--and
+at the mention of that conversation his brows drew together and he
+became very grave again; "but in the course of that conversation this
+child had occasion to refer, by way of illustration, to some abstruse
+theorem of the differential calculus. He did it, you will understand, by
+way of making his meaning clear--though the illustration was utterly
+beyond me: that reference represented an act of intellectual
+condescension."
+
+"God bless me, you don't say so?" said Mr. Forman.
+
+"I cannot see," said Crashaw, "that this instance of yours, Mr. Challis,
+has any real bearing on the situation. If the child is a mathematical
+genius--there have been instances in history, such as Blaise Pascal--he
+would not, of course, receive elementary instruction in a subject with
+which he was already acquainted."
+
+"You could not find any subject, believe me, Crashaw, in which he could
+be instructed by any teacher in a Council school."
+
+"Forgive me, I don't agree with you," returned Crashaw. "He is sadly in
+need of some religious training."
+
+"He would not get that at a Council school," said Challis, and Mr.
+Forman shook his head sadly, as though he greatly deprecated the fact.
+
+"He must learn to recognise authority," said Crashaw. "When he has been
+taught the necessity of submitting himself to all his governors,
+teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters: ordering himself lowly and
+reverently to all his betters; when, I say, he has learnt that lesson,
+he may be in a fit and proper condition to receive the teachings of the
+Holy Church."
+
+Mr. Forman appeared to think he was attending divine service. If the
+rector had said "Let us pray," there can be no doubt that he would
+immediately have fallen on his knees.
+
+Challis shook his head. "You can't understand, Crashaw," he said.
+
+"I _do_ understand," said Crashaw, rising to his feet, "and I intend to
+see that the statute is not disobeyed in the case of this child, Victor
+Stott."
+
+Challis shrugged his shoulders; Mr. Forman assumed an expression of
+stern determination.
+
+"In any case, why drag me into it?" asked Challis.
+
+Crashaw sat down again. The flush which had warmed his sallow skin
+subsided as his passion died out. He had worked himself into a condition
+of righteous indignation, but the calm politeness of Challis rebuked
+him. If Crashaw prided himself on his devotion to the Church, he did not
+wish that attitude to overshadow the pride he also took in the belief
+that he was Challis's social equal. Crashaw's father had been a lawyer,
+with a fair practice in Derby, but he had worked his way up to a
+partnership from the position of office-boy, and Percy Crashaw seldom
+forgot to be conscious that he was a gentleman by education and
+profession.
+
+"I did not wish to _drag_ you into this business," he said quietly,
+putting his elbows on the writing-table in front of him, and reassuming
+the judicial attitude he had adopted earlier; "but I regard this child
+as, in some sense, your protégé." Crashaw put the tips of his fingers
+together, and Mr. Forman watched him warily, waiting for his cue. If
+this was to be a case for prayer, Mr. Forman was ready, with a clean
+white handkerchief to kneel upon.
+
+"In some sense, perhaps," returned Challis. "I haven't seen him for some
+months."
+
+"Cannot you see the necessity of his attending school?" asked Crashaw,
+this time with an insinuating suavity; he believed that Challis was
+coming round.
+
+"Oh!" Challis sighed with a note of expostulation. "Oh! the thing's
+grotesque, ridiculous."
+
+"If that's so," put in Mr. Forman, who had been struck by a brilliant
+idea, "why not bring the child here, and let the Reverend Mr. Crashaw,
+or myself, put a few general questions to 'im?"
+
+"Ye-es," hesitated Crashaw, "that might be done; but, of course, the
+decision does not rest with us."
+
+"It rests with the Local Authority," mused Challis. He was running over
+three or four names of members of that body who were known to him.
+
+"Certainly," said Crashaw, "the Local Education Authority alone has the
+right to prosecute, but----" He did not state his antithesis. They had
+come to the crux which Crashaw had wished to avoid. He had no influence
+with the committee of the L.E.A., and Challis's recommendation would
+have much weight. Crashaw intended that Victor Stott should attend
+school, but he had bungled his preliminaries; he had rested on his own
+authority, and forgotten that Challis had little respect for that
+influence. Conciliation was the only card to play now.
+
+"If I brought him, he wouldn't answer your questions," sighed Challis.
+"He's very difficult to deal with."
+
+"Is he, indeed?" sympathised Mr. Forman. "I've 'ardly seen 'im myself;
+not to speak to, that is."
+
+"He might come with his mother," suggested Crashaw.
+
+Challis shook his head. "By the way, it is the mother whom you would
+proceed against?" he asked.
+
+"The parent is responsible," said Mr. Forman. "She will be brought
+before a magistrate and fined for the first offence."
+
+"I shan't fine her if she comes before me," replied Challis.
+
+Crashaw smiled. He meant to avoid that eventuality.
+
+The little meeting lapsed into a brief silence. There seemed to be
+nothing more to say.
+
+"Well," said Crashaw, at last, with a rising inflexion that had a
+conciliatory, encouraging, now-my-little-man kind of air, "We-ll, of
+course, no one wishes to proceed to extremes. I think, Mr. Challis, I
+think I may say that you are the person who has most influence in this
+matter, and I cannot believe that you will go against the established
+authority both of the Church and the State. If it were only for the sake
+of example."
+
+Challis rose deliberately. He shook his head, and unconsciously his
+hands went behind his back. There was hardly room for him to pace up and
+down, but he took two steps towards Mr. Forman, who immediately rose to
+his feet; and then turned and went over to the window. It was from there
+that he pronounced his ultimatum.
+
+"Regulations, laws, religious and lay authorities," he said, "come into
+existence in order to deal with the rule, the average. That must be so.
+But if we are a reasoning, intellectual people we must have some means
+of dealing with the exception. That means rests with a consensus of
+intelligent opinion strong enough to set the rule upon one side. In an
+overwhelming majority of cases there _is_ no such consensus of opinion,
+and the exceptional individual suffers by coming within the rule of a
+law which should not apply to him. Now, I put it to you, as reasoning,
+intelligent men" ('ear, 'ear, murmured Mr. Forman automatically), "are
+we, now that we have the power to perform a common act of justice, to
+exempt an unfortunate individual exception who has come within the rule
+of a law that holds no application for him, or are we to exhibit a crass
+stupidity by enforcing that law? Is it not better to take the case into
+our own hands, and act according to the dictates of common sense?"
+
+"Very forcibly put," murmured Mr. Forman.
+
+"I'm not finding any fault with the law or the principle of the law,"
+continued Challis; "but it is, it must be, framed for the average. We
+must use our discretion in dealing with the exception--and this is an
+exception such as has never occurred since we have had an Education
+Act."
+
+"I don't agree with you," said Crashaw, stubbornly. "I do not consider
+this an exception."
+
+"But you _must_ agree with me, Crashaw. I have a certain amount of
+influence and I shall use it."
+
+"In that case," replied Crashaw, rising to his feet, "I shall fight you
+to the bitter end. I am _determined_"--he raised his voice and struck
+the writing-table with his fist--"I am _determined_ that this infidel
+child shall go to school. I am prepared, if necessary, to spend all my
+leisure in seeing that the law is carried out."
+
+Mr. Forman had also risen. "Very right, very right, indeed," he said,
+and he knitted his mild brows and stroked his patriarchal white beard
+with an appearance of stern determination.
+
+"I think you would be better advised to let the matter rest," said
+Challis.
+
+Mr. Forman looked inquiringly at the representative of the Church.
+
+"I shall fight," replied Crashaw, stubbornly, fiercely.
+
+"Ha!" said Mr. Forman.
+
+"Very well, as you think best," was Challis's last word.
+
+As Challis walked down to the gate, where his motor was waiting for him,
+Mr. Forman trotted up from behind and ranged himself alongside.
+
+"More rain wanted yet for the roots, sir," he said. "September was a
+grand month for 'arvest, but we want rain badly now."
+
+"Quite, quite," murmured Challis, politely. He shook hands with Mr.
+Forman before he got into the car.
+
+Mr. Forman, standing politely bareheaded, saw that Mr. Challis's car
+went in the direction of Ailesworth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HIS EXAMINATION
+
+
+I
+
+Challis's first visit was paid to Sir Deane Elmer,[4] that man of many
+activities, whose name inevitably suggests his favourite phrase of
+"Organised Progress"--with all its variants.
+
+This is hardly the place in which to criticise a man of such diverse
+abilities as Deane Elmer, a man whose name still figures so prominently
+in the public press in connection with all that is most modern in
+eugenics; with the Social Reform programme of the moderate party; with
+the reconstruction of our penal system; with education, and so many
+kindred interests; and, finally, of course, with colour photography and
+process printing. This last Deane Elmer always spoke of as his hobby,
+but we may doubt whether all his interests were not hobbies in the same
+sense. He is the natural descendant of those earlier amateur
+scientists--the adjective conveys no reproach--of the nineteenth
+century, among whom we remember such striking figures as those of Lord
+Avebury and Sir Francis Galton.
+
+In appearance Deane Elmer was a big, heavy, rather corpulent man, with a
+high complexion, and his clean-shaven jowl and his succession of chins
+hung in heavy folds. But any suggestion of material grossness was
+contradicted by the brightness of his rather pale-blue eyes, by his
+alertness of manner, and by his ready, whimsical humour.
+
+As chairman of the Ailesworth County Council, and its most prominent
+unpaid public official--after the mayor--Sir Deane Elmer was certainly
+the most important member of the Local Authority, and Challis wisely
+sought him at once. He found him in the garden of his comparatively
+small establishment on the Quainton side of the town. Elmer was very
+much engaged in photographing flowers from nature through the ruled
+screen and colour filter--in experimenting with the Elmer process, in
+fact; by which the intermediate stage of a coloured negative is rendered
+unnecessary. His apparatus was complicated and cumbrous.
+
+"Show Mr. Challis out here," he commanded the man who brought the
+announcement.
+
+"You must forgive me, Challis," said Elmer, when Challis appeared. "We
+haven't had such a still day for weeks. It's the wind upsets us in this
+process. Screens create a partial vacuum."
+
+He was launched on a lecture upon his darling process before Challis
+could get in a word. It was best to let him have his head, and Challis
+took an intelligent interest.
+
+It was not until the photographs were taken, and his two assistants
+could safely be trusted to complete the mechanical operations, that
+Elmer could be divorced from his hobby. He was full of jubilation. "We
+should have excellent results," he boomed--he had a tremendous
+voice--"but we shan't be able to judge until we get the blocks made. We
+do it all on the spot. I have a couple of platens in the shops here; but
+we shan't be able to take a pull until to-morrow morning, I'm afraid.
+You shall have a proof, Challis. We _should_ get magnificent results."
+He looked benignantly at the vault of heaven, which had been so
+obligingly free from any current of air.
+
+Challis was beginning to fear that even now he would be allowed no
+opportunity to open the subject of his mission. But quite suddenly Elmer
+dropped the shutter on his preoccupation, and with that ready
+adaptability which was so characteristic of the man, forgot his hobby
+for the time being, and turned his whole attention to a new subject.
+
+"Well?" he said, "what is the latest news in anthropology?"
+
+"A very remarkable phenomenon," replied Challis. "That is what I have
+come to see you about."
+
+"I thought you were in Paraguay pigging it with the Guaranis----"
+
+"No, no; I don't touch the Americas," interposed Challis. "I want all
+your attention, Elmer. This is important."
+
+"Come into my study," said Elmer, "and let us have the facts. What will
+you have--tea, whisky, beer?"
+
+Challis's résumé of the facts need not be reported. When it was
+accomplished, Elmer put several keen questions, and finally delivered
+his verdict thus:
+
+"We must see the boy, Challis. Personally I am, of course, satisfied,
+but we must not give Crashaw opportunity to raise endless questions, as
+he can and will. There is Mayor Purvis, the grocer, to be reckoned with,
+you must remember. He represents a powerful Nonconformist influence.
+Crashaw will get hold of him--and work him if we see Purvis first.
+Purvis always stiffens his neck against any breach of conventional
+procedure. If Crashaw saw him first, well and good, Purvis would
+immediately jump to the conclusion that Crashaw intended some subtle
+attack on the Nonconformist position, and would side with us."
+
+"I don't think I know Purvis," mused Challis.
+
+"Purvis & Co. in the Square," prompted Elmer. "Black-and-white fellow;
+black moustache and side whiskers, black eyes and white face. There's a
+suggestion of the Methodist pulpit about him. Doesn't appear in the shop
+much, and when he does, always looks as if he'd sooner sell you a Bible
+than a bottle of whisky."
+
+"Ah, yes! I know," said Challis. "I daresay you're right, Elmer; but it
+will be difficult to persuade this child to answer any questions his
+examiners may put to him."
+
+"Surely he must be open to reason," roared Elmer. "You tell me he has an
+extraordinary intelligence, and in the next sentence you imply that the
+child's a fool who can't open his mouth to serve his own interests.
+What's your paradox?"
+
+"Sublimated material. Intellectual insight and absolute spiritual
+blindness," replied Challis, getting to his feet. "The child has gone
+too far in one direction--in another he has made not one step. His mind
+is a magnificent, terrible machine. He has the imagination of a
+mathematician and a logician developed beyond all conception, he has not
+one spark of the imagination of a poet. And so he cannot deal with men;
+he can't understand their weaknesses and limitations; they are geese and
+hens to him, creatures to be scared out of his vicinity. However, I will
+see what I can do. Could you arrange for the members of the Authority to
+come to my place?"
+
+"I should think so. Yes," said Elmer. "I say, Challis, are you sure
+you're right about this child? Sounds to me like some--some freak."
+
+"You'll see," returned Challis. "I'll try and arrange an interview. I'll
+let you know."
+
+"And, by the way," said Elmer, "you had better invite Crashaw to be
+present. He will put Purvis's back up, and that'll enlist the difficult
+grocer on our side probably."
+
+When Challis had gone, Elmer stood for a few minutes, thoughtfully
+scratching the ample red surface of his wide, clean-shaven cheek. "I
+don't know," he ejaculated at last, addressing his empty study, "I don't
+know." And with that expression he put all thought of Victor Stott away
+from him, and sat down to write an exhaustive article on the necessity
+for a broader basis in primary education.
+
+
+II
+
+Challis called at the rectory of Stoke-Underhill on the way back to his
+own house.
+
+"I give way," was the characteristic of his attitude to Crashaw, and the
+rector suppled his back again, remembered the Derby office-boy's
+tendency to brag, and made the amende honorable. He even overdid his
+magnanimity and came too near subservience--so lasting is the influence
+of the lessons of youth.
+
+Crashaw did not mention that in the interval between the two interviews
+he had called upon Mr. Purvis in the Square. The ex-mayor had refused to
+commit himself to any course of action.
+
+But Challis forgot the rectory and all that it connoted before he was
+well outside the rectory's front door. Challis had a task before him
+that he regarded with the utmost distaste. He had warmly championed a
+cause; he had been heated by the presentation of a manifest injustice
+which was none the less tyrannical because it was ridiculous. And now he
+realised that it was only the abstract question which had aroused his
+enthusiastic advocacy, and he shrank from the interview with Victor
+Stott--that small, deliberate, intimidating child.
+
+Henry Challis, the savant, the man of repute in letters, the respected
+figure in the larger world; Challis, the proprietor and landlord;
+Challis, the power among known men, knew that he would have to plead, to
+humble himself, to be prepared for a rebuff--worst of all, to
+acknowledge the justice of taking so undignified a position. Any
+aristocrat may stoop with dignity when he condescends of his own free
+will; but there are few who can submit gracefully to deserved contempt.
+
+Challis was one of the few. He had many admirable qualities.
+Nevertheless, during that short motor ride from Stoke to his own house,
+he resented the indignity he anticipated, resented it intensely--and
+submitted.
+
+
+III
+
+He was allowed no respite. Victor Stott was emerging from the library
+window as Challis rolled up to the hall door. It was one of Ellen Mary's
+days--she stood respectfully in the background while her son descended;
+she curtsied to Challis as he came forward.
+
+He hesitated a moment. He would not risk insult in the presence of his
+chauffeur and Mrs. Stott. He confronted the Wonder; he stood before him,
+and over him like a cliff.
+
+"I must speak to you for a moment on a matter of some importance," said
+Challis to the little figure below him, and as he spoke he looked over
+the child's head at the child's mother. "It is a matter that concerns
+your own welfare. Will you come into the house with me for a few
+minutes?"
+
+Ellen Mary nodded, and Challis understood. He turned and led the way. At
+the door, however, he stood aside and spoke again to Mrs. Stott. "Won't
+you come in and have some tea, or something?" he asked.
+
+"No, sir, thank you, sir," replied Ellen Mary; "I'll just wait 'ere till
+'e's ready."
+
+"At least come in and sit down," said Challis, and she came in and sat
+in the hall. The Wonder had already preceded them into the house. He had
+walked into the morning-room--probably because the door stood open,
+though he was now tall enough to reach the handles of the Challis Court
+doors. He stood in the middle of the room when Challis entered.
+
+"Won't you sit down?" said Challis.
+
+The Wonder shook his head.
+
+"I don't know if you are aware," began Challis, "that there is a system
+of education in England at the present time, which requires that every
+child should attend school at the age of five years, unless the parents
+are able to provide their children with an education elsewhere."
+
+The Wonder nodded.
+
+Challis inferred that he need proffer no further information with regard
+to the Education Act.
+
+"Now, it is very absurd," he continued, "and I have, myself, pointed out
+the absurdity; but there is a man of some influence in this
+neighbourhood who insists that you should attend the elementary school."
+He paused, but the Wonder gave no sign.
+
+"I have argued with this man," continued Challis, "and I have also seen
+another member of the Local Education Authority--a man of some note in
+the larger world--and it seems that you cannot be exempted unless you
+convince the Authority that your knowledge is such that to give you a
+Council school education would be the most absurd farce."
+
+"Cannot you stand in loco parentis?" asked the Wonder suddenly, in his
+still, thin voice.
+
+"You mean," said Challis, startled by this outburst, "that I am in a
+sense providing you with an education? Quite true; but there is Crashaw
+to deal with."
+
+"Inform him," said the Wonder.
+
+Challis sighed. "I have," he said, "but he can't understand." And then,
+feeling the urgent need to explain something of the motives that govern
+this little world of ours--the world into which this strangely logical
+exception had been born--Challis attempted an exposition.
+
+"I know," he said, "that these things must seem to you utterly absurd,
+but you must try to realise that you are an exception to the world about
+you; that Crashaw or I, or, indeed, the greatest minds of the present
+day, are not ruled by the fine logic which you are able to exercise. We
+are children compared to you. We are swayed even in the making of our
+laws by little primitive emotions and passions, self-interests, desires.
+And at the best we are not capable of ordering our lives and our
+government to those just ends which we may see, some of us, are
+abstractly right and fine. We are at the mercy of that great mass of the
+people who have not yet won to an intellectual and discriminating
+judgment of how their own needs may best be served, and whose
+representatives consider the interests of a party, a constituency, and
+especially of their own personal ambitions and welfare, before the needs
+of humanity as a whole, or even the humanity of these little islands.
+
+"Above all, we are divided man against man. We are split into parties
+and factions, by greed and jealousies, petty spites and self-seeking, by
+unintelligence, by education, and by our inability--a mental
+inability--'to see life steadily and see it whole,' and lastly, perhaps
+chiefly, by our intense egotisms, both physical and intellectual.
+
+"Try to realise this. It is necessary, because whatever your wisdom, you
+have to live in a world of comparative ignorance, a world which cannot
+appreciate you, but which can and will fall back upon the compelling
+power of the savage--the resort to physical, brute force."
+
+The Wonder nodded. "You suggest----?" he said.
+
+"Merely that you should consent to answer certain elementary questions
+which the members of the Local Authority will put to you," replied
+Challis. "I can arrange that these questions be asked here--in the
+library. Will you consent?"
+
+The Wonder nodded, and made his way into the hall, without another word.
+His mother rose and opened the front door for him.
+
+As Challis watched the curious couple go down the drive, he sighed
+again, perhaps with relief, perhaps at the impotence of the world of
+men.
+
+
+IV
+
+There were four striking figures on the Education Committee selected by
+the Ailesworth County Council.
+
+The first of these was Sir Deane Elmer, who was also chairman of the
+Council at this time. The second was the vice-chairman, Enoch Purvis,
+the ex-mayor, commonly, if incorrectly, known as "Mayor" Purvis.
+
+The third was Richard Standing, J.P., who owned much property on the
+Quainton side of the town. He was a bluff, hearty man, devoted to sport
+and agriculture; a Conservative by birth and inclination, a staunch
+upholder of the Church and the Tariff Reform movement.
+
+The fourth was the Rev. Philip Steven, a co-opted member of the
+Committee, head master of the Ailesworth Grammar School. Steven was a
+tall, thin man with bent shoulders, and he had a long, thin face, the
+length of which was exaggerated by his square brown beard. He wore
+gold-mounted spectacles which, owing to his habit of dropping his head,
+always needed adjustment whenever he looked up. The movement of lifting
+his head and raising his hand to his glasses had become so closely
+associated, that his hand went up even when there was no apparent need
+for the action. Steven spoke of himself as a Broad Churchman, and in his
+speech on prize-day he never omitted some allusion to the necessity for
+"marching" or "keeping step" with the times. But Elmer was inclined to
+laugh at this assumption of modernity. "Steven," he said, on one
+occasion, "marks time and thinks he is keeping step. And every now and
+then he runs a little to catch up." The point of Elmer's satire lay in
+the fact that Steven was usually to be seen either walking very slowly,
+head down, lost in abstraction; or--when aroused to a sense of present
+necessity--going with long-strides as if intent on catching up with the
+times without further delay. Very often, too, he might be seen running
+across the school playground, his hand up to those elusive glasses of
+his. "There goes Mr. Steven, catching up with the times," had become an
+accepted phrase.
+
+There were other members of the Education Committee, notably Mrs. Philip
+Steven, but they were subordinate. If those four striking figures were
+unanimous, no other member would have dreamed of expressing a contrary
+opinion. But up to this time they had not yet been agreed upon any
+important line of action.
+
+This four, Challis and Crashaw met in the morning-room of Challis Court
+one Thursday afternoon in November. Elmer had brought a stenographer
+with him for scientific purposes.
+
+"Well," said Challis, when they were all assembled. "The--the subject--I
+mean, Victor Stott is in the library. Shall we adjourn?" Challis had not
+felt so nervous since the morning before he had sat for honours in the
+Cambridge Senate House.
+
+In the library they found a small child, reading.
+
+
+V
+
+He did not look up when the procession entered, nor did he remove his
+cricket cap. He was in his usual place at the centre table.
+
+Challis found chairs for the Committee, and the members ranged
+themselves round the opposite side of the table. Curiously, the effect
+produced was that of a class brought up for a viva voce examination, and
+when the Wonder raised his eyes and glanced deliberately down the line
+of his judges, this effect was heightened. There was an audible
+fidgeting, a creak of chairs, an indication of small embarrassments.
+
+"Her--um!" Deane Elmer cleared his throat with noisy vigour; looked at
+the Wonder, met his eyes and looked hastily away again; "Hm!--her--rum!"
+he repeated, and then he turned to Challis. "So this little fellow has
+never been to school?" he said.
+
+Challis frowned heavily. He looked exceedingly uncomfortable and
+unhappy. He was conscious that he could take neither side in this
+controversy--that he was in sympathy with no one of the seven other
+persons who were seated in his library.
+
+He shook his head impatiently in answer to Sir Deane Elmer's question,
+and the chairman turned to the Rev. Philip Steven, who was gazing
+intently at the pattern of the carpet.
+
+"I think, Steven," said Elmer, "that your large experience will probably
+prompt you to a more efficient examination than we could conduct. Will
+you initiate the inquiry?"
+
+Steven raised his head slightly, put a readjusting hand up to his
+glasses, and then looked sternly at the Wonder over the top of them.
+Even the sixth form quailed when the head master assumed this
+expression, but the small child at the table was gazing out of the
+window.
+
+Doubtless Steven was slightly embarrassed by the detachment of the
+examinee, and blundered. "What is the square root of 226?" he asked--he
+probably intended to say 225.
+
+"15·03329--to five places," replied the Wonder.
+
+Steven started. Neither he nor any other member of the Committee was
+capable of checking that answer without resort to pencil and paper.
+
+"Dear me!" ejaculated Squire Standing.
+
+Elmer scratched the superabundance of his purple jowl, and looked at
+Challis, who thrust his hands into his pockets and stared at the
+ceiling.
+
+Crashaw leaned forward and clasped his hands together. He was biding his
+time.
+
+"Mayor" Purvis alone seemed unmoved. "What's that book he's got open in
+front of him?" he asked.
+
+"May I see?" interposed Challis hurriedly, and he rose from his chair,
+picked up the book in question, glanced at it for a moment, and then
+handed it to the grocer. The book was Van Vloten's Dutch text and Latin
+translation of Spinoza's Short Treatise.
+
+The grocer turned to the title-page. "Ad--beany--dick--ti--de--Spy--nozer,"
+he read aloud and then: "What's it all about, Mr. Challis?" he asked.
+"German or something, I take it?"
+
+"In any case it has nothing to do with elementary arithmetic," replied
+Challis curtly, "Mr. Steven will set your mind at ease on that point."
+
+"Certainly, certainly," murmured Steven.
+
+Grocer Purvis closed the book carefully and replaced it on the desk.
+"What does half a stone o' loaf sugar at two-three-farthings come to?"
+he asked.
+
+The Wonder shook his head. He did not understand the grocer's
+phraseology.
+
+"What is seven times two and three quarters?" translated Challis.
+
+"19·25," answered the Wonder.
+
+"What's that in shillin's?" asked Purvis.
+
+"1·60416."
+
+"Wrong!" returned the grocer triumphantly.
+
+"Er--excuse me, Mr. Purvis," interposed Steven, "I think not.
+The--the--er--examinee has given the correct mathematical answer to five
+places of decimals--that is, so far as I can check him mentally."
+
+"Well, it seems to me," persisted the grocer, "as he's gone a long way
+round to answer a simple question what any fifth-standard child could do
+in his head. I'll give him another."
+
+"Cast it in another form," put in the chairman. "Give it as a
+multiplication sum."
+
+Purvis tucked his fingers carefully into his waistcoat pockets. "I put
+the question, Mr. Chairman," he said, "as it'll be put to the youngster
+when he has to tot up a bill. That seems to be a sound and practical
+form for such questions to be put in."
+
+Challis sighed impatiently. "I thought Mr. Steven had been delegated to
+conduct the first part of the examination," he said. "It seems to me
+that we are wasting a lot of time."
+
+Elmer nodded. "Will you go on, Mr. Steven?" he said.
+
+Challis was ashamed for his compeers. "What children we are," he
+thought.
+
+Steven got to work again with various arithmetical questions, which were
+answered instantly, and then he made a sudden leap and asked: "What is
+the binomial theorem?"
+
+"A formula for writing down the coefficient of any stated term in the
+expansion of any stated power of a given binomial," replied the Wonder.
+
+Elmer blew out his cheeks and looked at Challis, but met the gaze of Mr.
+Steven, who adjusted his glasses and said, "I am satisfied under this
+head."
+
+"It's all beyond me," remarked Squire Standing frankly.
+
+"I think, Mr. Chairman, that we've had enough theoretical arithmetic,"
+said Purvis. "There's a few practical questions I'd like to put."
+
+"No more arithmetic, then," assented Elmer, and Crashaw exchanged a
+glance of understanding with the grocer.
+
+"Now, how old was our Lord when He began His ministry?" asked the
+grocer.
+
+"Uncertain," replied the Wonder.
+
+Mr. Purvis smiled. "Any Sunday-school child knows that!" he said.
+
+"Of course, of course," murmured Crashaw.
+
+But Steven looked uncomfortable. "Are you sure you understand the
+purport of the answer, Mr. Purvis?" he asked.
+
+"Can there be any doubt about it?" replied the grocer. "I asked how old
+our Lord was when He began His ministry, and he"--he made an indicative
+gesture with one momentarily released hand towards the Wonder--"and he
+says he's 'uncertain.'"
+
+"No, no," interposed Challis impatiently, "he meant that the answer to
+your question was uncertain."
+
+"How's that?" returned the grocer. "I've always understood----"
+
+"Quite, quite," interrupted Challis. "But what we have always understood
+does not always correspond to the actual fact."
+
+"What did you intend by your answer?" put in Elmer quickly, addressing
+the Wonder.
+
+"The evidence rests mainly on Luke's Gospel," answered the Wonder, "but
+the phrase 'ἀ�χόμενος ὡσὲι �τῶν τ�ιάκοντα' is vague--it allows latitude
+in either direction. According to the chronology of John's Gospel the
+age might have been about thirty-two."
+
+"It says 'thirty' in the Bible, and that's good enough for me," said the
+grocer, and Crashaw muttered "Heresy, heresy," in an audible under tone.
+
+"Sounds very like blarsphemy to me," said Purvis, "like doubtin' the
+word of God. I'm for sending him to school."
+
+Deane Elmer had been regarding the face of the small abstracted child
+with considerable interest. He put aside for the moment the grocer's
+intimation of his voting tendency.
+
+"How many elements are known to chemists?" asked Elmer of the examinee.
+
+"Eighty-one well characterised; others have been described," replied the
+Wonder.
+
+"Which has the greatest atomic weight?" asked Elmer.
+
+"Uranium."
+
+"And that weight is?"
+
+"On the oxygen basis of 16--238·5."
+
+"Extraordinary powers of memory," muttered Elmer, and there was silence
+for a moment, a silence broken by Squire Standing, who, in a loud voice,
+asked suddenly and most irrelevantly, "What's your opinion of Tariff
+Reform?"
+
+"An empirical question that cannot be decided from a theoretical basis,"
+replied the Wonder.
+
+Elmer laughed out, a great shouting guffaw. "Quite right, quite right,"
+he said, his cheeks shaking with mirth. "What have you to say to that,
+Standing?"
+
+"I say that Tariff Reform's the only way to save the country," replied
+Squire Standing, looking very red and obstinate, "and if this
+Government----"
+
+Challis rose to his feet. "Oh! aren't you all satisfied?" he said. "Is
+this Committee here to argue questions of present politics? What more
+evidence do you need?"
+
+"I'm not satisfied," put in Purvis resolutely, "nor is the Rev. Mr.
+Crashaw, I fancy."
+
+"He has no vote," said Challis. "Elmer, what do you say?"
+
+"I think we may safely say that the child has been, and is being,
+provided with an education elsewhere, and that he need not therefore
+attend the elementary school," replied Elmer, still chuckling.
+
+"On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, is that what you put to the
+meeting?" asked Purvis.
+
+"This is quite informal," replied Elmer. "Unless we are all agreed, the
+question must be put to the full Committee."
+
+"Shall we argue the point in the other room?" suggested Challis.
+
+"Certainly, certainly," said Elmer. "We can return, if necessary."
+
+And the four striking figures of the Education Committee filed out,
+followed by Crashaw and the stenographer.
+
+Challis, coming last, paused at the door and looked back.
+
+The Wonder had returned to his study of Spinoza.
+
+Challis waved a hand to the unconscious figure. "I must join my
+fellow-children," he said grimly, "or they will be quarrelling."
+
+
+VI
+
+But when he joined his fellow-children, Challis stood at the window of
+the morning-room, attending little to the buzz of voices and the clatter
+of glasses which marked the relief from the restraint of the
+examination-room. Even the stenographer was talking; he had joined
+Crashaw and Purvis--a lemonade group; the other three were drinking
+whisky. The division, however, is arbitrary, and in no way significant.
+
+Challis caught a fragment of the conversation here and there: a
+bull-roar from Elmer or Squire Standing; an occasional blatancy from
+Purvis; a vibrant protest from Crashaw; a hesitating tenor pronouncement
+from Steven.
+
+"Extraordinary powers of memory.... It isn't facts, but what they stand
+for that I.... Don't know his Bible--that's good enough for me....
+Heresy, heresy.... An astounding memory, of course, quite astounding,
+but----"
+
+The simple exposition of each man's theme was dogmatically asserted, and
+through it all Challis, standing alone, hardly conscious of each
+individual utterance, was still conscious that the spirits of those six
+men were united in one thing, had they but known it. Each was
+endeavouring to circumscribe the powers of the child they had just
+left--each was insistent on some limitation he chose to regard as vital.
+
+They came to no decision that afternoon. The question as to whether the
+Authority should prosecute or not had to be referred to the Committee.
+
+At the last, Crashaw entered his protest and announced once more that he
+would fight the point to the bitter end.
+
+Crashaw's religious hatred was not, perhaps, altogether free from a
+sense of affronted dignity, but it was nevertheless a force to be
+counted; and he had that obstinacy of the bigot which has in the past
+contributed much fire and food to the pyre of martyrdom. He had, too, a
+power of initiative within certain limits. It is true that the bird on a
+free wing could avoid him with contemptuous ease, but along his own path
+he was a terrifying juggernaut. Crashaw, thus circumscribed, was a
+power, a moving force.
+
+But now he was seeking to crush, not some paralysed rabbit on the road,
+but an elusive spirit of swiftness which has no name, but may be figured
+as the genius of modernity. The thing he sought to obliterate ran ahead
+of him with a smiling facility and spat rearwards a vaporous jet of
+ridicule.
+
+Crashaw might crush his clerical wideawake over his frowning eyebrows,
+arm himself with a slightly dilapidated umbrella, and seek with long,
+determined strides the members of the Local Education Authority, but far
+ahead of him had run an intelligence that represented the instructed
+common sense of modernity.
+
+It was for Crashaw to realise--as he never could and never did
+realise--that he was no longer the dominant force of progress; that he
+had been outstripped, left toiling and shouting vain words on a road
+that had served its purpose, and though it still remained and was used
+as a means of travel, was becoming year by year more antiquated and
+despised.
+
+Crashaw toiled to the end, and no one knows how far his personal purpose
+and spite were satisfied, but he could never impede any more that
+elusive spirit of swiftness; it had run past him.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] Afterwards Lord Quainton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HIS INTERVIEW WITH HERR GROSSMANN
+
+
+I
+
+Crashaw must have suffered greatly just at that time; and the
+anticipation of his defeat by the Committee was made still more bitter
+by the wonderful visit of Herr Grossmann. It is true that that visit
+feebly helped Crashaw's cause at the moment by further enlisting the
+sympathies and strenuous endeavour of the Nonconformist Purvis; but no
+effort of the ex-mayor could avail to upset the majority of the Local
+Education Authority and the grocer, himself, was not a person acceptable
+to Crashaw. The two men were so nearly allied by their manner of thought
+and social origin; and Crashaw instinctively flaunted the splendid
+throne of his holy office, whenever he and Purvis were together. Purvis
+was what the rector might have described as an ignorant man. It is a
+fact that, until Crashaw very fully and inaccurately informed him, he
+had never even heard of Hugo Grossmann.
+
+In that conversation between Crashaw and Purvis, the celebrated German
+Professor figured as the veritable Anti-Christ, the Devil's personal
+representative on earth; but Crashaw was not a safe authority on Science
+and Philosophy.
+
+Herr Grossmann's world-wide reputation was certainly not won in the
+field of religious controversy. He had not at that time reached the
+pinnacle of achievement which placed him so high above his brilliant
+contemporaries, and now presents him as the unique figure and
+representative of twentieth-century science. But his very considerable
+contributions to knowledge had drawn the attention of Europe for ten
+years, and he was already regarded by his fellow-scientists with that
+mixture of contempt and jealousy which inevitably precedes the world's
+acceptance of its greatest men.
+
+Sir Deane Elmer, for example, was a generous and kindly man; he had
+never been involved in any controversy with the professional scientists
+whose ground he continually encroached upon, and yet he could not hear
+the name of Grossmann without frowning. Grossmann had the German vice of
+thoroughness. He took up a subject and exhausted it, as far as is
+possible within the limits of our present knowledge; and his monograph
+on Heredity had demonstrated with a detestable logic that much of
+Elmer's treatise on Eugenics was based on evidence that must be viewed
+with the gravest suspicion. Not that Grossmann had directly attacked
+that treatise; he had made no kind of reference to it in his own book;
+but his irrefutable statements had been quoted by every reviewer of
+"Eugenics" who chanced to have come across the English translation of
+"Heredity and Human Development," to the confounding of Elmer's somewhat
+too optimistic prophecies concerning the possibility of breeding a race
+that should approximate to a physical and intellectual perfection.
+
+And it happened that Elmer met Grossmann at an informal gathering of
+members of the Royal Society a few days after the examination of the
+Wonder in the Challis Court Library. Herr Grossmann was delivering an
+impromptu lecture on the limits of variation from the normal type, when
+Elmer came in and joined the group of the great Professor's listeners,
+every one of whom was seeking some conclusive argument to confute their
+guest's overwhelmingly accurate collation of facts.
+
+Elmer realised instantly that his opportunity had come at last. He
+listened patiently for a few minutes to the flow of the German's
+argument, and then broke in with a loud exclamation of dissent. All the
+learned members of the Society turned to him at once, with a movement of
+profound relief and expectation.
+
+"You said what?" asked Grossmann with a frown of great annoyance.
+
+Elmer thrust out his lower lip and looked at his antagonist with the
+expression of a man seeking a vital spot for the coup de grace.
+
+"I said, Herr Professor," Elmer returned, "that there are exceptions
+which confound your argument."
+
+"For example?" Grossmann said, putting his hands behind him and gently
+nodding his head like a tolerant schoolmaster awaiting the inevitable
+confusion of the too intrepid scholar.
+
+"Christian Heinecken?" suggested Elmer.
+
+"Ah! You have not then read my brochure on certain abnormalities
+reported in history?" Grossmann said, and continued, "Mr. Aylmer, is it
+not? To whom I am speaking? Yes? We have met, I believe, once in
+Leipzig. I thought so. But in my brochure, Mr. Aylmer, I have examined
+the Heinecken case and shown my reasons to regard it as not so departing
+from the normal."
+
+Elmer shook his head. "Your reasons are not valid, Herr Professor," he
+said and held up a corpulent forefinger to enforce Grossmann's further
+attention. "They seemed convincing at the time, I admit, but this new
+prodigy completely upsets your case."
+
+"Eh! What is that? What new prodigy?" sneered Grossmann; and two or
+three savants among the little ring of listeners, although they had not
+that perfect confidence in Elmer which would have put them at ease,
+nodded gravely as if they were aware of the validity of his instance.
+
+Elmer blew out his cheeks and raised his eyebrows. "Ah! you haven't
+heard of him!" he remarked with a rather fleshy surprise. "Victor Stott,
+you know, son of a professional cricketer, protégé of Henry Challis, the
+anthropologist. Oh! you ought to investigate that case, Herr Professor.
+It is most remarkable, most remarkable."
+
+"Ach! What form does the abnormality take?" asked Grossmann
+suspiciously, and his tone made it clear that he had little confidence
+in the value of any report made to him by such an observer as Sir Deane
+Elmer.
+
+"I can't pretend to give you anything like a full account of it," Elmer
+returned. "I have only seen the child once. But, honestly, Herr
+Professor, you cannot use that brochure of yours in any future argument
+until you have investigated this case of young Stott. It confutes you."
+
+"I can see him, then?" Grossmann asked, frowning. In that company he
+could not afford to decline the challenge that had been thrown down.
+There were, at least, five men present who would, he believed,
+immediately conduct the examination on their own account, should he
+refuse the opportunity; men who would not fail to use their material for
+the demolition of that pamphlet on the type of abnormality, more
+particularly represented by the amazing precocity of Christian
+Heinecken.
+
+To the layman such an attack may seem a small matter, and likely to have
+little effect on such a reputation as that already won by Hugo
+Grossmann; and it should be explained that in the Professor's great work
+on "Heredity and Human Development," an essential argument was based on
+the absence of any considerable _progressive_ variation from the normal.
+Indeed it was from this premise that he developed the celebrated
+"variation" theory which is, now, generally admitted to have compromised
+the whole principle of "Natural Selection" while it has given a
+wonderful impetus to all recent investigations and experiments on the
+lines first indicated by Mendel.
+
+"I can see him, then?" asked Grossmann, with the faintly annoyed air of
+one who is compelled by circumstances to undertake a futile task.
+
+"Certainly, I will arrange an interview for you," Elmer replied, and
+went on to give an account of his own experience, an account that lost
+nothing in the telling.
+
+Elmer created a mild sensation in the rooms of the Royal Society that
+evening.
+
+
+II
+
+He found Challis at his house in Eaton Square the next morning, but it
+became evident from the outset that the plan of confounding Grossmann
+did not appeal to the magnate of Stoke-Underhill. Challis frowned and
+prevaricated. "It's a thousand to one, the child won't condescend to
+answer," was his chief evasion.
+
+Elmer was not to be frustrated in the development of his scheme by any
+such trivial excuse as that. He began to display a considerable
+annoyance at last.
+
+"Oh! nonsense; nonsense, Challis," he said. "You make altogether too
+much fuss about this prodigy of yours."
+
+"Not mine," Challis interrupted. "Take him over yourself, Elmer. Bring
+him out. Exhibit him. I make you a gift of all my interest in him."
+
+Elmer looked thoughtful for a moment, as if he were seriously
+considering that proposition, and then he said, "I recognise that there
+are--difficulties. The child seems--er--to have a queer, morose temper,
+doesn't he?"
+
+Challis shook his head. "It isn't that," he said.
+
+Elmer scratched his cheek. "I understand," he began, and then broke off
+and went on, "I'm putting this as a personal favour, Challis; but it is
+more than that. You know my theories with regard to the future of the
+race. I have a steady faith in our enormous potentialities for real
+progress. But it must be organised, and Grossmann is just now standing
+in our way. That stubborn materialism of his has infected many fine
+intelligences; and I would make very great sacrifices in order to clear
+this great and terrible obstacle out of the way."
+
+"And you believe that this interview ..." interrupted Challis.
+
+"I do, indeed," Elmer said. "It will destroy one of Grossmann's most
+vital premisses. This prodigy of yours--he is unquestionably a
+prodigy--demonstrates the fact of an immense progressive variation. Once
+that is conceded, the main argument of Grossmann's 'Heredity' is
+invalidated. We shall have knocked away the keystone of his mechanistic
+theory of evolution...."
+
+"But suppose that the boy refuses...."
+
+"He did not refuse to see us."
+
+"That was to save himself from further trouble."
+
+"But isn't he susceptible to argument?"
+
+"Not the kind of argument you have been using to me," Challis said
+gravely.
+
+Elmer blew like a porpoise; looked very thoughtful for a moment, and
+then said:
+
+"You could represent Grossmann as the final court of appeal--the High
+Lord Muck-a-muck of the L.E.A."
+
+"I should have to do something of the sort," Challis admitted, and
+continued with a spurt of temper. "But understand, Elmer, I don't do it
+again; no, not to save the reputation of the Royal Society."
+
+
+III
+
+Unhappily, no record exists of the conversation between the Wonder and
+Herr Grossmann.
+
+The Professor seems at the last moment to have had some misgiving as to
+the nature of the interview that was before him, and refused to have a
+witness to the proceedings.
+
+Challis made the introduction, and he says that the Wonder regarded
+Grossmann with perhaps rather more attention than he commonly conceded
+to strangers; and that the Professor exhibited the usual signs of
+embarrassment.
+
+Altogether, Grossmann was in the library for about half an hour, and he
+displayed no sign of perturbation when he rejoined Challis and Elmer in
+the breakfast-room. Indeed, only one fact of any significance emerges to
+throw suspicion on Grossmann's attitude during the progress of that
+secluded half-hour with the greatest intellect of all time--the
+Professor's spectacles had been broken.
+
+He spoke of the accident with a casual air when he was in the
+breakfast-room, but Challis remarked a slight flush on the great
+scientist's face as he referred, perhaps a trifle too ostentatiously, to
+the incident. And although it is worthless as evidence, there is
+something rather suspicious in Challis's discovery of finely powdered
+glass in his library--a mere pinch on the parquet near the further
+window of the big room, several feet away from the table at which the
+Wonder habitually sat. Challis would never have noticed the glass, had
+not one larger atom that had escaped pulverisation, caught the light
+from the window and drawn his attention.
+
+But even this find is in no way conclusive. The Professor may quite well
+have walked over to the window, taken off his spectacles to wipe them
+and dropped them as he, himself, explained. While the crushing of some
+fragment of one of the lenses was probably due to the chance of his
+stepping upon it, as he turned on his heel to continue the momentarily
+interrupted conversation. It is hard to believe that so great a man as
+Grossmann could have been convulsed by a petty rage that found
+expression in some act of wanton destruction.
+
+His own brief account of the interview accords very well with the single
+reference to the Wonder which exists in the literature of the world.
+This reference is a footnote to a second edition of Grossmann's
+brochure entitled "An Explanation of Certain Intellectual Abnormalities
+reported in History" ("Eine Erklärung gewisser Intellektueller
+geschichtlich überlieferter Anormalen Erscheinungen"). This footnote
+comes at the end of Grossmann's masterly analysis of the Heinecken case
+and reads: "I recently examined a similar case of abnormality in
+England, but found that it presented no such marked divergence from the
+type as would demand serious investigation."
+
+And in his brief account of the interview rendered to Challis and Elmer,
+Herr Grossmann, in effect, did no more than draft that footnote.
+
+
+IV
+
+It must remain uncertain, now, whether or not Elmer would have persisted
+in his endeavour to exploit the Wonder to the confounding of Grossmann,
+despite Challis's explicit statement that he would do no more, not even
+if it were to save the reputation of the Royal Society. Elmer certainly
+had the virtue of persistence and might have made the attempt. But in
+one of his rare moments of articulate speech, the Wonder decided the
+fate of that threatened controversy beyond the possibility of appeal.
+
+He spoke to Challis that same afternoon. He put up his tiny hand to
+command attention and made the one clear statement on record of his own
+interests and ambitions in the world.
+
+Challis, turning from his discovery of the Professor's crushed glasses,
+listened in silence.
+
+"This Grossmann," the Wonder said, "was not concerned in my exemption?"
+
+Challis shook his head. "He is the last," the Wonder concluded with a
+fine brevity. "You and your kind have no interest in truth."
+
+That last statement may have had a double intention. It is obvious from
+the Wonder's preliminary question,--which had, indeed, also the quality
+of an assertion,--how plainly he had recognised that Grossmann had been
+introduced under false pretences. But, it is permissible to infer that
+the pronouncement went deeper than that. The Wonder's logic penetrated
+far into the mysteries of life and he may have seen that Grossmann's
+attitude was warped by the human limitations of his ambition to shine as
+a great exponent of science; that he dared not follow up a line of
+research which might end in the invalidation of his great theory of
+heredity.
+
+Victor Stott had once before expounded his philosophy and Challis, on
+that occasion, had deliberately refused to listen. And we may guess that
+Grossmann, also, might have received some great illumination, had he
+chosen to pay deference to a mind so infinitely greater than his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+FUGITIVE
+
+
+Meanwhile a child of five--all unconscious that his quiet refusal to
+participate in the making and breaking of reputations was temporarily a
+matter of considerable annoyance to a Fellow of the Royal Society--ran
+through a well-kept index of the books in the library of Challis
+Court--an index written clearly on cards that occupied a great nest of
+accessible drawers; two cards with a full description to each book,
+alphabetically arranged, one card under the title of the work and one
+under the author's name.
+
+The child made no notes as he studied--he never wrote a single line in
+all his life; but when a drawer of that delightful index had been
+searched, he would walk here and there among the three rooms at his
+disposal, and by the aid of the flight of framed steps that ran smoothly
+on rubber-tyred wheels, he would take down now and again some book or
+another until, returning to the table at last to read, he sat in an
+enceinte of piled volumes that had been collected round him.
+
+Sometimes he read a book from beginning to end, more often he glanced
+through it, turning a dozen pages at a time, and then pushed it on one
+side with a gesture displaying the contempt that was not shown by any
+change of expression.
+
+On many afternoons the sombrely clad figure of a tall, gaunt woman would
+stand at the open casement of a window in the larger room, and keep a
+mystic vigil that sometimes lasted for hours. She kept her gaze fixed on
+that strange little figure whenever it roved up and down the suite of
+rooms or clambered the pyramid of brown steps that might have made such
+a glorious plaything for any other child. And even when her son was
+hidden behind the wall of volumes he had built, the woman would still
+stare in his direction, but then her eyes seemed to look inwards; at
+such times she appeared to be wrapped in an introspective devotion.
+
+Very rarely, the heavy-shouldered figure of a man would come to the
+doorway of the larger room, and also keep a silent vigil--a man who
+would stand for some minutes with thoughtful eyes and bent brows and
+then sigh, shake his head and move away, gently closing the door behind
+him.
+
+There were few other interruptions to the silence of that chapel-like
+library. Half a dozen times in the first few months a fair-haired,
+rather supercilious young man came and fetched away a few volumes; but
+even he evidenced an inclination to walk on tiptoe, a tendency that
+mastered him whenever he forgot for a moment his self-imposed rôle of
+scorn....
+
+Outside, over the swelling undulations of rich grass the sheep came back
+with close-cropped, ungainly bodies to a land that was yellow with
+buttercups. But when one looked again, their wool hung about them, and
+they were snatching at short turf that was covered at the woodside by a
+sprinkle of brown leaves. Then the sheep have gone, and the wood is
+black with February rain. And, again, the unfolding of the year is about
+us; a thickening of high twigs in the wood, a glint of green on the
+blackthorn....
+
+Nearly three cycles of death and birth have run their course, and then
+the strange little figure comes no more to the library at Challis
+Court.
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK
+
+
+I
+
+The circumstance that had intrigued me for so long was determined with
+an abruptness only less remarkable than the surprise of the onset. Two
+deaths within six months brought to me, the first, a competence, the
+second, release from gall and bitterness. For the first time in my life
+I was a free man. At forty one can still look forward, and I put the
+past behind me and made plans for the future. There was that book of
+mine still waiting to be written.
+
+It was wonderful how the detail of it all came back to me--the plan of
+it, the thread of development, even the very phrases that I had toyed
+with. The thought of the book brought back a train of associations.
+There was a phrase I had coined as I had walked out from Ailesworth to
+Stoke-Underhill; a chapter I had roughed out the day I went to see
+Ginger Stott at Pym. It seemed to me that the whole conception of the
+book was associated in some way with that neighbourhood. I remembered at
+last that I had first thought of writing it after my return from
+America, on the day that I had had that curious experience with the
+child in the train. It occurred to me that by a reversal of the process,
+I might regain many more of my original thoughts; that by going to live,
+temporarily perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Ailesworth, I might revive
+other associations.
+
+The picture of Pym presented itself to me very clearly. I remembered
+that I had once thought that Pym was a place to which I might retire one
+day in order to write the things I wished to write. I decided to make
+the dream a reality, and I wrote to Mrs. Berridge at the Wood Farm,
+asking her if she could let me have her rooms for the spring, summer,
+and autumn.
+
+
+II
+
+I was all aglow with excitement on the morning that I set out for the
+Hampden Hills. This was change, I thought, freedom, adventure. This was
+the beginning of life, my real entry into the joy of living.
+
+The world was alight with the fire of growth. May had come with a clear
+sky and a torrent of green was flowing over field, hedge, and wood. I
+remember that I thanked "whatever gods there be," that one could live so
+richly in the enjoyment of these things.
+
+
+III
+
+Farmer Bates met me at Great Hittenden Station. His was the only
+available horse and cart at Pym, for the Berridges were in a very small
+way, and it is doubtful if they could have made both ends meet if Mrs.
+Berridge had not done so well by letting her two spare rooms.
+
+I have a great admiration for Farmer Bates and Mrs. Berridge. I regret
+intensely that they should both have been unhappily married. If they had
+married each other they would undoubtedly have made a success of life.
+
+Bates was a Cockney by birth, but always he had had an ambition to take
+a farm, and after twenty years of work as a skilled mechanic he had
+thrown up a well-paid job, and dared the uncertainties which beset the
+English farmer. That venture was a constant bone of strife between him
+and his wife. Mrs. Bates preferred the town. It has always seemed to me
+that there was something fine about Bates and his love for the land.
+
+"Good growing weather, Mr. Bates," I said, as I climbed up into the
+cart.
+
+"Shouldn't be sorry to see some more rain," replied Bates, and damped my
+ardour for a moment.
+
+Just before we turned into the lane that leads up the long hill to Pym,
+we passed a ramshackle cart, piled up with a curious miscellany of
+ruinous furniture. A man was driving, and beside him sat a slatternly
+woman and a repulsive-looking boy of ten or twelve years old, with a
+great swollen head and an open, slobbering mouth.
+
+I was startled. I jumped to the conclusion that this was the child I had
+seen in the train, the son of Ginger Stott.
+
+As we slowed down to the ascent of the long hill, I said to Bates: "Is
+that Stott's boy?"
+
+Bates looked at me curiously. "Why, no," he said. "Them's the 'Arrisons.
+'Arrison's dead now; he was a wrong 'un, couldn't make a job of it,
+nohow. They used to live 'ere, five or six year ago, and now 'er
+'usband's dead, Mrs. 'Arrison's coming back with the boy to live. Worse
+luck. We thought we was shut of 'em."
+
+"Oh!" I said. "The boy's an idiot, I suppose."
+
+"'Orrible," replied Bates, shaking his head, "'orrible; can't speak nor
+nothing; goes about bleating and baa-ing like an old sheep."
+
+I looked round, but the ramshackle cart was hidden by the turn of the
+road. "Does Stott still live at Pym?" I asked.
+
+"Not Ginger," replied Bates. "He lives at Ailesworth. Mrs. Stott and 'er
+son lives here."
+
+"The boy's still alive then?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," said Bates.
+
+"Intelligent child?" I asked.
+
+"They say," replied Bates. "Book-learnin' and such. They say 'e's read
+every book in Mr. Challis's librairy."
+
+"Does he go to school?"
+
+"No. They let 'im off. Leastways Mr. Challis did. They say the Reverend
+Crashaw, down at Stoke, was fair put out about it."
+
+I thought that Bates emphasised the "on dit" nature of his information
+rather markedly. "What do _you_ think of him?" I asked.
+
+"Me?" said Bates. "I don't worry my 'ead about him. I've got too much to
+_do_." And he went off into technicalities concerning the abundance of
+charlock on the arable land of Pym. He called it "garlic." I saw that it
+was typical of Bates that he should have too much to _do_. I reflected
+that his was the calling which begot civilisation.
+
+
+IV
+
+The best and surest route from Pym to the Wood Farm is, appropriately,
+by way of the wood; but in wet weather the alternative of various cart
+tracks that wind among the bracken and shrub of the Common, is
+preferable in many ways. May had been very dry that year, however, and
+Farmer Bates chose the wood. The leaves were still light on the beeches.
+I remember that as I tried to pierce the vista of stems that dipped over
+the steep fall of the hill, I promised myself many a romantic
+exploration of the unknown mysteries beyond.
+
+Everything was so bright that afternoon that nothing, I believe, could
+have depressed me. When I had reached the farm and looked round the low,
+dark room with its one window, a foot from the ground and two from the
+ceiling, I only thought that I should be out-of-doors all the time. It
+amused me that I could touch the ceiling with my head by standing on
+tiptoe, and I laughed at the framed "presentation plates" from old
+Christmas numbers on the walls. These things are merely curious when the
+sun is shining and it is high May, and one is free to do the desired
+work after twenty years in a galley.
+
+
+V
+
+At a quarter to eight that evening I saw the sun set behind the hills.
+As I wandered reflectively down the lane that goes towards Challis
+Court, a blackbird was singing ecstatically in a high elm; here and
+there a rabbit popped out and sat up, the picture of precocious
+curiosity. Nature seemed to be standing in her doorway for a careless
+half-hour's gossip, before putting up the shutters to bar the robbers
+who would soon be about their work of the night.
+
+It was still quite light as I strolled back over the Common, and I chose
+a path that took me through a little spinney of ash, oak, and beech,
+treading carefully to avoid crushing the tender crosiers of bracken that
+were just beginning to break their way through the soil.
+
+As I emerged from the little clump of wood, I saw two figures going away
+from me in the direction of Pym.
+
+One was that of a boy wearing a cricket-cap; he was walking
+deliberately, his hands hanging at his sides; the other figure was a
+taller boy, and he threw out his legs in a curious, undisciplined way,
+as though he had little control over them. At first sight I thought he
+was not sober.
+
+The two passed out of sight behind a clump of hawthorn, but once I saw
+the smaller figure turn and face the other, and once he made a repelling
+gesture with his hands.
+
+It occurred to me that the smaller boy was trying to avoid his
+companion; that he was, in one sense, running away from him, that he
+walked as one might walk away from some threatening animal,
+deliberately--to simulate the appearance of courage.
+
+I fancied the bigger boy was the idiot Harrison I had seen that
+afternoon, and Farmer Bates's "We hoped we were shut of him" recurred to
+me. I wondered if the idiot were dangerous or only a nuisance.
+
+I took the smaller boy to be one of the villagers' children. I noticed
+that his cricket-cap had a dark patch as though it had been mended with
+some other material.
+
+The impression which I received from this trivial affair was one of
+disappointment. The wood and the Common had been so deserted by
+humanity, so given up to nature, that I felt the presence of the idiot
+to be a most distasteful intrusion. "If that horrible thing is going to
+haunt the Common there will be no peace or decency," was the idea that
+presented itself. "I must send him off, the brute," was the corollary.
+But I disliked the thought of being obliged to drive him away.
+
+
+VI
+
+The next morning I did not go on the Common; I was anxious to avoid a
+meeting with the Harrison idiot. I had been debating whether I should
+drive him away if I met him. Obviously I had no more right on the Common
+than he had--on the other hand, he was a nuisance, and I did not see why
+I should allow him to spoil all my pleasure in that ideal stretch of
+wild land which pressed on three sides of the Wood Farm. It was a stupid
+quandary of my own making; but I am afraid it was rather typical of my
+mental attitude. I am prone to set myself tasks, such as this eviction
+of the idiot from common ground, and equally prone to avoid them by a
+process of procrastination.
+
+By way of evasion I walked over to Deane Hill and surveyed the wonderful
+panorama of neat country that fills the basin between the Hampden and
+the Quainton Hills. Seen from that height, it has something the effect
+of a Dutch landscape, it all looks so amazingly tidy. Away to the left I
+looked over Stoke-Underhill. Ailesworth was a blur in the hollow, but I
+could distinguish the high fence of the County Ground.
+
+I sat all the morning on Deane Hill, musing and smoking, thinking of
+such things as Ginger Stott, and the match with Surrey. I decided that I
+must certainly go and see Stott's queer son, the phenomenon who had,
+they say, read all the books in Mr. Challis's library. I wondered what
+sort of a library this Challis had, and who he was. I had never heard of
+him before. I think I must have gone to sleep for a time.
+
+When Mrs. Berridge came to clear away my dinner--I dined, without shame,
+at half-past twelve--I detained her with conversation. Presently I asked
+about little Stott.
+
+"He's a queer one, that's what he is," said Mrs. Berridge. She was a
+neat, comely little woman, rather superior to her station, and it seemed
+to me, certainly superior to her clod of a husband.
+
+"A great reader, Farmer Bates tells me," I said.
+
+Mrs. Berridge passed that by. "His mother's in trouble about him this
+morning," she said. "She's such a nice, respectable woman, and has all
+her milk and eggs and butter off of us. She was here this morning while
+you were out, sir, and, what I could make of it that 'Arrison boy had
+been chasing her boy on the Common last night."
+
+"Oh!" I said with sudden enlightenment. "I believe I saw them." At the
+back of my mind I was struggling desperately with a vague remembrance.
+It may sound incredible, but I had only the dimmest memory of my later
+experience of the child. The train incident was still fresh in my mind,
+but I could not remember what Stott had told me when I talked with him
+by the pond. I seemed to have an impression that the child had some
+strange power of keeping people at a distance; or was I mixing up
+reality with some Scandinavian fairy tale?
+
+"Very likely, sir," Mrs. Berridge went on. "What upset Mrs. Stott was
+that her boy's never upset by anything--he has a curious way of looking
+at you, sir, that makes you wish you wasn't there; but from what Mrs.
+Stott says, this 'Arrison boy wasn't to be drove off, anyhow, and her
+son came in quite flurried like. Mrs. Stott seemed quite put out about
+it."
+
+Doubtless I might have had more information from my landlady, but I was
+struggling to reconstruct that old experience which had slipped away
+from me, and I nodded and turned back to the book I had been pretending
+to read. Mrs. Berridge was one of those unusual women--for her station
+in life--who know when to be silent, and she finished her clearing away
+without initiating any further remarks.
+
+When she had finished I went out onto the Common and looked for the pond
+where I had talked with Ginger Stott.
+
+I found it after a time, and then I began to gather up the threads I had
+dropped.
+
+It all came back to me, little by little. I remembered that talk I had
+had with him, his very gestures; I remembered how he had spoken of
+habits, or the necessity for the lack of them, and that took me back to
+the scene in the British Museum Reading Room, and to my theory. I was
+suddenly alive to that old interest again.
+
+I got up and walked eagerly in the direction of Mrs. Stott's cottage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE INCIPIENCE OF MY SUBJECTION TO THE WONDER
+
+
+I
+
+Victor Stott was in his eighth year when I met him for the third time. I
+must have stayed longer than I imagined by the pond on the Common, for
+Mrs. Stott and her son had had tea, and the boy was preparing to go out.
+He stopped when he saw me coming; an unprecedented mark of recognition,
+so I have since learned.
+
+As I saw him then, he made a remarkable, but not a repulsively abnormal
+figure. His baldness struck one immediately, but it did not give him a
+look of age. Then one noticed that his head was unmistakably out of
+proportion to his body, yet the disproportion was not nearly so marked
+as it had been in infancy. These two things were conspicuous; the less
+salient peculiarities were observed later; the curious little beaky nose
+that jutted out at an unusual angle from the face, the lips that were
+too straight and determined for a child, the laxity of the limbs when
+the body was in repose--lastly, the eyes.
+
+When I met Victor Stott on this, third, occasion, there can be no doubt
+that he had lost something of his original power. This may have been due
+to his long sojourn in the world of books, a sojourn that had, perhaps,
+altered the strange individuality of his thought; or it may have been
+due, in part at least, to his recent recognition of the fact that the
+power of his gaze exercised no influence over creatures such as the
+Harrison idiot. Nevertheless, though something of the original force had
+abated, he still had an extraordinary, and, so far as I can learn,
+altogether unprecedented power of enforcing his will without word or
+gesture; and I may say here that in those rare moments when Victor Stott
+looked me in the face, I seemed to see a rare and wonderful personality
+peering out through his eyes,--the personality which had, no doubt,
+spoken to Challis and Lewes through that long afternoon in the library
+of Challis Court. Normally one saw a curious, unattractive, rather
+repulsive figure of a child; when he looked at one with that rare look
+of intention, the man that lived within that unattractive body was
+revealed, his insight, his profundity, his unexampled wisdom. If we mark
+the difference between man and animals by a measure of intelligence,
+then surely this child was a very god among men.
+
+
+II
+
+Victor Stott did not look at me when I entered his mother's cottage; I
+saw only the unattractive exterior of him, and I blundered into an air
+of patronage.
+
+"Is this your boy?" I said, when I had greeted her. "I hear he is a
+great scholar."
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Ellen Mary quietly. She never boasted to strangers.
+
+"You don't remember me, I suppose?" I went on, foolishly; trying,
+however, to speak as to an equal. "You were in petticoats the last time
+I saw you."
+
+The Wonder was standing by the window, his arms hanging loosely at his
+sides; he looked out aslant up the lane; his profile was turned towards
+me. He made no answer to my question.
+
+"Oh yes, sir, he remembers," replied Ellen Mary. "He never forgets
+anything."
+
+I paused, uncomfortably. I was slightly huffed by the boy's silence.
+
+"I have come to spend the summer here," I said at last. "I hope he will
+come to see me. I have brought a good many books with me; perhaps he
+might care to read some of them."
+
+I had to talk _at_ the boy; there was no alternative. Inwardly I was
+thinking that I had Kant's Critique and Hegel's Phenomenology among my
+books. "He may put on airs of scholarship," I thought; "but I fancy that
+he will find those two works rather above the level of his comprehension
+as yet." I did not recognise the fact that it was I who was putting on
+airs, not Victor Stott.
+
+"'E's given up reading the past six weeks, sir," said Ellen Mary, "but I
+daresay he will come and see your books."
+
+She spoke demurely, and she did not look at her son; I received the
+impression that her statements were laid before him to take up, reject,
+or pass unnoticed as he pleased.
+
+I was slightly exasperated. I turned to the Wonder. "Would you care to
+come?" I asked.
+
+He nodded without looking at me, and walked out of the cottage.
+
+I hesitated.
+
+"'E'll go with you now, sir," prompted Ellen Mary. "That's what 'e
+means."
+
+I followed the Wonder in a condition of suppressed irritation. "His
+mother might be able to interpret his rudeness," I thought, "but I would
+teach him to convey his intentions more clearly. The child had been
+spoilt."
+
+
+III
+
+The Wonder chose the road over the Common. I should have gone by the
+wood, but when we came to the entrance of the wood, he turned up on to
+the Common. He did not ask me which way I preferred. Indeed, we neither
+of us spoke during the half-mile walk that separated the Wood Farm from
+the last cottage in Pym.
+
+I was fuming inwardly. I had it in my mind at that time to put the
+Wonder through some sort of an examination. I was making plans to
+contribute towards his education, to send him to Oxford, later. I had
+adumbrated a scheme to arouse interest in his case among certain
+scholars and men of influence with whom I was slightly acquainted. I had
+been very much engrossed with these plans as I had made my way to the
+Stotts' cottage. I was still somewhat exalted in mind with my dreams of
+a vicarious brilliance. I had pictured the Wonder's magnificent passage
+through the University; I had acted, in thought, as the generous and
+kindly benefactor.... It had been a grandiose dream, and the reality was
+so humiliating. Could I make this mannerless child understand his
+possibilities? Had he any ambition?
+
+Thinking of these things, I had lagged behind as we crossed the Common,
+and when I came to the gate of the farmyard, the Wonder was at the door
+of the house. He did not wait for me, but walked straight into my
+sitting-room. When I entered, I found him seated on the low window-sill,
+turning over the top layer of books in the large case which had been
+opened, but not unpacked. There was no place to put the books; in fact,
+I was proposing to have some shelves put up, if Mrs. Berridge had no
+objection.
+
+I entered the room in a condition of warm indignation. "Cheek" was the
+word that was in my mind. "Confounded cheek," I muttered. Nevertheless I
+did not interrupt the boy; instead, I lit a cigarette, sat down and
+watched him.
+
+I was sceptical at first. I noted at once the sure touch with which the
+boy handled my books, the practised hand that turned the pages, the
+quick examination of title-page and the list of contents, the occasional
+swift reference to the index, but I did not believe it possible that any
+one could read so fast as he read when he did condescend for a few
+moments to give his attention to a few consecutive pages. "Was it a
+pose?" I thought, yet he was certainly an adept in handling the books. I
+was puzzled, yet I was still sceptical--the habit of experience was
+towards disbelief--a boy of seven and a half could not possibly have the
+mental equipment to skim all that philosophy....
+
+My books were being unpacked very quickly. Kant, Hegel, Schelling,
+Fichte, Leibnitz, Nietzsche, Hume, Bradley, William James had all been
+rejected and were piled on the floor, but he had hesitated longer over
+Bergson's _Creative Evolution_. He really seemed to be giving that some
+attention, though he read it--if he were reading it--so fast that the
+hand which turned the pages hardly rested between each movement.
+
+When Bergson was sent to join his predecessors, I determined that I
+would get some word out of this strange child--I had never yet heard him
+speak, not a single syllable. I determined to brave all rebuffs. I was
+prepared for that.
+
+"Well?" I said, when Bergson was laid down. "Well! What do you make of
+that?"
+
+He turned and looked out of the window.
+
+I came and sat on the end of the table within a few feet of him. From
+that position I, too, could see out of the window, and I saw the figure
+of the Harrison idiot slouching over the farmyard gate.
+
+A gust of impatience whirled over me. I caught up my stick and went out
+quickly.
+
+"Now then," I said, as I came within speaking distance of the idiot,
+"get away from here. Out with you!"
+
+The idiot probably understood no word of what I said, but like a dog he
+was quick to interpret my tone and gesture. He made a revoltingly
+inhuman sound as he shambled away, a kind of throaty yelp. I walked back
+to the house. I could not avoid the feeling that I had been
+unnecessarily brutal.
+
+When I returned the Wonder was still staring out of the window; but
+though I did not guess it then, the idiot had served my purpose better
+than my determination. It was to the idiot that I owed my subsequent
+knowledge of Victor Stott. The Wonder had found a use for me. He was
+resigned to bear with my feeble mental development, because I was strong
+enough to keep at bay that half-animal creature who appeared to believe
+that Victor Stott was one of his own kind--the only one he had ever met.
+The idiot in some unimaginable way had inferred a likeness between
+himself and the Wonder--they both had enormous heads--and the idiot was
+the only human being over whom the Wonder was never able to exercise the
+least authority.
+
+
+IV
+
+I went in and sat down again on the end of the table. I was rather
+heated. I lit another cigarette and stared at the Wonder, who was still
+looking out of the window.
+
+There was silence for a few seconds, and then he spoke of his own
+initiative.
+
+"Illustrates the weakness of argument from history and analogy," he said
+in a clear, small voice, addressing no one in particular. "Hegel's
+limitations are qualitatively those of Harrison, who argues that I and
+he are similar in kind."
+
+The proposition was so astounding that I could find no answer
+immediately. If the statement had been made in boyish language I should
+have laughed at it, but the phraseology impressed me.
+
+"You've read Hegel, then?" I asked evasively.
+
+"Subtract the endeavour to demonstrate a preconceived hypothesis from
+any known philosophy," continued the Wonder, without heeding my
+question, "and the remainder, the only valuable material, is found to be
+distorted." He paused as if waiting for my reply.
+
+How could one answer such propositions as these offhand? I tried,
+however, to get at the gist of the sentence, and, as the silence
+continued, I said with some hesitation: "But it is impossible, surely,
+to approach the work of writing, say a philosophy, without some
+apprehension of the end in view?"
+
+"Illogical," replied the Wonder, "not philosophy; a system of trial and
+error--to evaluate a complex variable function." He paused a moment, and
+then glanced down at the pile of books on the floor. "More millions," he
+said.
+
+I think he meant that more millions of books might be written on this
+system without arriving at an answer to the problem, but I admit that I
+am at a loss, that I cannot interpret his remarks. I wrote them down an
+hour or two after they were uttered, but I may have made mistakes. The
+mathematical metaphor is beyond me. I have no acquaintance with the
+higher mathematics.
+
+The Wonder had a very expressionless face, but I thought at this moment
+that he wore a look of sadness; and that look was one of the factors
+which helped me to understand the unbridgeable gulf that lay between his
+intellect and mine. I think it was at this moment that I first began to
+change my opinion. I had been regarding him as an unbearable little
+prig, but it flashed across me as I watched him now, that his mind and
+my own might be so far differentiated that he was unable to convey his
+thoughts to me. "Was it possible," I wondered, "that he had been trying
+to talk down to my level?"
+
+"I am afraid I don't quite follow you," I said. I had intended to
+question him further, to urge him to explain, but it came to me that it
+would be quite hopeless to go on. How can one answer the unreasoning
+questions of a child? Here I was the child, though a child of slightly
+advanced development. I could appreciate that it was useless to persist
+in a futile "Why, why?" when the answer could only be given in terms
+that I could not comprehend. Therefore I hesitated, sighed, and then
+with that obstinacy of vanity which creates an image of self-protection
+and refuses to relinquish it, I said:
+
+"I wish you could explain yourself; not on this particular point of
+philosophy, but your life----" I stopped, because I did not know how to
+phrase my demand. What was it, after all, that I wanted to learn?
+
+"That I can't explain," said the Wonder. "There are no data."
+
+I saw that he had accepted my request for explanation in a much wider
+sense than I had intended, and I took him up on this.
+
+"But haven't you any hypothesis?"
+
+"I cannot work on the system of trial and error," replied the Wonder.
+
+Our conversation went no further this afternoon, for Mrs. Berridge came
+in to lay the cloth. She looked askance, I thought, at the figure on the
+window-sill, but she ventured no remark save to ask if I was ready for
+my supper.
+
+"Yes, oh! yes!" I said.
+
+"Shall I lay for two, sir?" asked Mrs. Berridge.
+
+"Will you stay and have supper?" I said to the Wonder, but he shook his
+head, got up and walked out of the room. I watched him cross the
+farmyard and make his way over the Common.
+
+"Well!" I said to Mrs. Berridge, when the boy was out of sight, "that
+child is what in America they call 'the limit,' Mrs. Berridge."
+
+My landlady put her lips together, shook her head, and shivered
+slightly. "He gives me the shudders," she said.
+
+
+V
+
+I neither read nor wrote that evening. I forgot to go out for a walk at
+sunset. I sat and pondered until it was time for bed, and then I
+pondered myself to sleep. No vision came to me, and I had no relevant
+dreams.
+
+The next morning at seven o'clock I saw Mrs. Stott come over the Common
+to fetch her milk from the farm. I waited until her business was done,
+and then I went out and walked back with her.
+
+"I want to understand about your son," I said by way of making an
+opening.
+
+She looked at me quickly. "You know, 'e 'ardly ever speaks to me, sir,"
+she said.
+
+I was staggered for a moment. "But you understand him?" I said.
+
+"In some ways, sir," was her answer.
+
+I recognised the direction of the limitation. "Ah! we none of us
+understand him in all ways," I said, with a touch of patronage.
+
+"No, sir," replied Ellen Mary. She evidently agreed to that statement
+without qualification.
+
+"But what is he going to do?" I asked. "When he grows up, I mean?"
+
+"I can't say, sir. We must leave that to 'im."
+
+I accepted the rebuke more mildly than I should have done on the
+previous day. "He never speaks of his future?" I said feebly.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+There seemed to be nothing more to say. We had only gone a couple of
+hundred yards, but I paused in my walk. I thought I might as well go
+back and get my breakfast. But Mrs. Stott looked at me as though she had
+something more to say. We stood facing each other on the cart track.
+
+"I suppose I can't be of any use?" I asked vaguely.
+
+Ellen Mary became suddenly voluble.
+
+"I 'ope I'm not askin' too much, sir," she said, "but there is a way you
+could 'elp if you would. 'E 'ardly ever speaks to me, as I've said, but
+I've been opset about that 'Arrison boy. 'E's a brute beast, sir, if you
+know what I mean, and _'e_" (she differentiated her pronouns only by
+accent, and where there is any doubt I have used italics to indicate
+that her son is referred to) "doesn't seem to 'ave the same 'old on 'im
+as _'e_ does over others. It's truth, I am not easy in my mind about it,
+sir, although _'e_ 'as never said a word to me, not being afraid of
+anything like other children, but 'e seems to have took a sort of a
+fancy to you, sir" (I think this was intended as the subtlest flattery),
+"and if you was to go with 'im when 'e takes 'is walks--'e's much in the
+air, sir, and a great one for walkin'--I think 'e'd be glad of your
+cump'ny, though maybe 'e won't never say it in so many words. You
+mustn't mind 'im being silent, sir; there's some things we can't
+understand, and though, as I say, 'e 'asn't said anything to me, it's
+not that I'm scheming be'ind 'is back, for I know 'is meaning without
+words being necessary."
+
+She might have said more, but I interrupted her at this point.
+"Certainly, I will come and fetch him,"--I lapsed unconsciously into her
+system of denomination--"this morning, if you are sure he would like to
+come out with me."
+
+"I'm quite sure, sir," she said.
+
+"About nine o'clock?" I asked.
+
+"That would do nicely, sir," she answered.
+
+As I walked back to the farm I was thinking of the life of those two
+occupants of the Stotts' cottage. The mother who watched her son in
+silence, studying his every look and action in order to gather his
+meaning; who never asked her son a question nor expected from him any
+statement of opinion; and the son wrapped always in that profound
+speculation which seemed to be his only mood. What a household!
+
+It struck me while I was having breakfast that I seemed to have let
+myself in for a duty that might prove anything but pleasant.
+
+
+VI
+
+There is nothing to say of that first walk of mine with the Wonder. I
+spoke to him once or twice and he answered by nodding his head; even
+this notice I now know to have been a special mark of favour, a
+condescension to acknowledge his use for me as a guardian. He did not
+speak at all on this occasion.
+
+I did not call for him in the afternoon; I had made other plans. I
+wanted to see the man Challis, whose library had been at the disposal of
+this astonishing child. Challis might be able to give me further
+information. The truth of the matter is that I was in two minds as to
+whether I would stay at Pym through the summer, as I had originally
+intended. I was not in love with the prospect which the sojourn now held
+out for me. If I were to be constituted head nursemaid to Master Victor
+Stott, there would remain insufficient time for the progress of my own
+book on certain aspects of the growth of the philosophic method.
+
+I see now, when I look back, that I was not convinced at that time, that
+I still doubted the Wonder's learning. I may have classed it as a
+freakish pedantry, the result of an unprecedented memory.
+
+Mrs. Berridge had much information to impart on the subject of Henry
+Challis. He was her husband's landlord, of course, and his was a
+hallowed name, to be spoken with decency and respect. I am afraid I
+shocked Mrs. Berridge at the outset by my casual "Who's this man
+Challis?" She certainly atoned by her own manner for my irreverence; she
+very obviously tried to impress me. I professed submission, but was not
+intimidated, rather my curiosity was aroused.
+
+Mrs. Berridge was not able to tell me the one thing I most desired to
+know, whether the lord of Challis Court was in residence; but it was not
+far to walk, and I set out about two o'clock.
+
+
+VII
+
+Challis was getting into his motor as I walked up the drive. I hurried
+forward to catch him before the machine was started. He saw me coming
+and paused on the doorstep.
+
+"Did you want to see me?" he asked, as I came up.
+
+"Mr. Challis?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"I won't keep you now," I said, "but perhaps you could let me know some
+time when I could see you."
+
+"Oh, yes," he said, with the air of a man who is constantly subjected to
+annoyance by strangers. "But perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me what
+it is you wish to see me about? I might be able to settle it now, at
+once."
+
+"I am staying at the Wood Farm," I began. "I am interested in a very
+remarkable child----"
+
+"Ah! take my advice, leave him alone," interrupted Challis quickly.
+
+I suppose I looked my amazement, for Challis laughed. "Oh, well," he
+said, "of course you won't take such spontaneous advice as that. I'm in
+no hurry. Come in." He took off his heavy overcoat and threw it into the
+tonneau. "Come round again in an hour," he said to the chauffeur.
+
+"It's very good of you," I protested, "I could come quite well at any
+other time."
+
+"I'm in no hurry," he repeated. "You had better come to the scene of
+Victor Stott's operations. He hasn't been here for six weeks, by the
+way. Can you throw any light on his absence?"
+
+I made a friend that afternoon. When the car came back at four o'clock,
+Challis sent it away again. "I shall probably stay down here to-night,"
+he said to the butler, and to me: "Can you stay to dinner? I must
+convince you about this child."
+
+"I have dined once to-day," I said. "At half-past twelve. I have no
+other excuse."
+
+"Oh! well," said Challis, "you needn't eat, but I must. Get us
+something, Heathcote," he said to the butler, "and bring tea here."
+
+Much of our conversation after dinner was not relevant to the subject of
+the Wonder; we drifted into a long argument upon human origins which has
+no place here. But by that time I had been very well informed as to all
+the essential facts of the Wonder's childhood, of his entry into the
+world of books, of his earlier methods, and of the significance of that
+long speech in the library. But at that point Challis became reserved.
+He would give me no details.
+
+"You must forgive me; I can't go into that," he said.
+
+"But it is so incomparably important," I protested.
+
+"That may be, but you must not question me. The truth of the matter is
+that I have a very confused memory of what the boy said, and the little
+I might remember, I prefer to leave undisturbed."
+
+He piqued my curiosity, but I did not press him. It was so evident that
+he did not wish to speak on that head.
+
+He walked up with me to the farm at ten o'clock and came into my room.
+
+"We need not keep you out of bed, Mrs. Berridge," he said to my
+flustered landlady. "I daresay we shall be up till all hours. We promise
+to see that the house is locked up." Mr. Berridge stood a figure of
+subservience in the background.
+
+My books were still heaped on the floor. Challis sat down on the
+window-sill and looked over some of them. "Many of these Master Stott
+probably read in my library," he remarked, "in German. Language is no
+bar to him. He learns a language as you or I would learn a page of
+history."
+
+Later on, I remember that we came down to essentials. "I must try and
+understand something of this child's capacities," I said in answer to a
+hint of Challis's that I should leave the Wonder alone. "It seems to me
+that here we have something which is of the first importance, of greater
+importance, indeed, than anything else in the history of the world."
+
+"But you can't make him speak," said Challis.
+
+"I shall try," I said. "I recognise that we cannot compel him, but I
+have a certain hold over him. I see from what you have told me that he
+has treated me with most unusual courtesy. I assure you that several
+times when I spoke to him this morning he nodded his head."
+
+"A good beginning," laughed Challis.
+
+"I can't understand," I went on, "how it is that you are not more
+interested. It seems to me that this child knows many things which we
+have been patiently attempting to discover since the dawn of
+civilisation."
+
+"Quite," said Challis. "I admit that, but ... well, I don't think I want
+to know."
+
+"Surely," I said, "this key to all knowledge----"
+
+"We are not ready for it," replied Challis. "You can't teach metaphysics
+to children."
+
+Nevertheless my ardour was increased, not abated, by my long talk with
+Challis.
+
+"I shall go on," I said, as I went out to the farm gate with him at
+half-past two in the morning.
+
+"Ah! well," he answered, "I shall come over and see you when I get
+back." He had told me earlier that he was going abroad for some months.
+
+We hesitated a moment by the gate, and instinctively we both looked up
+at the vault of the sky and the glimmering dust of stars.
+
+The same thought was probably in both our minds, the thought of the
+insignificance of this little system that revolves round one of the
+lesser lights of the Milky Way, but that thought was not to be expressed
+save by some banality, and we did not speak.
+
+"I shall certainly look you up when I come back," said Challis.
+
+"Yes; I hope you will," I said lamely.
+
+I watched the loom of his figure against the vague background till I
+could distinguish it no longer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PROGRESS AND RELAXATION OF MY SUBJECTION
+
+
+I
+
+The memory of last summer is presented to me now as a series of
+pictures, some brilliant, others vague, others again so uncertain that I
+cannot be sure how far they are true memories of actual occurrences, and
+how far they are interwoven with my thoughts and dreams. I have, for
+instance, a recollection of standing on Deane Hill and looking down over
+the wide panorama of rural England, through a driving mist of fine rain.
+This might well be counted among true memories, were it not for the fact
+that clearly associated with the picture is an image of myself grown to
+enormous dimensions, a Brocken spectre that threatened the world with
+titanic gestures of denouncement, and I seem to remember that this
+figure was saying: "All life runs through my fingers like a handful of
+dry sand." And yet the remembrance has not the quality of a dream.
+
+I was, undoubtedly, overwrought at times. There were days when the
+sight of a book filled me with physical nausea, with contempt for the
+littleness, the narrow outlook, that seemed to me to characterise every
+written work. I was fiercely, but quite impotently, eager at such times
+to demonstrate the futility of all the philosophy ranged on the rough
+wooden shelves in my gloomy sitting-room. I would walk up and down and
+gesticulate, struggling, fighting to make clear to myself what a true
+philosophy should set forth. I felt at such times that all the knowledge
+I needed for so stupendous a task was present with me in some
+inexplicable way, was even pressing upon me, but that my brain was so
+clogged and heavy that not one idea of all that priceless wisdom could
+be expressed in clear thought. "I have never been taught to think," I
+would complain, "I have never perfected the machinery of thought," and
+then some dictum thrown out haphazard by the Wonder--his conception of
+light conversation--would recur to me, and I would realise that however
+well I had been trained, my limitations would remain, that I was an
+undeveloped animal, only one stage higher than a totem-fearing savage, a
+creature of small possibilities, incapable of dealing with great
+problems.
+
+Once the Wonder said to me, in a rare moment of lucid condescension to
+my feeble intellect, "You figure space as a void in three dimensions,
+and time as a line that runs across it, and all other conceptions you
+relegate to that measure." He implied that this was a cumbrous machinery
+which had no relation to reality, and could define nothing. He told me
+that his idea of force, for example, was a pure abstraction, for which
+there was no figure in my mental outfit.
+
+Such pronouncements as these left me struggling like a drowning man in
+deep water. I felt that it _must_ be possible for me to come to the
+surface, but I could do nothing but flounder; beating fiercely with
+limbs that were so powerful and yet so utterly useless. I saw that my
+very metaphors symbolised my feebleness; I had no terms for my own
+mental condition; I was forced to resort to some inapplicable physical
+analogy.
+
+These fits of revolt against the limitations of human thought grew more
+frequent as the summer progressed. Day after day my self-sufficiency and
+conceit were being crushed out of me. I was always in the society of a
+boy of seven whom I was forced to regard as immeasurably my intellectual
+superior. There was no department of useful knowledge in which I could
+compete with him. Compete indeed! I might as well speak of a
+third-standard child competing with Macaulay in a general knowledge
+paper.
+
+"_Useful_ knowledge," I have written, but the phrase needs definition. I
+might have taught the Wonder many things, no doubt; the habits of men
+in great cities, the aspects of foreign countries, or the subtleties of
+cricket; but when I was with him I felt--and my feelings must have been
+typical--that such things as these were of no account.
+
+Towards the end of the summer, the occasions upon which I was able to
+stimulate myself into a condition of bearable complacency were very
+rare. I often thought of Challis's advice to leave the Wonder alone. I
+should have gone away if I had been free, but Victor Stott had a use for
+me, and I was powerless to disobey him. I feared him, but he controlled
+me at his will. I feared him as I had once feared an imaginary God, but
+I did not hate him.
+
+One curious little fragment of wisdom came to me as the result of my
+experience--a useless fragment perhaps, but something that has in one
+way altered my opinion of my fellow-men. I have learnt that a measure of
+self-pride, of complacency, is essential to every human being. I judge
+no man any more for displaying an overweening vanity, rather do I envy
+him this representative mark of his humanity. The Wonder was completely
+and quite inimitably devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had no
+meaning for him. It was inconceivable that he should compare himself
+with any of his fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that any
+honour they might have lavished upon him would have given him one
+moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among aliens who were unable to
+comprehend him, aliens who could not flatter him, whose opinions were
+valueless to him. He had no more common ground on which to air his
+knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve
+self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep.
+From what I have heard him say on the subject of our slavery to
+preconceptions, I think the metaphor of sheep is one which he might have
+approved.
+
+But the result of all this, so far as I am concerned, is a feeling of
+admiration for those men who are capable of such magnificent approval
+for themselves, the causes they espouse, their family, their country,
+and their species; it is an approval which I fear I can never again
+attain in full measure.
+
+I have seen possibilities which have enforced a humbleness that is not
+good for my happiness nor conducive to my development. Henceforward I
+will espouse the cause of vanity. It is only the vain who deprecate
+vanity in others.
+
+But there were times in the early period of my association with Victor
+Stott when I rebelled vigorously against his complacent assumption of my
+ignorance.
+
+
+II
+
+May was a gloriously fine month, and we were much out of doors.
+Unfortunately, except for one fortnight in August, that was all the
+settled weather we had that summer.
+
+I remember sitting one afternoon staring at the same pond that Ginger
+Stott had stared at when he told me that the boy now beside me was a
+"blarsted freak."
+
+The Wonder had said nothing that day, but now he began to enunciate some
+of his incomprehensible commonplaces in that thin, clear voice of his. I
+wrote down what I could remember of his utterances when I went home, but
+now I read them over again I am exceedingly doubtful whether I reported
+him correctly. There is, however, one dictum which seems clearly
+phrased, and when I recall the scene, I remember trying to push the
+induction he had started. The pronouncement, as I have it written, is as
+follows:
+
+"Pure deduction from a single premiss, unaided by previous knowledge of
+the functions of the terms used in the expansion of the argument, is an
+act of creation, incontrovertible, and outside the scope of human
+reasoning."
+
+I believe he meant to say--but my notes are horribly confused--that
+logic and philosophy were only relative, being dependent always in a
+greater or less degree upon the test of a material experiment for
+verification.
+
+Here, as always, I find the Wonder's pronouncements very elusive. In one
+sense I see that what I have quoted here is a self-evident proposition,
+but I have the feeling that behind it there lies some gleam of wisdom
+which throws a faint light on the profound problem of existence.
+
+I remember that in my own feeble way I tried to analyse this statement,
+and for a time I thought I had grasped one significant aspect of it. It
+seemed to me that the possibility of conceiving a philosophy that was
+not dependent for verification upon material experiment--that is to say,
+upon evidence afforded by the five senses--indicates that there is
+something which is not matter; but that since the development of such a
+philosophy is not possible to our minds, we must argue that our
+dependence upon matter is so intimate that it is almost impossible to
+conceive that we are actuated by any impulse which does not arise out of
+a material complex.
+
+At the back of my mind there seemed to be a thought that I could not
+focus, I trembled on the verge of some great revelation that never came.
+
+Through my thoughts there ran a thread of reverence for the intelligence
+that had started my speculations. If only he could speak in terms that
+I could understand.
+
+I looked round at the Wonder. He was, as usual, apparently lost in
+abstraction, and quite unconscious of my regard.
+
+The wind was strong on the Common, and he sniffed once or twice and then
+wiped his nose. He did not use a handkerchief.
+
+It came to me at the moment that he was no more than a vulgar little
+village boy.
+
+
+III
+
+There were few incidents to mark the progress of that summer. I marked
+the course of time by my own thoughts and feelings, especially by my
+growing submission to the control of the Wonder.
+
+It was curious to recall that I had once thought of correcting the
+Wonder's manners, of administering, perhaps, a smacking. That was a
+fault of ignorance. I had often erred in the same way in other
+experiences of life, but I had not taken the lesson to heart. I remember
+at school our "head" taking us--I was in the lower fifth then--in Latin
+verse. He rebuked me for a false quantity, and I, very cocksure,
+disputed the point and read my line. The head pointed out very gravely
+that I had been misled by an English analogy in my pronunciation of the
+word "maritus," and I grew very hot and ashamed and apologetic. I feel
+much the same now when I think of my early attitude towards the Wonder.
+But this time, I think, I have profited by my experience.
+
+There is, however, one incident which in the light of subsequent events
+it seems worth while to record.
+
+One afternoon in early July, when the sky had lifted sufficiently for us
+to attempt some sort of a walk, we made our way down through the sodden
+woods in the direction of Deane Hill.
+
+As we were emerging into the lane at the foot of the slope, I saw the
+Harrison idiot lurking behind the trunk of a big beech. This was only
+the third time I had seen him since I drove him away from the farm, and
+on the two previous occasions he had not come close to us.
+
+This time he had screwed up his courage to follow us. As we climbed the
+lane I saw him slouching up the hedge-side behind us.
+
+The Wonder took no notice, and we continued our way in silence.
+
+When we reached the prospect at the end of the hill, where the ground
+falls away like a cliff and you have a bird's-eye view of two counties,
+we sat down on the steps of the monument erected in honour of those
+Hampdenshire men whose lives were thrown away in the South-African war.
+
+That view always has a soothing effect upon me, and I gave myself up to
+an ecstasy of contemplation and forgot, for a few moments, the presence
+of the Wonder, and the fact that the idiot had followed us.
+
+I was recalled to existence by the sound of a foolish, conciliatory
+mumbling, and looked round to see the leering face of the Harrison idiot
+ogling the Wonder from the corner of the plinth. The Wonder was between
+me and the idiot, but he was apparently oblivious of either of us.
+
+I was about to rise and drive the idiot away, but the Wonder, still
+staring out at some distant horizon, said quietly, "Let him be."
+
+I was astonished, but I sat still and awaited events.
+
+The idiot behaved much as I have seen a very young and nervous puppy
+behave.
+
+He came within a few feet of us, gurgling and crooning, flapping his
+hands and waggling his great head; his uneasy eyes wandered from the
+Wonder to me and back again, but it was plainly the Wonder whom he
+wished to propitiate. Then he suddenly backed as if he had dared too
+much, flopped on to the wet grass and regarded us both with foolish,
+goggling eyes. For a few seconds he lay still, and then he began to
+squirm along the ground towards us, a few inches at a time, stopping
+every now and again to bleat and gurgle with that curious, crooning
+note which he appeared to think would pacificate the object of his
+overtures.
+
+I stood by, as it were; ready to obey the first hint that the presence
+of this horrible creature was distasteful to the Wonder, but he gave no
+sign.
+
+The idiot had come within five or six feet of us, wriggling himself
+along the wet grass, before the Wonder looked at him. The look when it
+came was one of those deliberate, intentional stares which made one feel
+so contemptible and insignificant.
+
+The idiot evidently regarded this look as a sign of encouragement. He
+knelt up, began to flap his hands and changed his crooning note to a
+pleased, emphatic bleat.
+
+"A-ba-ba," he blattered, and made uncouth gestures, by which I think he
+meant to signify that he wanted the Wonder to come and play with him.
+
+Still the Wonder gave no sign, but his gaze never wavered, and though
+the idiot was plainly not intimidated, he never met that gaze for more
+than a second or two. Nevertheless he came on, walking now on his knees,
+and at last stretched out a hand to touch the boy he so curiously
+desired for a playmate.
+
+That broke the spell. The Wonder drew back quickly--he never allowed one
+to touch him--got up and climbed two or three steps higher up the base
+of the monument. "Send him away," he said to me.
+
+"That'll do," I said threateningly to the idiot, and at the sound of my
+voice and the gesture of my hand, he blenched, yelped, rolled over away
+from me, and then got to his feet and shambled off for several yards
+before stopping to regard us once more with his pacificatory, disgusting
+ogle.
+
+"Send him away," repeated the Wonder, as I hesitated, and I rose to my
+feet and pretended to pick up a stone.
+
+That was enough. The idiot yelped again and made off. This time he did
+not stop, though he looked over his shoulder several times as he
+lolloped away among the low gorse, to which look I replied always with
+the threat of an imaginary stone.
+
+The Wonder made no comment on the incident as we walked home. He had
+shown no sign of fear. It occurred to me that my guardianship of him was
+merely a convenience, not a protection from any danger.
+
+
+IV
+
+As time went on it became increasingly clear to me that my chance of
+obtaining the Wonder's confidence was becoming more and more remote.
+
+At first he had replied to my questions; usually, it is true, by no more
+than an inclination of his head, but he soon ceased to make even this
+acknowledgment of my presence.
+
+So I fell by degrees into a persistent habit of silence, admitted my
+submission by obtruding neither remark nor question upon my constant
+companion, and gave up my intention of using the Wonder as a means to
+gratify my curiosity concerning the problem of existence.
+
+Once or twice I saw Crashaw at a distance. He undoubtedly recognised the
+Wonder, and I think he would have liked to come up and rebuke
+him--perhaps me, also; but probably he lacked the courage. He would
+hover within sight of us for a few minutes, scowling, and then stalk
+away. He gave me the impression of being a dangerous man, a thwarted
+fanatic, brooding over his defeat. If I had been Mrs. Stott, I should
+have feared the intrusion of Crashaw more than the foolish overtures of
+the Harrison idiot. But there was, of course, the Wonder's compelling
+power to be reckoned with, in the case of Crashaw.
+
+
+V
+
+Challis came back in early September, and it was he who first coaxed,
+and then goaded me into rebellion.
+
+Challis did not come too soon.
+
+At the end of August I was seeing visions, not pleasant, inspiriting
+visions, but the indefinite, perplexing shapes of delirium.
+
+I think it must have been in August that I stood on Deane Hill, through
+an afternoon of fine, driving rain, and had a vision of myself playing
+tricks with the sands of life.
+
+I had begun to lose my hold on reality. Silence, contemplation, a
+long-continued wrestle with the profound problems of life, were
+combining to break up the intimacy of life and matter, and my brain was
+not of the calibre to endure the strain.
+
+Challis saw at once what ailed me.
+
+He came up to the farm one morning at twelve o'clock. The date was, I
+believe, the twelfth of September. It was a brooding, heavy morning,
+with half a gale of wind blowing from the south-west, but it had not
+rained, and I was out with the Wonder when Challis arrived.
+
+He waited for me and talked to the flattered Mrs. Berridge, remonstrated
+kindly with her husband for his neglect of the farm, and incidentally
+gave him a rebate on the rent.
+
+When I came in, he insisted that I should come to lunch with him at
+Challis Court.
+
+I consented, but stipulated that I must be back at Pym by three o'clock
+to accompany the Wonder for his afternoon walk.
+
+Challis looked at me curiously, but allowed the stipulation.
+
+We hardly spoke as we walked down the hill--the habit of silence had
+grown upon me, but after lunch Challis spoke out his mind.
+
+On that occasion I hardly listened to him, but he came up to the farm
+again after tea and marched me off to dinner at the Court. I was
+strangely plastic when commanded, but when he suggested that I should
+give up my walks with the Wonder, go away ... I smiled and said
+"Impossible," as though that ended the matter.
+
+Challis, however, persisted, and I suppose I was not too far gone to
+listen to him. I remember his saying: "That problem is not for you or me
+or any man living to solve by introspection. Our work is to add
+knowledge little by little, data here and there, for future evidence."
+
+The phrase struck me, because the Wonder had once said "There are no
+data," when in the early days I had asked him whether he could say
+definitely if there was any future existence possible for us?
+
+Now Challis put it to me that our work was to find data, that every
+little item of real knowledge added to the feeble store man has
+accumulated in his few thousand years of life, was a step, the greatest
+step any man could possibly make.
+
+"But could we not get, not a small but a very important item, from
+Victor Stott?"
+
+Challis shook his head. "He is too many thousands of years ahead of us,"
+he said. "We can only bridge the gap by many centuries of patient toil.
+If a revelation were made to us, we should not understand it."
+
+So, by degrees, Challis's influence took possession of me and roused me
+to self-assertion.
+
+One morning, half in dread, I stayed at home and read a novel--no other
+reading could hold my attention--philosophy had become nauseating.
+
+I expected to see the strange little figure of the Wonder come across
+the Common, but he never came, nor did I receive any reproach from Ellen
+Mary. I think she had forgotten her fear of the Harrison idiot.
+
+Nevertheless, I did not give up my guardianship all at once. Three times
+after that morning I took the Wonder for a walk. He made no allusion to
+my defalcations. Indeed he never spoke. He relinquished me as he had
+taken me up, without comment or any expression of feeling.
+
+
+VI
+
+On the twenty-ninth of September I went down to Challis Court and stayed
+there for a week. Then I returned for a few days to Wood Farm in order
+to put my things together and pack my books. I had decided to go to
+Cairo for the winter with Challis.
+
+At half-past one o'clock on Thursday, the eighth of October, I was in
+the sitting-room, when I saw the figure of Mrs. Stott coming across the
+Common. She came with a little stumbling run. I could see that she was
+agitated even before she reached the farmyard gate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+RELEASE
+
+
+I
+
+She opened the front door without knocking, and came straight into my
+sitting-room.
+
+"'E's not 'ere," she said in a manner that left it doubtful whether she
+made an assertion or asked a question.
+
+"Your son?" I said. I had risen when she came into the room, "No; I
+haven't seen him to-day."
+
+Ellen Mary was staring at me, but it was clear that she neither saw nor
+heard me. She had a look of intense concentration. One could see that
+she was calculating, thinking, thinking....
+
+I went over to her and took her by the arm. I gently shook her. "Now,
+tell me what's the matter? What has happened?" I asked.
+
+She made an effort to collect herself, loosened her arm from my hold and
+with an instinctive movement pushed forward the old bonnet, which had
+slipped to the back of her head.
+
+"'E 'asn't been in to 'is dinner," she said hurriedly. "I've been on
+the Common looking for 'im."
+
+"He may have made a mistake in the time," I suggested.
+
+She made a movement as though to push me on one side, and turned towards
+the door. She was calculating again. Her expression said quite plainly,
+"Could he be there, could he be _there_?"
+
+"Come, come," I said, "there is surely no need to be anxious yet."
+
+She turned on me. "'E never makes a mistake in the time," she said
+fiercely, "'e always knows the time to the minute without clock or
+watch. Why did you leave 'im alone?"
+
+She broke off in her attack upon me and continued: "'E's never been late
+before, not a minute, and now it's a hour after 'is time."
+
+"He may be at home by now," I said. She took the hint instantly and
+started back again with the same stumbling little run.
+
+I picked up my hat and followed her.
+
+
+II
+
+The Wonder was not at the cottage.
+
+"Now, my dear woman, you must keep calm," I said. "There is absolutely
+no reason to be disturbed. You had better go to Challis Court and see if
+he is in the library, I----"
+
+"I'm a fool," broke in Ellen Mary with sudden decision, and she set off
+again without another word. I followed her back to the Common and
+watched her out of sight. I was more disturbed about her than about the
+non-appearance of the Wonder. He was well able to take care of himself,
+but she.... How strange that with all her calculations she had not
+thought of going to Challis Court, to the place where her son had spent
+so many days. I began to question whether the whole affair was not, in
+some way, a mysterious creation of her own disordered brain.
+
+Nevertheless, I took upon myself to carry out that part of the programme
+which I had not been allowed to state in words to Mrs. Stott, and set
+out for Deane Hill. It was just possible that the Wonder might have
+slipped down that steep incline and injured himself. Possible, but very
+unlikely; the Wonder did not take the risks common to boys of his age,
+he did not disport himself on dangerous slopes.
+
+As I walked I felt a sense of lightness, of relief from depression. I
+had not been this way by myself since the end of August. It was good to
+be alone and free.
+
+The day was fine and not cold, though the sun was hidden. I noticed that
+the woods showed scarcely a mark of autumn decline.
+
+There was not a soul to be seen by the monument. I scrambled down the
+slope and investigated the base of the hill and came back another way
+through the woods. I saw no one. I stopped continually and whistled
+loudly. If he is anywhere near at hand, I thought, and in trouble, he
+will hear that and answer me. I did not call him by name. I did not know
+what name to call. It would have seemed absurd to have called "Victor."
+No one ever addressed him by name.
+
+My return route brought me back to the south edge of the Common, the
+point most remote from the farm. There I met a labourer whom I knew by
+sight, a man named Hawke. He was carrying a stick, and prodding with it
+foolishly among the furze and gorse bushes. The bracken was already
+dying down.
+
+"What are you looking for?" I asked.
+
+"It's this 'ere Master Stott, sir," he said, looking up. "'E's got
+loarst seemingly."
+
+I felt a sudden stab of self-reproach. I had been taking things too
+easily. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to four.
+
+"Mr. Challis 'ave told me to look for 'un," added the man, and continued
+his aimless prodding of the gorse.
+
+"Where is Mr. Challis?" I asked.
+
+"'E's yonder, soomewheres." He made a vague gesture in the direction of
+Pym.
+
+The sun had come out, and the Common was all aglow. I hastened towards
+the village.
+
+On the way I met Farmer Bates and two or three labourers. They, too,
+were beating among the gorse and brown bracken. They told me that Mr.
+Challis was at the cottage and I hurried on. All the neighbourhood, it
+seems, was searching for the Wonder. In the village I saw three or four
+women standing with aprons over their heads, talking together.
+
+I had never seen Pym so animated.
+
+
+III
+
+I met Challis in the lane. He was coming away from Mrs. Stott's cottage.
+
+"Have you found him?" I asked stupidly. I knew quite well that the
+Wonder was not found, and yet I had a fond hope that I might,
+nevertheless, be mistaken.
+
+Challis shook his head. "There will be a mad woman in that cottage if he
+doesn't come back by nightfall," he remarked with a jerk of his head.
+"I've done what I can for her."
+
+I explained that I had been over to Deane Hill, searching and calling.
+
+"You didn't see anything?" asked Challis, echoing my foolish query of a
+moment before. I shook my head.
+
+We were both agitated without doubt.
+
+We soon came up with Farmer Bates and his men. They stopped and touched
+their hats when they saw us, and we put the same silly question to them.
+
+"You haven't found him?" We knew perfectly well that they would have
+announced the fact at once if they had found him.
+
+"One of you go over to the Court and get any man you can find to come
+and help," said Challis. "Tell Heathcote to send every one."
+
+One of the labourers touched his cap again, and started off at once with
+a lumbering trot.
+
+Challis and I walked on in silence, looking keenly about us and stopping
+every now and then and calling. We called "Hallo! Hallo-o!" It was an
+improvement upon my whistle.
+
+"He's such a little chap," muttered Challis once; "it would be so easy
+to miss him if he were unconscious."
+
+It struck me that the reference to the Wonder was hardly sufficiently
+respectful. I had never thought of him as "a little chap." But Challis
+had not known him so intimately as I had.
+
+The shadows were fast creeping over the Common. At the woodside it was
+already twilight. The whole of the western sky right up to the zenith
+was a finely shaded study in brilliant orange and yellow. "More rain," I
+thought instinctively, and paused for a moment to watch the sunset. The
+black distance stood clearly silhouetted against the sky. One could
+discern the sharp outline of tiny trees on the distant horizon.
+
+We met Heathcote and several other men in the lane.
+
+"Shan't be able to do much to-night, sir," said Heathcote. "It'll be
+dark in 'alf an hour, sir."
+
+"Well, do what you can in half an hour," replied Challis, and to me he
+said, "You'd better come back with me. We've done what we can."
+
+I had a picture of him then as the magnate; I had hardly thought of him
+in that light before. The arduous work of the search he could delegate
+to his inferiors. Still, he had come out himself, and I doubt not that
+he had been altogether charming to the bewildered, distraught mother.
+
+I acquiesced in his suggestion. I was beginning to feel very tired.
+
+Mrs. Heathcote was at the gate when we arrived at the Court. "'Ave they
+found 'im, sir?" she asked.
+
+"Not yet," replied Challis.
+
+I followed him into the house.
+
+
+IV
+
+As I walked back at ten o'clock it was raining steadily. I had refused
+the offer of a trap. I went through the dark and sodden wood, and
+lingered and listened. The persistent tap, tap, tap of the rain on the
+leaves irritated me. How could one hear while that noise was going on?
+There was no other sound. There was not a breath of wind. Only that
+perpetual tap, tap, tap, patter, patter, drip, tap, tap. It seemed as if
+it might go on through eternity....
+
+I went to the Stotts' cottage, though I knew there could be no news.
+Challis had given strict instructions that any news should be brought to
+him immediately. If it was bad news it was to be brought to him before
+the mother was told.
+
+There was a light burning in the cottage, and the door was set wide
+open.
+
+I went up to the door but I did not go in.
+
+Ellen Mary was sitting in a high chair, her hands clasped together, and
+she rocked continually to and fro. She made no sound; she merely rocked
+herself with a steady, regular persistence.
+
+She did not see me standing at the open door, and I moved quietly away.
+
+As I walked over the Common--I avoided the wood deliberately--I wondered
+what was the human limit of endurance. I wondered whether Ellen Mary
+had not reached that limit.
+
+Mrs. Berridge had not gone to bed, and there were some visitors in the
+kitchen. I heard them talking. Mrs. Berridge came out when I opened the
+front door.
+
+"Any news, sir?" she asked.
+
+"No; no news," I said. I had been about to ask her the same question.
+
+
+V
+
+I did not go to sleep for some time. I had a picture of Ellen Mary
+before my eyes, and I could still hear that steady pat, patter, drip, of
+the rain on the beech leaves.
+
+In the night I awoke suddenly, and thought I heard a long, wailing cry
+out on the Common. I got up and looked out of the window, but I could
+see nothing. The rain was still falling, but there was a blur of light
+that showed where the moon was shining behind the clouds. The cry, if
+there had been a cry, was not repeated.
+
+I went back to bed and soon fell asleep again.
+
+I do not know whether I had been dreaming, but I woke suddenly with a
+presentation of the little pond on the Common very clear before me.
+
+"We never looked in the pond," I thought, and then--"but he could not
+have fallen into the pond; besides, it's not two feet deep."
+
+It was full daylight, and I got up and found that it was nearly seven
+o'clock.
+
+The rain had stopped, but there was a scurry of low, threatening cloud
+that blew up from the south.
+
+I dressed at once and went out. I made my way directly to the Stotts'
+cottage.
+
+The lamp was still burning and the door open, but Ellen Mary had fallen
+forward on to the table; her head was pillowed on her arms.
+
+"There _is_ a limit to our endurance," I reflected, "and she has reached
+it."
+
+I left her undisturbed.
+
+Outside I met two of Farmer Bates's labourers going back to work.
+
+"I want you to come up with me to the pond," I said.
+
+
+VI
+
+The pond was very full.
+
+On the side from which we approached, the ground sloped gradually, and
+the water was stretching out far beyond its accustomed limits.
+
+On the farther side the gorse among the trunks of the three ash-trees
+came right to the edge of the bank. On that side the bank was three or
+four feet high.
+
+We came to the edge of the pond, and one of the labourers waded in a
+little way--the water was very shallow on that side--but we could see
+nothing for the scum of weed, little spangles of dirty green, and a mass
+of some other plant that had borne a little white flower in the earlier
+part of the year--stuff like dwarf hemlock.
+
+Under the farther bank, however, I saw one comparatively clear space of
+black water.
+
+"Let's go round," I said, and led the way.
+
+There was a tiny path which twisted between the gorse roots and came out
+at the edge of the farther bank by the stem of the tallest ash. I had
+seen tiny village boys pretending to fish from this point with a stick
+and a piece of string. There was a dead branch of ash some five or six
+feet long, with the twigs partly twisted off; it was lying among the
+bushes. I remembered that I had seen small boys using this branch to
+clear away the surface weed. I picked it up and took it with me.
+
+I wound one arm round the trunk of the ash, and peered over into the
+water under the bank.
+
+I caught sight of something white under the water. I could not see
+distinctly. I thought it was a piece of broken ware--the bottom of a
+basin. I had picked up the ash stick and was going to probe the deeper
+water with it. Then I saw that the dim white object was globular.
+
+The end of my stick was actually in the water. I withdrew it quickly,
+and threw it behind me.
+
+My heart began to throb painfully.
+
+I turned my face away and leaned against the ash-tree.
+
+"Can you see anythin'?" asked one of the labourers who had come up
+behind me.
+
+"Oh! Christ!" I said. I turned quickly from the pond and pressed a way
+through the gorse.
+
+I was overwhelmingly and disgustingly sick.
+
+
+VII
+
+By degrees the solid earth ceased to wave and sway before me like a
+rolling heave of water, and I looked up, pressing my hands to my
+head--my hands were as cold as death.
+
+My clothes were wet and muddy where I had lain on the sodden ground. I
+got to my feet and instinctively began to brush at the mud.
+
+I was still a little giddy, and I swayed and sought for support.
+
+I could see the back of one labourer. He was kneeling by the ash-tree
+bending right down over the water. The other man was standing in the
+pond, up to his waist in water and mud. I could just see his head and
+shoulders....
+
+I staggered away in the direction of the village.
+
+
+VIII
+
+I found Ellen Mary still sitting in the same chair. The lamp was
+fluttering to extinction, the flame leaping spasmodically, dying down
+till it seemed that it had gone out, and then again suddenly flickering
+up with little clicking bursts of flame. The air reeked intolerably of
+paraffin.
+
+I blew the lamp out and pushed it on one side.
+
+There was no need to break the news to Ellen Mary. She had known last
+night, and now she was beyond the reach of information.
+
+She sat upright in her chair and stared out into the immensity. Her
+hands alone moved, and they were not still for an instant. They lay in
+her lap, and her fingers writhed and picked at her dress.
+
+I spoke to her once, but I knew that her mind was beyond the reach of my
+words.
+
+"It is just as well," I thought; "but we must get her away."
+
+I went out and called to the woman next door.
+
+She was in her kitchen, but the door was open. She came out when I
+knocked.
+
+"Poor thing," she said, when I told her. "It _'as_ been a shock, no
+doubt. She was so wrapped hup in the boy."
+
+She could hardly have said less if her neighbour had lost half-a-crown.
+
+"Get her into your cottage before they come," I said harshly, and left
+her.
+
+I wanted to get out of the lane before the men came back, but I had
+hardly started before I saw them coming.
+
+They had made a chair of their arms, and were carrying him between them.
+They had not the least fear of him, now.
+
+
+IX
+
+The Harrison idiot suddenly jumped out of the hedge.
+
+I put my hand to my throat. I wanted to cry out, to stop him, but I
+could not move. I felt sick again, and utterly weak and powerless, and I
+could not take my gaze from that little doll with the great drooping
+head that rolled as the men walked.
+
+I was reminded, disgustingly, of children with a guy.
+
+The idiot ran shambling down the lane. He knew the two men, who
+tolerated him and laughed at him. He was not afraid of them nor their
+burden.
+
+He came right up to them. I heard one of the men say gruffly, "Now then,
+you cut along off!"
+
+I believe the idiot must have touched the dead body.
+
+I was gripping my throat in my hand; I was trying desperately to cry
+out.
+
+Whether the idiot actually touched the body or not I cannot say, but he
+must have realised in his poor, bemused brain that the thing was dead.
+
+He cried out with his horrible, inhuman cry, turned, and ran up the lane
+towards me. He fell on his face a few yards from me, scrambled wildly to
+his feet again and came on yelping and shrieking. He was wildly,
+horribly afraid. I caught sight of his face as he passed me, and his
+mouth was distorted into a square, his upper lip horribly drawn up over
+his ragged, yellow teeth. Suddenly he dashed at the hedge and clawed his
+way through. I heard him still yelping appallingly as he rushed away
+across the field....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+IMPLICATIONS
+
+
+I
+
+The jury returned a verdict of "Accidental death."
+
+If there had been any traces of a struggle, I had not noticed them when
+I came to the edge of the pond. There may have been marks as if a foot
+had slipped. I was not thinking of evidence when I looked into the
+water.
+
+There were marks enough when the police came to investigate, but they
+were the marks made by a twelve-stone man in hobnail boots, who had
+scrambled into, and out of, the pond. As the inspector said, it was not
+worth while wasting any time in looking for earlier traces of footsteps
+below those marks.
+
+Nor were there any signs of violence on the body. It was in no way
+disfigured, save by the action of the water, in which it had lain for
+perhaps eighteen hours.
+
+There was, indeed, only one point of any significance from the jury's
+point of view, and that they put on one side, if they considered it at
+all; the body was pressed into the mud.
+
+The Coroner asked a few questions about this fact.
+
+Was the mud very soft? Yes, very soft, liquid on top.
+
+How was the body lying? Face downwards.
+
+What part of the body was deepest in the mud? The chest. The witness
+said he had hard work to get the upper part of the body released; the
+head was free, but the mud held the rest. "The mooad soocked like," was
+the expressive phrase of the witness.
+
+The Coroner passed on to other things. Had any one a spite against the
+child? and such futilities. Only once more did he revert to that
+solitary significant fact. "Would it be possible," he asked of the
+abashed and self-conscious labourer, "would it be possible for the body
+to have worked its way down into the soft mud as you have described it
+to have been found?"
+
+"We-el," said the witness, "'twas in the stacky mooad, 'twas through the
+sarft stoof."
+
+"But this soft mud would suck any solid body down, would it not?"
+persisted the Coroner.
+
+And the witness recalled the case of a duck that had been sucked into
+the same soft pond mud the summer before, and cited the instance. He
+forgot to add that on that occasion the mud had not been under water.
+
+The Coroner accepted the instance. There can be no question that both he
+and the jury were anxious to accept the easier explanation.
+
+
+II
+
+But I know perfectly well that the Wonder did not fall into the pond by
+accident.
+
+I should have known, even if that conclusive evidence with regard to his
+being pushed into the mud had never come to light.
+
+He may have stood by the ash-tree and looked into the water, but he
+would never have fallen. He was too perfectly controlled; and, with all
+his apparent abstraction, no one was ever more alive to the detail of
+his surroundings. He and I have walked together perforce in many
+slippery places, but I have never known him to fall or even begin to
+lose his balance, whereas I have gone down many times.
+
+Yes; I know that he was pushed into the pond, and I know that he was
+held down in the mud, most probably by the aid of that ash stick I had
+held. But it was not for me to throw suspicion on any one at that
+inquest, and I preferred to keep my thoughts and my inferences to
+myself. I should have done so, even if I had been in possession of
+stronger evidence.
+
+I hope that it was the Harrison idiot who was to blame. He was not
+dangerous in the ordinary sense, but he might quite well have done the
+thing in play--as he understood it. Only I cannot quite understand his
+pushing the body down after it fell. That seems to argue
+vindictiveness--and a logic which I can hardly attribute to the idiot.
+Still, who can tell what went on in the distorted mind of that poor
+creature? He is reported to have rescued the dead body of a rabbit from
+the undergrowth on one occasion, and to have blubbered when he could not
+bring it back to life.
+
+There is but one other person who could have been implicated, and I
+hesitate to name him in this place. Yet one remembers what terrific acts
+of misapplied courage and ferocious brutality the fanatics of history
+have been capable of performing when their creed and their authority
+have been set at naught.
+
+
+III
+
+Ellen Mary never recovered her sanity. She died a few weeks ago in the
+County Asylum. I hear that her husband attended the funeral. When she
+lost her belief in the supernal wisdom and power of her god, her world
+must have fallen about her. The thing she had imagined to be solid,
+real, everlasting, had proved to be friable and destructible like all
+other human building.
+
+
+IV
+
+The Wonder is buried in Chilborough churchyard.
+
+You may find the place by its proximity to the great marble mausoleum
+erected over the remains of Sir Edward Bigg, the well-known brewer and
+philanthropist.
+
+The grave of Victor Stott is marked by a small stone, some six inches
+high, which is designed to catch the foot rather than the eye of the
+seeker.
+
+The stone bears the initials "V. S.," and a date--no more.
+
+
+V
+
+I saw the Wonder before he was buried.
+
+I went up into the little bedroom and looked at him in his tiny coffin.
+
+I was no longer afraid of him. His power over me was dissipated. He was
+no greater and no less than any other dead thing.
+
+It was the same with every one. He had become that "poor little boy of
+Mrs. Stott's." No one spoke of him with respect now. No one seemed to
+remember that he had been in any way different from other "poor little
+fellows" who had died an untimely death.
+
+One thing did strike me as curious. The idiot, the one person who had
+never feared him living, had feared him horribly when he was dead....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+THE USES OF MYSTERY
+
+Something Challis has told me; something I have learned for myself; and
+there is something which has come to me from an unknown source.
+
+But here again we are confronted with the original difficulty--the
+difficulty that for some conceptions there is no verbal figure.
+
+It is comprehensible, it is, indeed, obvious that the deeper abstract
+speculation of the Wonder's thought cannot be set out by any metaphor
+that would be understood by a lesser intelligence.
+
+We see that many philosophers, whose utterances have been recorded in
+human history--that record which floats like a drop of oil on the
+limitless ocean of eternity--have been confronted with this same
+difficulty, and have woven an intricate and tedious design of words in
+their attempt to convey some single conception--some conception which
+themselves could see but dimly when disguised in the masquerade of
+language; some figure that as it was limned grew ever more confused
+beneath the wrappings of metaphor, so that we who read can glimpse
+scarce a hint of its original shape and likeness. We see, also, that the
+very philosophers who caricatured their own eidolon, became intrigued
+with the logical abstraction of words and were led away into a
+wilderness of barren deduction--their one inspired vision of a stable
+premiss distorted and at last forgotten.
+
+How then shall we hope to find words to adumbrate a philosophy which
+starts by the assumption that we can have no impression of reality until
+we have rid ourselves of the interposing and utterly false concepts of
+space and time, which delimit the whole world of human thought.
+
+I admit that one cannot even begin to do this thing; within our present
+limitations our whole machinery of thought is built of these two
+original concepts. They are the only gauges wherewith we may measure
+every reality, every abstraction; wherewith we may give outline to any
+image or process of the mind. Only when we endeavour to grapple with
+that indeterminable mystery of consciousness can we conceive, however
+dimly, some idea of a pure abstraction uninfluenced by and independent
+of, those twin bases of our means of thought.
+
+Here it is that Challis has paused. Here he says that we must wait, that
+no revelation can reveal what we are incapable of understanding, that
+only by the slow process of evolution can we attain to any understanding
+of the mystery we have sought to solve by our futile and primitive
+hypotheses.
+
+"But then," I have pressed him, "why do you hesitate to speak of what
+you heard on that afternoon?"
+
+And once he answered me:
+
+"I glimpsed a finality," he said, "and that appalled me. Don't you see
+that ignorance is the means of our intellectual pleasure? It is the
+solving of the problem that brings enjoyment--the solved problem has no
+further interest. So when all is known, the stimulus for action ceases;
+when all is known there is quiescence, nothingness. Perfect knowledge
+implies the peace of death, implies the state of being one--our
+pleasures are derived from action, from differences, from heterogeneity.
+
+"Oh! pity the child," said Challis, "for whom there could be no mystery.
+Is not mystery the first and greatest joy of life? Beyond the gate there
+is unexplored mystery for us in our childhood. When that is explored,
+there are new and wonderful possibilities beyond the hills, then beyond
+the seas, beyond the known world, in the everyday chances and movements
+of the unknown life in which we are circumstanced.
+
+"Surely we should all perish through sheer inanity, or die desperately
+by suicide if no mystery remained in the world. Mystery takes a thousand
+beautiful shapes; it lurks even in the handiwork of man, in a stone god,
+or in some mighty, intricate machine, incomprehensibly deliberate and
+determined. The imagination endows the man-made thing with consciousness
+and powers, whether of reservation or aloofness; the similitude of
+meditation and profundity is wrought into stone. Is there not source for
+mystery to the uninstructed in the great machine registering the
+progress of its own achievement with each solemn, recurrent beat of its
+metal pulse?
+
+"Behind all these things is the wonder of the imagination that never
+approaches more nearly to the creation of a hitherto unknown image than
+when it thus hesitates on the verge of mystery.
+
+"There is yet so much, so very much cause for wondering speculation.
+Science gains ground so slowly. Slowly it has outlined, however vaguely,
+the uncertainties of our origin so far as this world is concerned, while
+the mystic has fought for his entrancing fairy tales one by one.
+
+"The mystic still holds his enthralling belief in the succession of
+peoples who have risen and died--the succeeding world-races, red, black,
+yellow, and white, which have in turn dominated this planet. Science
+with its hammer and chisel may lay bare evidence, may collate material,
+date man's appearance, call him the most recent of placental mammals,
+trace his superstitions and his first conceptions of a god from the
+elemental fears of the savage. But the mystic turns aside with an
+assumption of superior knowledge; he waves away objective evidence; he
+has a certainty impressed upon his mind.
+
+"And the mystic is a power. He compels a multitude of followers, because
+he offers an attraction greater than the facts of science. He tells of a
+mystery profounder than any problem solved by patient investigation,
+because his mystery is incomprehensible even by himself; and in fear
+lest any should comprehend it, he disguises the approach with an array
+of lesser mysteries, man-made; with terminologies, symbologies and high
+talk of esotericism too fearful for any save the initiate.
+
+"But we must preserve our mystic in some form against the awful time
+when science shall have determined a limit; when the long history of
+evolution shall be written in full, and every stage of world-building
+shall be made plain. When the cycle of atomic dust to atomic dust is
+demonstrated, and the detail of the life-process is taught and
+understood, we shall have a fierce need for the mystic to save us from
+the futility of a world we understand, to lie to us if need be, to
+inspirit our material and regular minds with some breath of delicious
+madness. We shall need the mystic then, or the completeness of our
+knowledge will drive us at last to complete the dusty circle in our
+eagerness to escape from a world we understand....
+
+"See how man clings to his old and useless traditions; see how he
+opposes at every step the awful force of progress. At each stage he
+protests that the thing that is, is good, or that the thing that was and
+has gone, was better. He despises new knowledge and fondly clings to the
+belief that once men were greater than they now are. He looks back to
+the more primitive, and endows it with that mystery he cannot find in
+his own times. So have men ever looked lingeringly behind them. It is an
+instinct, a great and wonderful inheritance that postpones the moment of
+disillusionment.
+
+"We are still mercifully surrounded with the countless mysteries of
+everyday experience, all the evidences of the unimaginable stimulus we
+call life. Would you take them away? Would you resolve life into a
+disease of the ether--a disease of which you and I, all life and all
+matter, are symptoms? Would you teach that to the child, and explain to
+him that the wonder of life and growth is no wonder, but a demonstrable
+result of impeded force, to be evaluated by the application of an
+adequate formula?
+
+"You and I," said Challis, "are children in the infancy of the world.
+Let us to our play in the nursery of our own times. The day will come,
+perhaps, when humanity shall have grown and will have to take upon
+itself the heavy burden of knowledge. But you need not fear that that
+will be in our day, nor in a thousand years.
+
+"Meanwhile leave us our childish fancies, our little imaginings, our
+hope--children that we are--of those impossible mysteries beyond the
+hills...."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wonder, by J. D. Beresford
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diff --git a/27188-0.zip b/27188-0.zip
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wonder, by J. D. Beresford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wonder
+
+Author: J. D. Beresford
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2008 [EBook #27188]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WONDER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+       BY J. D. BERESFORD
+
+ THESE LYNNEKERS
+ THE EARLY HISTORY OF JACOB STAHL
+ A CANDIDATE FOR TRUTH
+ THE INVISIBLE EVENT
+ THE HOUSE IN DEMETRIUS ROAD
+
+    GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+            NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                              THE
+                            WONDER
+
+
+                              BY
+
+                        J. D. BERESFORD
+ AUTHOR OF "THESE LYNNEKERS," "THE STORY OF JACOB STAHL," ETC.
+
+
+                           [Device]
+
+
+                           NEW YORK
+                    GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+            COPYRIGHT, 1917,
+       BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect
+    and variant spellings have been retained. Greek text has been
+    transliterated and is shown between {braces}.
+
+
+
+
+          TO
+ MY FRIEND AND CRITIC
+     HUGH WALPOLE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                PART ONE
+
+                MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT
+
+ CHAPTER                                                  PAGE
+     I. THE MOTIVE                                          11
+
+    II. NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF GINGER STOTT               22
+
+   III. THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF GINGER STOTT                 58
+
+
+                                PART TWO
+
+                      THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER
+
+    IV. THE MANNER OF HIS BIRTH                             71
+
+     V. HIS DEPARTURE FROM STOKE-UNDERHILL                  92
+
+    VI. HIS FATHER'S DESERTION                             107
+
+   VII. HIS DEBT TO HENRY CHALLIS                          118
+
+  VIII. HIS FIRST VISIT TO CHALLIS COURT                   143
+
+        INTERLUDE                                          149
+
+
+                         THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS
+
+    IX. HIS PASSAGE THROUGH THE PRISON OF KNOWLEDGE        155
+
+     X. HIS PASTORS AND MASTERS                            179
+
+    XI. HIS EXAMINATION                                    193
+
+   XII. HIS INTERVIEW WITH HERR GROSSMANN                  217
+
+  XIII. FUGITIVE                                           229
+
+
+                               PART THREE
+
+                     MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER
+
+   XIV. HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK                  235
+
+    XV. THE INCIPIENCE OF MY SUBJECTION TO THE WONDER      247
+
+   XVI. THE PROGRESS AND RELAXATION OF MY SUBJECTION       267
+
+  XVII. RELEASE                                            284
+
+ XVIII. IMPLICATIONS                                       299
+
+   XIX. EPILOGUE: THE USES OF MYSTERY                      305
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE MOTIVE
+
+
+I
+
+I could not say at which station the woman and her baby entered the
+train.
+
+Since we had left London, I had been struggling with Baillie's
+translation of Hegel's "Phenomenology." It was not a book to read among
+such distracting circumstances as those of a railway journey, but I was
+eagerly planning a little dissertation of my own at that time, and my
+work as a journalist gave me little leisure for quiet study.
+
+I looked up when the woman entered my compartment, though I did not
+notice the name of the station. I caught sight of the baby she was
+carrying, and turned back to my book. I thought the child was a freak,
+an abnormality; and such things disgust me.
+
+I returned to the study of my Hegel and read: "For knowledge is not the
+divergence of the ray, but the ray itself by which the truth comes to
+us; and if this ray be removed, the bare direction or the empty place
+would alone be indicated."
+
+I kept my eyes on the book--the train had started again--but the next
+passage conveyed no meaning to my mind, and as I attempted to re-read it
+an impression was interposed between me and the work I was studying.
+
+I saw projected on the page before me an image which I mistook at first
+for the likeness of Richard Owen. It was the conformation of the head
+that gave rise to the mistake, a head domed and massive, white and
+smooth--it was a head that had always interested me. But as I looked, my
+mind already searching for the reason of this hallucination, I saw that
+the lower part of the face was that of an infant. My eyes wandered from
+the book, and my gaze fluttered along the four persons seated opposite
+to me, till it rested on the reality of my vision. And even as my
+attention was thus irresistibly dragged from my book, my mind clung with
+a feeble desperation to its task, and I murmured under my breath like a
+child repeating a mechanically learned lesson: "Knowledge is not the
+divergence of the ray but the ray itself...."
+
+For several seconds the eyes of the infant held mine. Its gaze was
+steady and clear as that of a normal child, but what differentiated it
+was the impression one received of calm intelligence. The head was
+completely bald, and there was no trace of eyebrows, but the eyes
+themselves were protected by thick, short lashes.
+
+The child turned its head, and I felt my muscles relax. Until then I had
+not been conscious that they had been stiffened. My gaze was released,
+pushed aside as it were, and I found myself watching the object of the
+child's next scrutiny.
+
+This object was a man of forty or so, inclined to corpulence, and
+untidy. He bore the evidences of failure in the process of becoming. He
+wore a beard that was scanty and ragged, there were bald patches of skin
+on the jaw; one inferred that he wore that beard only to save the
+trouble of shaving. He was sitting next to me, the middle passenger of
+the three on my side of the carriage, and he was absorbed in the pages
+of a half-penny paper--I think he was reading the police reports--which
+was interposed between him and the child in the corner diagonally
+opposite to that which I occupied.
+
+The man was hunched up, slouching, his legs crossed, his elbows seeking
+support against his body; he held his clumsily folded paper close to his
+eyes. He had the appearance of being very myopic, but he did not wear
+glasses.
+
+As I watched him, he began to fidget. He uncrossed his legs and hunched
+his body deeper into the back of his seat. Presently his eyes began to
+creep up the paper in front of him. When they reached the top, he
+hesitated a moment, making a survey under cover, then he dropped his
+hands and stared stupidly at the infant in the corner, his mouth
+slightly open, his feet pulled in under the seat of the carriage.
+
+As the child let him go, his head drooped, and then he turned and looked
+at me with a silly, vacuous smile. I looked away hurriedly; this was not
+a man with whom I cared to share experience.
+
+The process was repeated. The next victim was a big, rubicund,
+healthy-looking man, clean shaved, with light-blue eyes that were
+slightly magnified by the glasses of his gold-mounted spectacles. He,
+too, had been reading a newspaper--the _Evening Standard_--until the
+child's gaze claimed his attention, and he, too, was held motionless by
+that strange, appraising stare. But when he was released, his surprise
+found vent in words. "This," I thought, "is the man accustomed to act."
+
+"A very remarkable child, ma'am," he said, addressing the thin,
+ascetic-looking mother.
+
+
+II
+
+The mother's appearance did not convey the impression of poverty. She
+was, indeed, warmly, decently, and becomingly clad. She wore a long
+black coat, braided and frogged; it had the air of belonging to an older
+fashion, but the material of it was new. And her bonnet, trimmed with
+jet ornaments growing on stalks that waved tremulously--that, also, was
+a modern replica of an older mode. On her hands were black thread
+gloves, somewhat ill-fitting.
+
+Her face was not that of a country woman. The thin, high-bridged nose,
+the fallen cheeks, the shadows under eyes gloomy and retrospective--these
+were marks of the town; above all, perhaps, that sallow greyness of the
+skin which speaks of confinement....
+
+The child looked healthy enough. Its great bald head shone resplendently
+like a globe of alabaster.
+
+"A very remarkable child, ma'am," said the rubicund man who sat facing
+the woman.
+
+The woman twitched her untidy-looking black eyebrows, her head trembled
+slightly and set the jet fruit of her bonnet dancing and nodding.
+
+"Yes, sir," she replied.
+
+"Very remarkable," said the man, adjusting his spectacles and leaning
+forward. His action had an air of deliberate courage; he was justifying
+his fortitude after that temporary aberration.
+
+I watched him a little nervously. I remembered my feelings when, as a
+child, I had seen some magnificent enter the lion's den in a travelling
+circus. The failure on my right was, also, absorbed in the spectacle; he
+stared, open-mouthed, his eyes blinking and shifting.
+
+The other three occupants of the compartment, sitting on the same side
+as the woman, back to the engine, dropped papers and magazines and
+turned their heads, all interest. None of these three had, so far as I
+had observed, fallen under the spell of inspection by the infant, but I
+noticed that the man--an artisan apparently--who sat next to the woman
+had edged away from her, and that the three passengers opposite to me
+were huddled towards my end of the compartment.
+
+The child had abstracted its gaze, which was now directed down the aisle
+of the carriage, indefinitely focussed on some point outside the window.
+It seemed remote, entirely unconcerned with any human being.
+
+I speak of it asexually. I was still uncertain as to its sex. It is true
+that all babies look alike to me; but I should have known that this
+child was male, the conformation of the skull alone should have told me
+that. It was its dress that gave me cause to hesitate. It was dressed
+absurdly, not in "long-clothes," but in a long frock that hid its feet
+and was bunched about its body.
+
+
+III
+
+"Er--does it--er--can it--talk?" hesitated the rubicund man, and I grew
+hot at his boldness. There seemed to be something disrespectful in
+speaking before the child in this impersonal way.
+
+"No, sir, he's never made a sound," replied the woman, twitching and
+vibrating. Her heavy, dark eyebrows jerked spasmodically, nervously.
+
+"Never cried?" persisted the interrogator.
+
+"Never once, sir."
+
+"Dumb, eh?" He said it as an aside, half under his breath.
+
+"'E's never spoke, sir."
+
+"Hm!" The man cleared his throat and braced himself with a deliberate
+and obvious effort. "Is it--he--not water on the brain--what?"
+
+I felt that a rigour of breathless suspense held every occupant of the
+compartment. I wanted, and I know that every other person there wanted,
+to say, "Look out! Don't go too far." The child, however, seemed
+unconscious of the insult: he still stared out through the window, lost
+in profound contemplation.
+
+"No, sir, oh no!" replied the woman. "'E's got more sense than a
+ordinary child." She held the infant as if it were some priceless piece
+of earthenware, not nursing it as a woman nurses a baby, but balancing
+it with supreme attention in her lap.
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+We had been awaiting this question.
+
+"A year and nine munse, sir."
+
+"Ought to have spoken before that, oughtn't he?"
+
+"Never even cried, sir," said the woman. She regarded the child with a
+look into which I read something of apprehension. If it were
+apprehension it was a feeling that we all shared. But the rubicund man
+was magnificent, though, like the lion tamer of my youthful experience,
+he was doubtless conscious of the aspect his temerity wore in the eyes
+of beholders. He must have been showing off.
+
+"Have you taken opinion?" he asked; and then, seeing the woman's lack of
+comprehension, he translated the question--badly, for he conveyed a
+different meaning--thus,
+
+"I mean, have you had a doctor for him?"
+
+The train was slackening speed.
+
+"Oh! yes, sir."
+
+"And what do _they_ say?"
+
+The child turned its head and looked the rubicund man full in the eyes.
+Never in the face of any man or woman have I seen such an expression of
+sublime pity and contempt....
+
+I remembered a small urchin I had once seen at the Zoological Gardens.
+Urged on by a band of other urchins, he was throwing pebbles at a great
+lion that lolled, finely indifferent, on the floor of its playground.
+Closer crept the urchin; he grew splendidly bold; he threw larger and
+larger pebbles, until the lion rose suddenly with a roar, and dashed
+fiercely down to the bars of its cage.
+
+I thought of that urchin's scared, shrieking face now, as the rubicund
+man leant quickly back into his corner.
+
+Yet that was not all, for the infant, satisfied, perhaps, with its
+victim's ignominy, turned and looked at me with a cynical smile. I was,
+as it were, taken into its confidence. I felt flattered, undeservedly
+yet enormously flattered. I blushed, I may have simpered.
+
+The train drew up in Great Hittenden station.
+
+The woman gathered her priceless possession carefully into her arms, and
+the rubicund man adroitly opened the door for her.
+
+"Good day, sir," she said, as she got out.
+
+"Good day," echoed the rubicund man with relief, and we all drew a deep
+breath of relief with him in concert, as though we had just witnessed
+the safe descent of some over-daring aviator.
+
+
+IV
+
+As the train moved on, we six, who had been fellow-passengers for some
+thirty or forty minutes before the woman had entered our compartment, we
+who had not till then exchanged a word, broke suddenly into general
+conversation.
+
+"Water on the brain; I don't care what any one says," asserted the
+rubicund man.
+
+"My sister had one very similar," put in the failure, who was sitting
+next to me. "It died," he added, by way of giving point to his instance.
+
+"Ought not to exhibit freaks like that in public," said an old man
+opposite to me.
+
+"You're right, sir," was the verdict of the artisan, and he spat
+carefully and scraped his boot on the floor; "them things ought to be
+kep' private."
+
+"Mad, of course, that's to say imbecile," repeated the rubicund man.
+
+"Horrid head he'd got," said the failure, and shivered histrionically.
+
+They continued to demonstrate their contempt for the infant by many
+asseverations. The reaction grew. They were all bold now, and all wanted
+to speak. They spoke as the survivors from some common peril; they were
+increasingly anxious to demonstrate that they had never suffered
+intimidation, and in their relief they were anxious to laugh at the
+thing which had for a time subdued them. But they never named it as a
+cause for fear. Their speech was merely innuendo.
+
+At the last, however, I caught an echo of the true feeling.
+
+It was the rubicund man who, most daring during the crisis, was now bold
+enough to admit curiosity.
+
+"What's your opinion, sir?" he said to me. The train was running into
+Wenderby; he was preparing to get out; he leaned forward, his fingers on
+the handle of the door.
+
+I was embarrassed. Why had I been singled out by the child? I had taken
+no part in the recent interjectory conversation. Was this a consequence
+of the notice that had been paid to me?
+
+"I?" I stammered, and then reverted to the rubicund man's original
+phrase, "It--it was certainly a very remarkable child," I said.
+
+The rubicund man nodded and pursed his lips. "Very," he muttered as he
+alighted, "Very remarkable. Well, good day to you."
+
+I returned to my book, and was surprised to find that my index finger
+was still marking the place at which I had been interrupted some fifteen
+minutes before. My arm felt stiff and cramped.
+
+I read: "... and if this ray be removed, the bare direction or the empty
+place would alone be indicated."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF GINGER STOTT
+
+
+I
+
+Ginger Stott is a name that was once as well known as any in England.
+Stott has been the subject of leading articles in every daily paper; his
+life has been written by an able journalist who interviewed Stott
+himself, during ten crowded minutes, and filled three hundred pages with
+details, seventy per cent. of which were taken from the journals, and
+the remainder supplied by a brilliant imagination. Ten years ago Ginger
+Stott was on a pinnacle, there was a Stott vogue. You found his name at
+the bottom of signed articles written by members of the editorial staff;
+you bought Stott collars, although Stott himself did not wear collars;
+there was a Stott waltz, which is occasionally hummed by clerks, and
+whistled by errand-boys to this day; there was a periodical which lived
+for ten months, entitled _Ginger Stott's Weekly_; in brief, during one
+summer there was a Stott apotheosis.
+
+But that was ten years ago, and the rising generation has almost
+forgotten the once well-known name. One rarely sees him mentioned in the
+morning paper now, and then it is but the briefest reference; some such
+note as this "Pickering was at the top of his form, recalling the finest
+achievements of Ginger Stott at his best," or "Flack is a magnificent
+find for Kent: he promises to completely surpass the historic feats of
+Ginger Stott." These journalistic superlatives only irritate those who
+remember the performances referred to. We who watched the man's career
+know that Pickering and Flack are but tyros compared to Stott; we know
+that none of his successors has challenged comparison with him. He was a
+meteor that blazed across the sky, and if he ever has a true successor,
+such stars as Pickering and Flack will shine pale and dim in comparison.
+
+It makes one feel suddenly old to recall that great matinée at the
+Lyceum, given for Ginger Stott's benefit after he met with his accident.
+In ten years so many great figures in that world have died or fallen
+into obscurity. I can count on my fingers the number of those who were
+then, and are still, in the forefront of popularity. Of the others poor
+Captain Wallis, for instance, is dead--and no modern writer, in my
+opinion, can equal the brilliant descriptiveness of Wallis's articles in
+the _Daily Post_. Bobby Maisefield, again, Stott's colleague, is a
+martyr to rheumatism, and keeps a shop in Ailesworth, the scene of so
+many of his triumphs. What a list one might make, but how uselessly. It
+is enough to note how many names have dropped out, how many others are
+the names of those we now speak of as veterans. In ten years! It
+certainly makes one feel old.
+
+
+II
+
+No apology is needed for telling again the story of Stott's career.
+Certain details will still be familiar, it is true, the historic details
+that can never be forgotten while cricket holds place as our national
+game. But there are many facts of Stott's life familiar to me, which
+have never been made public property. If I must repeat that which is
+known, I can give the known a new setting; perhaps a new value.
+
+He came of mixed races. His mother was pure Welsh, his father a
+Yorkshire collier; but when Ginger was nine years old his father died,
+and Mrs. Stott came to live in Ailesworth where she had immigrant
+relations, and it was there that she set up the little paper-shop, the
+business by which she maintained herself and her boy. That shop is still
+in existence, and the name has not been altered. You may find it in the
+little street that runs off the market place, going down towards the
+Borstal Institution.
+
+There are many people alive in Ailesworth to-day who can remember the
+sturdy, freckled, sandy-haired boy who used to go round with the morning
+and evening papers; the boy who was to change the fortunes of a county.
+
+Ginger was phenomenally thorough in all he undertook. It was one of the
+secrets of his success. It was this thoroughness that kept him engaged
+in his mother's little business until he was seventeen. Up to that age
+he never found time for cricket--sufficient evidence of his remarkable
+and most unusual qualities.
+
+It was sheer chance, apparently, that determined his choice of a career.
+
+He had walked into Stoke-Underhill to deliver a parcel, and on his way
+back his attention was arrested by the sight of a line of vehicles drawn
+up to the boarded fencing that encloses the Ailesworth County Ground.
+The occupants of these vehicles were standing up, struggling to catch a
+sight of the match that was being played behind the screen erected to
+shut out non-paying sightseers. Among the horses' feet, squirming
+between the spokes of wheels, utterly regardless of all injury, small
+boys glued their eyes to knot-holes in the fence, while others climbed
+surreptitiously, and for the most part unobserved, on to the backs of
+tradesmen's carts. All these individuals were in a state of tremendous
+excitement, and even the policeman whose duty it was to move them on,
+was so engrossed in watching the game that he had disappeared inside the
+turnstile, and had given the outside spectators full opportunity for
+eleemosynary enjoyment.
+
+That tarred fence has since been raised some six feet, and now encloses
+a wider sweep of ground--alterations that may be classed among the minor
+revolutions effected by the genius of the thick-set, fair-haired youth
+of seventeen, who paused on that early September afternoon to wonder
+what all the fuss was about. The Ailesworth County Ground was not famous
+in those days; not then was accommodation needed for thirty thousand
+spectators, drawn from every county in England to witness the
+unparallelled.
+
+Ginger stopped. The interest of the spectacle pierced his absorption in
+the business he had in hand. Such a thing was almost unprecedented.
+
+"What's up?" he asked of Puggy Phillips.
+
+Puggy Phillips--hazarding his life by standing on the shiny, slightly
+curved top of his butcher's cart--made no appropriate answer.
+"Yah--_ah_--AH!" he screamed in ecstasy. "Oh! played! Pla-a-a-ayed!!"
+
+Ginger wasted no more breath, but laid hold of the little brass rail
+that encircled Puggy's platform, and with a sudden hoist that lifted the
+shafts and startled the pony, raised himself to the level of a
+spectator.
+
+"'Ere!" shouted the swaying, tottering Puggy. "What the ... are yer rup
+to?"
+
+The well-drilled pony, however, settled down again quietly to maintain
+his end of the see-saw, and, finding himself still able to preserve his
+equilibrium, Puggy instantly forgot the presence of the intruder.
+
+"What's up?" asked Ginger again.
+
+"Oh! Well _'it_, WELL 'IT!" yelled Puggy. "Oh! Gow on, gow on agen! Run
+it _aht_. Run it AH-T."
+
+Ginger gave it up, and turned his attention to the match.
+
+It was not any famous struggle that was being fought out on the old
+Ailesworth Ground; it was only second-class cricket, the deciding match
+of the Minor Counties championship. Hampdenshire and Oxfordshire, old
+rivals, had been neck-and-neck all through the season, and, as luck
+would have it, the engagement between them had been the last fixture on
+the card.
+
+When Ginger rose to the level of spectator, the match was anybody's
+game. Bobby Maisefield was batting. He was then a promising young colt
+who had not earned a fixed place in the Eleven. Ginger knew him
+socially, but they were not friends, they had no interests in common.
+Bobby had made twenty-seven. He was partnered by old Trigson, the
+bowler, (he has been dead these eight years,) whose characteristic score
+of "Not out ... 0," is sufficiently representative of his methods.
+
+It was the fourth innings, and Hampdenshire with only one more wicket to
+fall, still required nineteen runs to win. Trigson could be relied upon
+to keep his wicket up, but not to score. The hopes of Ailesworth centred
+in the ability of that almost untried colt Bobby Maisefield--and he
+seemed likely to justify the trust reposed in him. A beautiful late cut
+that eluded third man and hit the fence with a resounding bang, nearly
+drove Puggy wild with delight.
+
+"Only fifteen more," he shouted. "Oh! Played; pla-a-a-yed!"
+
+But as the score crept up, the tensity grew. As each ball was delivered,
+a chill, rigid silence held the onlookers in its grip. When Trigson,
+with the field collected round him, almost to be covered with a sheet,
+stonewalled the most tempting lob, the click of the ball on his bat was
+an intrusion on the stillness. And always it was followed by a deep
+breath of relief that sighed round the ring like a faint wind through a
+plantation of larches. When Bobby scored, the tumult broke out like a
+crash of thunder; but it subsided again, echoless, to that intense
+silence so soon as the ball was "dead."
+
+Curiously, it was not Bobby who made the winning hit but Trigson. "One
+to tie, two to win," breathed Puggy as the field changed over, and it
+was Trigson who had to face the bowling. The suspense was torture.
+Oxford had put on their fast bowler again, and Trigson, intimidated,
+perhaps, did not play him with quite so straight a bat as he had opposed
+to the lob-bowler. The ball hit Trigson's bat and glanced through the
+slips. The field was very close to the wicket, and the ball was
+travelling fast. No one seemed to make any attempt to stop it. For a
+moment the significance of the thing was not realised; for a moment
+only, then followed uproar, deafening, stupendous.
+
+Puggy was stamping fiercely on the top of his cart; the tears were
+streaming down his face; he was screaming and yelling incoherent words.
+And he was representative of the crowd. Thus men shouted and stamped and
+cried when news came of the relief of Kimberley, or when that false
+report of victory was brought to Paris in the August of 1870....
+
+The effect upon Ginger was a thing apart. He did not join in the fierce
+acclamation; he did not wait to see the chairing of Bobby and Trigson.
+The greatness of Stott's character, the fineness of his genius is
+displayed in his attitude towards the dramatic spectacle he had just
+witnessed.
+
+As he trudged home into Ailesworth, his thoughts found vent in a
+muttered sentence which is peculiarly typical of the effect that had
+been made upon him.
+
+"I believe I could have bowled that chap," he said.
+
+
+III
+
+In writing a history of this kind, a certain licence must be claimed. It
+will be understood that I am filling certain gaps in the narrative with
+imagined detail. But the facts are true. My added detail is only
+intended to give an appearance of life and reality to my history. Let
+me, therefore, insist upon one vital point. I have not been dependent on
+hearsay for one single fact in this story. Where my experience does not
+depend upon personal experience, it has been received from the
+principals themselves. Finally, it should be remembered that when I
+have, imaginatively, put words into the mouths of the persons of this
+story, they are never essential words which affect the issue. The
+essential speeches are reported from first-hand sources. For instance,
+Ginger Stott himself has told me on more than one occasion that the
+words with which I closed the last section, were the actual words spoken
+by him on the occasion in question. It was not until six years after the
+great Oxfordshire match that I myself first met the man, but what
+follows is literally true in all essentials.
+
+There was a long, narrow strip of yard, or alley, at the back of Mrs.
+Stott's paper-shop, a yard that, unfortunately, no longer exists. It has
+been partly built over, and another of England's memorials has thus been
+destroyed by the vandals of modern commerce....
+
+This yard was fifty-three feet long, measuring from Mrs. Stott's back
+door to the door of the coal-shed, which marked the alley's extreme
+limit. This measurement, an apparently negligible trifle, had an
+important effect upon Stott's career. For it was in this yard that he
+taught himself to bowl, and the shortness of the pitch precluded his
+taking any run. From those long studious hours of practice he emerged
+with a characteristic that was--and still remains--unique. Stott never
+took more than two steps before delivering the ball; frequently he
+bowled from a standing position, and batsmen have confessed that of all
+Stott's puzzling mannerisms, this was the one to which they never became
+accustomed. S. R. L. Maturin, the finest bat Australia ever sent to this
+country, has told me that to this peculiarity of delivery he attributed
+his failure ever to score freely against Stott. It completely upset
+one's habit of play, he said: one had no time to prepare for the flight
+of the ball; it came at one so suddenly. Other bowlers have since
+attempted some imitation of this method without success. They had not
+Stott's physical advantages.
+
+Nevertheless, the shortness of that alley threw Stott back for two
+years. When he first emerged to try conclusions on the field, he found
+his length on the longer pitch utterly unreliable, and the effort
+necessary to throw the ball another six yards, at first upset his slowly
+acquired methods.
+
+It was not until he was twenty years old that Ginger Stott played in his
+first Colts' match.
+
+The three years that had intervened had not been prosperous years for
+Hampdenshire. Their team was a one-man team. Bobby Maisefield was
+developing into a fine bat (and other counties were throwing out
+inducements to him, trying to persuade him to qualify for first-class
+cricket), but he found no support, and Hampdenshire was never looked
+upon as a coming county. The best of the minor counties in those years
+were Staffordshire and Norfolk.
+
+In the Colts' match Stott's analysis ran:
+
+    overs    maidens    runs    wickets
+    11·3        7        16        7
+
+and reference to the score-sheet, which is still preserved among the
+records of the County Club, shows that six of the seven wickets were
+clean bowled. The Eleven had no second innings; the match was drawn,
+owing to rain. Stott has told me that the Eleven had to bat on a dry
+wicket, but after making all allowances, the performance was certainly
+remarkable.
+
+After this match Stott was, of course, played regularly. That year
+Hampdenshire rose once more to their old position at the head of the
+minor counties, and Maisefield, who had been seriously considering
+Surrey's offer of a place in their Eleven after two years' qualification
+by residence, decided to remain with the county which had given him his
+first chance.
+
+During that season Stott did not record any performance so remarkable as
+his feat in the Colts' match, but his record for the year was
+eighty-seven wickets with an average of 9·31; and it is worthy of notice
+that Yorkshire made overtures to him, as he was qualified by birth to
+play for the northern county.
+
+I think there must have been a wonderful _esprit de corps_ among the
+members of that early Hampdenshire Eleven. There are other evidences
+beside this refusal of its two most prominent members to join the ranks
+of first-class cricket. Lord R----, the president of the H.C.C.C., has
+told me that this spirit was quite as marked as in the earlier case of
+Kent. He himself certainly did much to promote it, and his generosity in
+making good the deficits of the balance sheet, had a great influence on
+the acceleration of Hampdenshire's triumph.
+
+In his second year, though Hampdenshire were again champions of the
+second-class counties, Stott had not such a fine average as in the
+preceding season. Sixty-one wickets for eight hundred and sixty-eight
+(average 14·23) seems to show a decline in his powers, but that was a
+wonderful year for batsmen (Maisefield scored seven hundred and
+forty-two runs, with an average of forty-two) and, moreover, that was
+the year in which Stott was privately practising his new theory.
+
+It was in this year that three very promising recruits, all since become
+famous, joined the Eleven, viz.: P. H. Evans, St. John Townley, and
+Flower the fast bowler. With these five cricketers Hampdenshire fully
+deserved their elevation into the list of first-class counties.
+Curiously enough, they took the place of the old champions,
+Gloucestershire, who, with Somerset, fell back into the obscurity of the
+second-class that season.
+
+
+IV
+
+I must turn aside for a moment at this point in order to explain the
+"new theory" of Stott's, to which I have referred, a theory which became
+in practice one of the elements of his most astounding successes.
+
+Ginger Stott was not a tall man. He stood only 5 ft. 5-1/4 in. in his
+socks, but he was tremendously solid; he had what is known as a "stocky"
+figure, broad and deep-chested. That was where his muscular power lay,
+for his abnormally long arms were rather thin, though his huge hands
+were powerful enough.
+
+Even without his "new theory," Stott would have been an exceptional
+bowler. His thoroughness would have assured his success. He studied his
+art diligently, and practised regularly in a barn through the winter.
+His physique, too, was a magnificent instrument. That long, muscular
+body was superbly steady on the short, thick legs. It gave him a
+fulcrum, firm, apparently immovable. And those weirdly long, thin arms
+could move with lightning rapidity. He always stood with his hands
+behind him, and then--as often as not without even one preliminary
+step--the long arm would flash round and the ball be delivered, without
+giving the batsman any opportunity of watching his hand; you could never
+tell which way he was going to break. It was astonishing, too, the pace
+he could get without any run. Poor Wallis used to call him the "human
+catapult"; Wallis was always trying to find new phrases.
+
+The theory first came to Stott when he was practising at the nets. It
+was a windy morning, and he noticed that several times the balls he
+bowled swerved in the air. When those swerving balls came they were
+almost unplayable.
+
+Stott made no remark to any one--he was bowling to the groundsman--but
+the ambition to bowl "swerves,"[1] as they were afterwards called, took
+possession of him from that morning. It is true that he never mastered
+the theory completely; on a perfectly calm day he could never depend
+upon obtaining any swerve at all, but, within limits, he developed his
+theory until he had any batsman practically at his mercy.
+
+He might have mastered the theory completely, had it not been for his
+accident--we must remember that he had only three seasons of first-class
+cricket--and, personally, I believe he would have achieved that complete
+mastery. But I do not believe, as Stott did, that he could have taught
+his method to another man. That belief became an obsession with him, and
+will be dealt with later.
+
+My own reasons for doubting that Stott's "swerve" could have been
+taught, is that it would have been necessary for the pupil to have had
+Stott's peculiarities, not only of method, but of physique. He used to
+spin the ball with a twist of his middle finger and thumb, just as you
+may see a billiard professional spin a billiard ball. To do this in his
+manner, it is absolutely necessary not only to have a very large and
+muscular hand, but to have very lithe and flexible arm muscles, for the
+arm is moving rapidly while the twist is given, and there must be no
+antagonistic muscular action. Further, I believe that part of the secret
+was due to the fact that Stott bowled from a standing position. Given
+these things, the rest is merely a question of long and assiduous
+practice. The human mechanism is marvellously adaptable. I have seen
+Stott throw a cricket ball half across the room with sufficient spin on
+the ball to make it shoot back to him along the carpet.
+
+I have mentioned the wind as a factor in obtaining the swerve. It was a
+head-wind that Stott required. I have seen him, for sport, toss a
+cricket ball into the teeth of a gale, and make it describe the
+trajectory of a badly sliced golf-ball. This is why the big pavilion at
+Ailesworth is set at such a curious angle to the ground. It was built in
+the winter following Hampdenshire's second season of first-class
+cricket, and it was so placed that when the wickets were pitched in a
+line with it, they might lie south-west and north-east, or in the
+direction of the prevailing winds.
+
+
+V
+
+The first time I ever saw Ginger Stott, was on the occasion of the
+historic encounter with Surrey; Hampdenshire's second engagement in
+first-class cricket. The match with Notts, played at Trent Bridge a few
+days earlier, had not foreshadowed any startling results. The truth of
+the matter is that Stott had been kept, deliberately, in the background;
+and as matters turned out his services were only required to finish off
+Notts' second innings. Stott was even then a marked man, and the
+Hampdenshire captain did not wish to advertise his methods too freely
+before the Surrey match. Neither Archie Findlater, who was captaining
+the team that year, nor any other person, had the least conception of
+how unnecessary such a reservation was to prove. In his third year, when
+Stott had been studied by every English, Australian, and South African
+batsman of any note, he was still as unplayable as when he made his
+début in first-class cricket.
+
+I was reporting the Surrey match for two papers, and in company with
+poor Wallis interviewed Stott before the first innings.
+
+His appearance made a great impression on me. I have, of course, met
+him, and talked with him many times since then, but my most vivid
+memory of him is the picture recorded in the inadequate professional
+dressing-room of the old Ailesworth pavilion.
+
+I have turned up the account of my interview in an old press-cutting
+book, and I do not know that I can do better than quote that part of it
+which describes Stott's personal appearance. I wrote the account on the
+off chance of being able to get it taken. It was one of my lucky hits.
+After that match, finished in a single day, my interview afforded copy
+that any paper would have paid heavily for, and gladly.
+
+Here is the description:
+
+    "Stott--he is known to every one in Ailesworth as 'Ginger' Stott--is
+    a short, thick-set young man, with abnormally long arms that are
+    tanned a rich red up to the elbow. The tan does not, however,
+    obliterate the golden freckles with which arm and face are richly
+    speckled. There is no need to speculate as to the _raison d'être_ of
+    his nickname. The hair of his head, a close, short crop, is a pale
+    russet, and the hair on his hands and arms is a yellower shade of
+    the same colour. 'Ginger' is, indeed, a perfectly apt description.
+    He has a square chin and a thin-lipped, determined mouth. His eyes
+    are a clear, but rather light blue, his forehead is good, broad,
+    and high, and he has a well-proportioned head. One might have put
+    him down as an engineer, essentially intelligent, purposeful, and
+    reserved."
+
+The description is journalistic, but I do not know that I could improve
+upon the detail of it. I can see those queer, freckled, hairy arms of
+his as I write--the combination of colours in them produced an effect
+that was almost orange. It struck one as unusual....
+
+Surrey had the choice of innings, and decided to bat, despite the fact
+that the wicket was drying after rain, under the influence of a steady
+south-west wind and occasional bursts of sunshine. Would any captain in
+Stott's second year have dared to take first innings under such
+conditions? The question is farcical now, but not a single member of the
+Hampdenshire Eleven had the least conception that the Surrey captain was
+deliberately throwing away his chances on that eventful day.
+
+Wallis and I were sitting together in the reporters' box. There were
+only four of us; two specials,--Wallis and myself,--a news-agency
+reporter, and a local man.
+
+"Stott takes first over," remarked Wallis, sharpening his pencil and
+arranging his watch and score-sheet--he was very meticulous in his
+methods. "They've put him to bowl against the wind. He's medium right,
+isn't he?"
+
+"Haven't the least idea," I said. "He volunteered no information;
+Hampdenshire have been keeping him dark."
+
+Wallis sneered. "Think they've got a find, eh?" he said. "We'll wait and
+see what he can do against first-class batting."
+
+We did not have to wait long.
+
+As usual, Thorpe and Harrison were first wicket for Surrey, and Thorpe
+took the first ball.
+
+It bowled him. It made his wicket look as untidy as any wicket I have
+ever seen. The off stump was out of the ground, and the other two were
+markedly divergent.
+
+"Damn it, I wasn't ready for him," we heard Thorpe say in the
+professionals' room. Thorpe always had some excuse, but on this occasion
+it was justified.
+
+C. V. Punshon was the next comer, and he got his first ball through the
+slips for four, but Wallis looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
+
+"Punshon didn't know a lot about that," he said, and then he added, "I
+say, what a queer delivery the chap has. He stands and shoots 'em out.
+It's uncanny. He's a kind of human catapult." He made a note of the
+phrase on his pad.
+
+Punshon succeeded in hitting the next ball, also, but it simply ran up
+his bat into the hands of short slip.
+
+"Well, that's a sitter, if you like," said Wallis. "What's the matter
+with 'em?"
+
+I was beginning to grow enthusiastic.
+
+"Look here, Wallis," I said, "this chap's going to break records."
+
+Wallis was still doubtful.
+
+He was convinced before the innings was over.
+
+There must be many who remember the startling poster that heralded the
+early editions of the evening papers:
+
+       SURREY
+
+      ALL OUT
+
+    FOR 13 RUNS.
+
+For once sub-editors did not hesitate to give the score on the contents
+bill. That was a proclamation which would sell. Inside, the headlines
+were rich and varied. I have an old paper by me, yellow now, and
+brittle, that may serve as a type for the rest. The headlines are as
+follows:--
+
+      SURREY AND HAMPDENSHIRE.
+
+       EXTRAORDINARY BOWLING
+           PERFORMANCE.
+
+         DOUBLE HAT-TRICK.
+
+    SURREY ALL OUT IN 35 MINUTES
+           FOR 13 RUNS.
+
+    STOTT TAKES 10 WICKETS FOR 5.
+
+The "double hat-trick" was six consecutive wickets, the last six, all
+clean bowled.
+
+"Good God!" Wallis said, when the last wicket fell, and he looked at me
+with something like fear in his eyes. "This man will have to be barred;
+it means the end of cricket."
+
+
+VI
+
+Stott's accident came during the high flood of Hampdenshire success. For
+two years they held undisputed place as champion county, a place which
+could not be upset by the most ingenious methods of calculating points.
+They three times defeated Australia, and played four men in the test
+matches. As a team they were capable of beating any Eleven opposed to
+them. Not even the newspaper critics denied that.
+
+The accident appeared insignificant at the time. The match was against
+Notts on the Trent Bridge ground. I was reporting for three papers;
+Wallis was not there.
+
+Stott had been taken off. Notts were a poor lot that year and I think
+Findlater did not wish to make their defeat appear too ignominious.
+Flower was bowling; it was a fast, true wicket, and Stott, who was a
+safe field, was at cover-point.
+
+G. L. Mallinson was batting and making good use of his opportunity; he
+was, it will be remembered, a magnificent though erratic hitter. Flower
+bowled him a short-pitched, fast ball, rather wide of the off-stump.
+Many men might have left it alone, for the ball was rising, and the
+slips were crowded, but Mallinson timed the ball splendidly, and drove
+it with all his force. He could not keep it on the ground, however, and
+Stott had a possible chance. He leaped for it and just touched the ball
+with his right hand. The ball jumped the ring at its first bound, and
+Mallinson never even attempted to run. There was a big round of applause
+from the Trent Bridge crowd.
+
+I noticed that Stott had tied a handkerchief round his finger, but I
+forgot the incident until I saw Findlater beckon to his best bowler, a
+few overs later. Notts had made enough runs for decency; it was time to
+get them out.
+
+I saw Stott walk up to Findlater and shake his head, and through my
+glasses I saw him whip the handkerchief from his finger and display his
+hand. Findlater frowned, said something and looked towards the pavilion,
+but Stott shook his head. He evidently disagreed with Findlater's
+proposal. Then Mallinson came up, and the great bulk of his back hid the
+faces of the other two. The crowd was beginning to grow excited at the
+interruption. Every one had guessed that something was wrong. All round
+the ring men were standing up, trying to make out what was going on.
+
+I drew my inferences from Mallinson's face, for when he turned round and
+strolled back to his wicket, he was wearing a broad smile. Through my
+field glasses I could see that he was licking his lower lip with his
+tongue. His shoulders were humped and his whole expression one of barely
+controlled glee. (I always see that picture framed in a circle; a
+bioscopic presentation.) He could hardly refrain from dancing. Then
+little Beale, who was Mallinson's partner, came up and spoke to him, and
+I saw Mallinson hug himself with delight as he explained the situation.
+
+When Stott unwillingly came back to the pavilion, a low murmur ran round
+the ring, like the buzz of a great crowd of disturbed blue flies. In
+that murmur I could distinctly trace the signs of mixed feelings. No
+doubt the crowd had come there to witness the performances of the new
+phenomenon--the abnormal of every kind has a wonderful attraction for
+us--but, on the other hand, the majority wanted to see their own county
+win. Moreover, Mallinson was giving them a taste of his abnormal powers
+of hitting, and the batsman appeals to the spectacular, more than the
+bowler.
+
+I ran down hurriedly to meet Stott.
+
+"Only a split finger, sir," he said carelessly, in answer to my
+question; "but Mr. Findlater says I must see to it."
+
+I examined the finger, and it certainly did not seem to call for
+surgical aid. Evidently it had been caught by the seam of the new ball;
+there was a fairly clean cut about half an inch long on the fleshy
+underside of the second joint of the middle finger.
+
+"Better have it seen to," I said. "We can't afford to lose you, you
+know, Stott."
+
+Stott gave a laugh that was more nearly a snarl. "Ain't the first time
+I've 'ad a cut finger," he said scornfully.
+
+He had the finger bound up when I saw him again, but it had been done by
+an amateur. I learnt afterwards that no antiseptic had been used. That
+was at lunch time, and Notts had made a hundred and sixty-eight for one
+wicket; Mallinson was not out, a hundred and three. I saw that the Notts
+Eleven were in magnificent spirits.
+
+But after lunch Stott came out and took the first over. I don't know
+what had passed between him and Findlater, but the captain had evidently
+been over-persuaded.
+
+We must not blame Findlater. The cut certainly appeared trifling, it was
+not bad enough to prevent Stott from bowling, and Hampdenshire seemed
+powerless on that wicket without him. It is very easy to distribute
+blame after the event, but most people would have done what Findlater
+did in those circumstances.
+
+The cut did not appear to inconvenience Stott in the least degree. He
+bowled Mallinson with his second ball, and the innings was finished up
+in another fifty-seven minutes for the addition of thirty-eight runs.
+
+Hampdenshire made two hundred and thirty-seven for three wickets before
+the drawing of stumps, and that was the end of the match, for the
+weather changed during the night and rain prevented any further play.
+
+I, of course, stayed on in Nottingham to await results. I saw Stott on
+the next day, Friday, and asked him about his finger. He made light of
+it, but that evening Findlater told me over the bridge-table that he was
+not happy about it. He had seen the finger, and thought it showed a
+tendency to inflammation. "I shall take him to Gregory in the morning if
+it's not all right," he said. Gregory was a well-known surgeon in
+Nottingham.
+
+Again one sees, now, that the visit to Gregory should not have been
+postponed, but at the time one does not take extraordinary precautions
+in such a case as this. A split finger is such an everyday thing, and
+one is guided by the average of experience. After all, if one were
+constantly to make preparation for the abnormal; ordinary life could not
+go on....
+
+I heard that Gregory pursed his lips over that finger when he had
+learned the name of his famous patient. "You'll have to be very careful
+of this, young man," was Findlater's report of Gregory's advice. It was
+not sufficient. I often wonder now whether Gregory might not have saved
+the finger. If he had performed some small operation at once, cut away
+the poison, it seems to me that the tragedy might have been averted. I
+am, I admit, a mere layman in these matters, but it seems to me that
+something might have been done.
+
+I left Nottingham on Saturday after lunch--the weather was hopeless--and
+I did not make use of the information I had for the purposes of my
+paper. I was never a good journalist. But I went down to Ailesworth on
+Monday morning, and found that Findlater and Stott had already gone to
+Harley Street to see Graves, the King's surgeon.
+
+I followed them, and arrived at Graves's house while Stott was in the
+consulting-room. I hocussed the butler and waited with the patients.
+Among the papers, I came upon the famous caricature of Stott in the
+current number of _Punch_--the "Stand-and-Deliver" caricature, in which
+Stott is represented with an arm about ten feet long, and the batsman is
+looking wildly over his shoulder to square leg, bewildered, with no
+conception from what direction the ball is coming. Underneath is written
+"Stott's New Theory--the Ricochet. Real Ginger." While I was laughing
+over the cartoon, the butler came in and nodded to me. I followed him
+out of the room and met Findlater and Stott in the hall.
+
+Findlater was in a state of profanity. I could not get a sensible word
+out of him. He was in a white heat of pure rage. The butler, who seemed
+as anxious as I to learn the verdict, was positively frightened.
+
+"Well, for God's sake tell me what Graves said," I protested.
+
+Findlater's answer is unprintable, and told me nothing.
+
+Stott, however, quite calm and self-possessed, volunteered the
+information. "Finger's got to come off, sir," he said quietly. "Doctor
+says if it ain't off to-day or to-morrer, he won't answer for my 'and."
+
+This was the news I had to give to England. It was a great coup from the
+journalistic point of view, but I made up my three columns with a heavy
+heart, and the congratulations of my editor only sickened me. I had some
+luck, but I should never have become a good journalist.
+
+The operation was performed successfully that evening, and Stott's
+career was closed.
+
+
+VII
+
+I did not see Stott again till August, and then I had a long talk with
+him on the Ailesworth County Ground, as together we watched the progress
+of Hampdenshire's defeat by Lancashire.
+
+"Oh! I can't learn him _nothing_," he broke out, as Flower was hit to
+the four corners of the ground, "'alf vollies and long 'ops and then a
+full pitch--'e's a disgrace."
+
+"They've knocked him off his length," I protested. "On a wicket like
+this ..."
+
+Stott shook his head. "I've been trying to learn 'im," he said, "but he
+can't never learn. 'E's got 'abits what you can't break 'im of."
+
+"I suppose it _is_ difficult," I said vaguely.
+
+"Same with me," went on Stott, "I've been trying to learn myself to bowl
+without my finger"--he held up his mutilated hand--"or left-'anded; but
+I can't. If I'd started that way ... No! I'm always feeling for that
+finger as is gone. A second-class bowler I might be in time, not better
+nor that."
+
+"It's early days yet," I ventured, intending encouragement, but Stott
+frowned and shook his head.
+
+"I'm not going to kid myself," he said, "I know. But I'm going to find a
+youngster and learn 'im. On'y he must be young.
+
+"No 'abits, you know," he explained.
+
+The next time I met Stott was in November. I ran up against him,
+literally, one Friday afternoon in Ailesworth.
+
+When he recognised me he asked me if I would care to walk out to
+Stoke-Underhill with him. "I've took a cottage there," he explained,
+"I'm to be married in a fortnight's time."
+
+His circumstances certainly warranted such a venture. The proceeds of
+matinée and benefit, invested for him by the Committee of the County
+Club, produced an income of nearly two pounds a week, and in addition to
+this he had his salary as groundsman. I tendered my congratulations.
+
+"Oh! well, as to that, better wait a bit," said Stott.
+
+He walked with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground. He
+had the air of a man brooding over some project.
+
+"It _is_ a lottery, of course ..." I began, but he interrupted me.
+
+"Oh that!" he said, and kicked a stone into the ditch; "take my chances
+of that. It's the kid I'm thinking on."
+
+"The kid?" I repeated, doubtful whether he spoke of his fiancée, or
+whether his nuptials pointed an act of reparation.
+
+"What, else 'ud I tie myself up for?" asked Stott. "I must 'ave a kid of
+my own and learn 'im from his cradle. It's come to that."
+
+"Oh! I understand," I said; "teach him to bowl."
+
+"Ah!" replied Stott as an affirmative. "Learn 'im from his cradle;
+before 'e's got 'abits. When I started I'd never bowled a ball in my
+life, and by good luck I started right. But I can't find another kid
+over seven years old in England as ain't never bowled a ball o' some
+sort and started 'abits. I've tried ..."
+
+"And you hope with your own boys...?" I said.
+
+"Not 'ope, it's a cert," said Stott. "I'll see no boy of mine touches a
+ball afore he's fourteen, and then 'e'll learn from me; and learn
+right. From the first go off." He was silent for a few seconds, and then
+he broke out in a kind of ecstasy. "My Gawd, 'e'll be a bowler such as
+'as never been, never in this world. He'll start where I left orf.
+He'll ..." Words failed him, he fell back on the expletive he had used,
+repeating it with an awed fervour. "My Gawd!"
+
+I had never seen Stott in this mood before. It was a revelation to me of
+the latent potentialities of the man, the remarkable depth and quality
+of his ambitions....
+
+
+VIII
+
+I intended to be present at Stott's wedding, but I was not in England
+when it took place; indeed, for the next two years and a half I was
+never in England for more than a few days at a time. I sent him a
+wedding-present, an inkstand in the guise of a cricket ball, with a
+pen-rack that was built of little silver wickets. They were still
+advertised that Christmas as "Stott inkstands."
+
+Two years and a half of American life broke up many of my old habits of
+thought. When I first returned to London I found that the cricket news
+no longer held the same interest for me, and this may account for the
+fact that I did not trouble for some time to look up my old friend
+Stott.
+
+In July, however, affairs took me to Ailesworth, and the associations of
+the place naturally led me to wonder how Stott's marriage had turned
+out, and whether the much-desired son had been born to him. When my
+business in Ailesworth was done, I decided to walk out to
+Stoke-Underhill.
+
+The road passes the County Ground, and a match was in progress, but I
+walked by without stopping. I was wool-gathering. I was not thinking of
+the man I was going to see, or I should have turned in at the County
+Ground, where he would inevitably have been found. Instead, I was
+thinking of the abnormal child I had seen in the train that day;
+uselessly speculating and wondering.
+
+When I reached Stoke-Underhill I found the cottage which Stott had shown
+me. I had by then so far recovered my wits as to know that I should not
+find Stott himself there, but from the look of the cottage I judged that
+it was untenanted, so I made inquiries at the post-office.
+
+"No; he don't live here, now, sir," said the postmistress; "he lives at
+Pym, now, sir, and rides into Ailesworth on his bike." She was evidently
+about to furnish me with other particulars, but I did not care to hear
+them. I was moody and distrait. I was wondering why I should bother my
+head about so insignificant a person as this Stott.
+
+"You'll be sure to find Mr. Stott at the cricket ground," the
+postmistress called after me.
+
+Another two months of English life induced a return to my old habits of
+thought. I found myself reverting to old tastes and interests. The
+reversion was a pleasant one. In the States I had been forced out of my
+groove, compelled to work, to strive, to think desperately if I would
+maintain any standing among my contemporaries. But when the perpetual
+stimulus was removed, I soon fell back to the less strenuous methods of
+my own country. I had time, once more, for the calm reflection that is
+so unlike the urgent, forced, inventive thought of the American
+journalist. I was braced by that thirty months' experience, perhaps
+hardened a little, but by September my American life was fading into the
+background; I had begun to take an interest in cricket again.
+
+With the revival of my old interests, revived also my curiosity as to
+Ginger Stott, and one Sunday in late September I decided to go down to
+Pym.
+
+It was a perfect day, and I thoroughly enjoyed my four-mile walk from
+Great Hittenden Station.
+
+Pym is a tiny hamlet made up of three farms and a dozen scattered
+cottages. Perched on one of the highest summits of the Hampden Hills and
+lost in the thick cover of beech woods, without a post-office or a
+shop, Pym is the most perfectly isolated village within a reasonable
+distance of London. As I sauntered up the mile-long lane that climbs the
+steep hill, and is the only connection between Pym and anything
+approaching a decent road, I thought that this was the place to which I
+should like to retire for a year, in order to write the book I had so
+often contemplated, and never found time to begin. This, I reflected,
+was a place of peace, of freedom from all distraction, the place for
+calm, contemplative meditation.
+
+I met no one in the lane, and there was no sign of life when I reached
+what I must call the village, though the word conveys a wrong idea, for
+there is no street, merely a cottage here and there, dropped haphazard,
+and situated without regard to its aspect. These cottages lie all on
+one's left hand; to the right a stretch of grass soon merges into
+bracken and bush, and then the beech woods enclose both, and surge down
+into the valley and rise up again beyond, a great wave of green; as I
+saw it then, not yet touched with the first flame of autumn.
+
+I inquired at the first cottage and received my direction to Stott's
+dwelling. It lay up a little lane, the further of two cottages joined
+together.
+
+The door stood open, and after a moment's hesitation and a light knock,
+I peered in.
+
+Sitting in a rocking-chair was a woman with black, untidy eyebrows, and
+on her knee, held with rigid attention, was the remarkable baby I had
+seen in the train two months before. As I stood, doubtful and, I will
+confess it, intimidated, suddenly cold and nervous, the child opened his
+eyes and honoured me with a cold stare. Then he nodded, a reflective,
+recognisable nod.
+
+"'E remembers seein' you in the train, sir," said the woman, "'e never
+forgets any one. Did you want to see my 'usband? 'E's upstairs."
+
+So _this_ was the boy who was designed by Stott to become the greatest
+bowler the world had ever seen....
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] A relatively easy task for the baseball thrower, but one very
+difficult of accomplishment for the English bowler, who is not permitted
+by the laws of cricket to bend his elbow in delivering the ball.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF GINGER STOTT
+
+
+I
+
+Stott maintained an obstinate silence as we walked together up to the
+Common, a stretch of comparatively open ground on the plateau of the
+hill. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down, as he
+had walked out from Ailesworth with me nearly three years before, but
+his mood was changed. I was conscious that he was gloomy, depressed,
+perhaps a little unstrung. I was burning with curiosity. Now that I was
+released from the thrall of the child's presence, I was eager to hear
+all there was to tell of its history.
+
+Presently we sat down under an ash-tree, one of three that guarded a
+shallow, muddy pond skimmed with weed. Stott accepted my offer of a
+cigarette, but seemed disinclined to break the silence.
+
+I found nothing better to say than a repetition of the old phrase.
+"That's a very remarkable baby of yours, Stott," I said.
+
+"Ah!" he replied, his usual substitute for "yes," and he picked up a
+piece of dead wood and threw it into the little pond.
+
+"How old is he?" I asked.
+
+"Nearly two year."
+
+"Can he ..." I paused; my imagination was reconstructing the scene of
+the railway carriage, and I felt a reflex of the hesitation shown by the
+rubicund man when he had asked the same question. "Can he ... can he
+talk?" It seemed so absurd a question to ask, yet it was essentially a
+natural question in the circumstances.
+
+"He can, but he won't."
+
+This was startling enough, and I pressed my enquiry.
+
+"How do you know? Are you sure he can?"
+
+"Ah!" Only that irritating, monosyllabic assent.
+
+"Look here, Stott," I said, "don't you want to talk about the child?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and threw more wood into the pond with a
+strained attentiveness as though he were peculiarly anxious to hit some
+particular wafer of the vivid, floating weed. For a full five minutes we
+maintained silence. I was trying to subdue my impatience and my temper.
+I knew Stott well enough to know that if I displayed signs of either, I
+should get no information from him. My self-control was rewarded at
+last.
+
+"I've 'eard 'im speak," he said, "speak proper, too, not like a baby."
+
+He paused, and I grunted to show that I was listening, but as he
+volunteered no further remark, I said: "What did you hear him say?"
+
+"I dunno," replied Stott, "somethin' about learnin' and talkin'. I
+didn't get the rights of it, but the missus near fainted--_she_ thinks
+'e's Gawd A'mighty or suthing."
+
+"But why don't you make him speak?" I asked deliberately.
+
+"Make 'im!" said Stott, with a curl of his lip, "_make_ 'im! You try it
+on!"
+
+I knew I was acting a part, but I wanted to provoke more information.
+"Well! Why not?" I said.
+
+"'Cos 'e'd look at you--that's why not," replied Stott, "and you can't
+no more face 'im than a dog can face a man. I shan't stand it much
+longer."
+
+"Curious," I said, "very curious."
+
+"Oh! he's a blarsted freak, that's what 'e is," said Stott, getting to
+his feet and beginning to pace moodily up and down.
+
+I did not interrupt him. I was thinking of this man who had drawn huge
+crowds from every part of England, who had been a national hero, and
+who, now, was unable to face his own child. Presently Stott broke out
+again.
+
+"To think of all the trouble I took when 'e was comin'," he said,
+stopping in front of me. "There was nothin' the missus fancied as I
+wouldn't get. We was livin' in Stoke then." He made a movement of his
+head in the direction of Ailesworth. "Not as she was difficult," he went
+on thoughtfully. "She used to say 'I mussent get 'abits, George.' Caught
+that from me; I was always on about that--then. You know, thinkin' of
+learnin' 'im bowlin'. Things was different then; afore _'e_ came." He
+paused again, evidently thinking of his troubles.
+
+Sympathetically, I was wondering how far the child had separated husband
+and wife. There was the making of a tragedy here, I thought; but when
+Stott, after another period of pacing up and down, began to speak again
+I found that his tragedy was of another kind.
+
+"Learn _'im_ bowling!" he said, and laughed a mirthless laugh. "My Gawd!
+it 'ud take something. No fear; that little game's off. And I could a'
+done it if he'd been a decent or'nery child, 'stead of a blarsted freak.
+There won't never be another, neither. This one pretty near killed the
+missus. Doctor said it'd be 'er last.... With an 'ead like that, whacher
+expect?"
+
+"Can he walk?" I asked.
+
+"Ah! Gets about easy enough for all 'is body and legs is so small. When
+the missus tries to stop 'im--she's afraid 'e'll go over--'e just looks
+at 'er and she 'as to let 'im 'ave 'is own way."
+
+
+II
+
+Later, I reverted to that speech of the child's, that intelligent,
+illuminating speech that seemed to prove that there was indeed a
+powerful, thoughtful mind behind those profoundly speculative eyes.
+
+"That time he spoke, Stott," I said, "was he alone?"
+
+"Ah!" assented Stott. "In the garden, practisin' walkin' all by
+'imself."
+
+"Was that the only time?"
+
+"Only time _I've_ 'eard 'im."
+
+"Was it lately?"
+
+"'Bout six weeks ago."
+
+"And he has never made a sound otherwise, cried, laughed?"
+
+"'Ardly. 'E gives a sort o' grunt sometimes, when 'e wants anything--and
+points."
+
+"He's very intelligent."
+
+"Worse than that, 'e's a freak, I tell you."
+
+With the repetition of this damning description, Stott fell back into
+his moody pacing, and this time I failed to rouse him from his gloom.
+"Oh! forget it," he broke out once, when I asked him another question,
+and I saw that he was not likely to give me any more information that
+day.
+
+We walked back together, and I said good-bye to him at the end of the
+lane which led up to his cottage.
+
+"Not comin' up?" he asked, with a nod of his head towards his home.
+
+"Well! I have to catch that train ..." I prevaricated, looking at my
+watch. I did not wish to see that child again; my distaste was even
+stronger than my curiosity.
+
+Stott grinned. "We don't 'ave many visitors," he said. "Well, I'll come
+a bit farther with you."
+
+He came to the bottom of the hill, and after he left me he took the road
+that goes over the hill to Wenderby. It would be about seven miles back
+to Pym by that road....
+
+
+III
+
+I spent the next afternoon in the Reading Room of the British Museum. I
+was searching for a precedent, and at last I found one in the story of
+Christian Heinrich Heinecken,[2] who was born at Lubeck on February 6,
+1721. There were marked points of difference between the development of
+Heinecken and that of Stott's child. Heinecken was physically feeble; at
+the age of three he was still being fed at the breast. The Stott
+precocity appeared to be physically strong; his body looked small and
+undeveloped, it is true, but this was partly an illusion produced by the
+abnormal size of the head. Again Heinecken learned to speak very early;
+at ten months old he was asking intelligent questions, at eighteen
+months he was studying history, geography, Latin and anatomy; whereas
+the Stott child had only once been heard to speak at the age of two
+years, and had not, apparently, begun any study at all.
+
+From this comparison it might seem at first that the balance of
+precocity lay in the Heinecken scale. I drew another inference. I argued
+that the genius of the Stott child far outweighed the genius of
+Christian Heinecken.
+
+Little Heinecken in his four years of life suffered the mental
+experience--with certain necessary limitations--of a developed brain. He
+gathered knowledge as an ordinary child gathers knowledge, the only
+difference being that his rate of assimilation was as ten to one.
+
+But little Stott had gathered no knowledge from books. He had been born
+of ignorant parents, he was being brought up among uneducated people.
+Yet he had wonderful intellectual gifts; surely he must have one above
+all others--the gift of reason. His brain must be constructive, logical;
+he must have the power of deduction. He must even at an extraordinarily
+early age, say six months, have developed some theory of life. He must
+be withholding his energy, deliberately; declining to exhibit his
+powers, holding his marvellous faculties in reserve. Here was surely a
+case of genius which, comparable in some respects to the genius of
+Heinecken, yet far exceeded it.
+
+As I developed my theory, my eagerness grew. And then suddenly an
+inspiration came to me. In my excitement I spoke aloud and smacked the
+desk in front of me with my open hand. "Why, of course!" I said. "That
+is the key."
+
+An old man in the next seat scowled fiercely. The attendants in the
+central circular desk all looked up. Other readers turned round and
+stared at me. I had violated the sacred laws of the Reading Room. I saw
+one of the librarians make a sign to an attendant and point to me.
+
+I gathered up my books quickly and returned them at the central desk. My
+self-consciousness had returned, and I was anxious to be away from the
+observation of the many dilettante readers who found my appearance more
+engrossing than the books with which they were dallying on some pretext
+or another.
+
+Yet, curiously, when I reached the street, the theory which had come to
+me in the Museum with the force and vividness of an illuminating dream
+had lost some of its glamour. Nevertheless, I set it out as it then
+shaped itself in my mind.
+
+The great restraining force in the evolution of man, so I thought, has
+been the restriction imposed by habit. What we call instinct is a
+hereditary habit. This is the first guiding principle in the life of the
+human infant. Upon this instinct we immediately superimpose the habits
+of reason, all the bodily and intellectual conventions that have been
+handed down from generation to generation. We learn everything we know
+as children by the hereditary, simian habit of imitation. The child of
+intellectual, cultured parents, born into savage surroundings, becomes
+the slave of this inherited habit--call it tendency, if you will, the
+intention is the same. I elaborated the theory by instance and
+introspection, and found no flaw in it....
+
+And here, by some freak of nature, was a child born without these
+habits. During the period of gestation, one thought had dominated the
+minds of both parents--the desire to have a son born without habits. It
+does not seriously affect the theory that the desire had a peculiar end
+in view; the wish, the urgent, controlling, omnipotent will had been
+there, and the result included far more than the specific intention.
+
+Already some of my distaste for the Stott child had vanished. It was
+accountable, and therefore no longer fearful. The child was supernormal,
+a cause of fear to the normal man, as all truly supernormal things are
+to our primitive, animal instincts. This is the fear of the wild thing;
+when we can explain and give reasons, the horror vanishes. We are men
+again.
+
+I did not quite recover the glow of my first inspiration, but the theory
+remained with me; I decided to make a study of the child, to submit
+knowledge to his reason. I would stand between him and the delimiting
+training of the pedagogue, I thought.
+
+Then I reached home, and my life was changed.
+
+This story is not of my own life, and I have no wish to enter into the
+curious and saddening experiences which stood between me and the child
+of Ginger Stott for nearly six years. In that time my thoughts strayed
+now and again to that cottage in the little hamlet on those wooded
+hills. Often I thought "When I have time I will go and see that child
+again if he is alive." But as the years passed, the memory of him grew
+dim, even the memory of his father was blurred over by a thousand new
+impressions. So it chanced that for nearly six years I heard no word of
+Stott and his supernormal infant, and then chance again intervened. My
+long period of sorrow came to an end almost as suddenly as it had begun,
+and by a coincidence I was once more entangled in the strange web of the
+abnormal.
+
+In this story of Victor Stott I have bridged these six years in the
+pages that follow. In doing this I have been compelled to draw to a
+certain extent on my imagination, but the main facts are true. They have
+been gathered from first-hand authority only, from Henry Challis, from
+Mrs. Stott, and from her husband; though none, I must confess, has been
+checked by that soundest of all authorities, Victor Stott himself, who
+might have given me every particular in accurate detail, had it not been
+for those peculiarities of his which will be explained fully in the
+proper place.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] See the Teutsche Bibliothek and Schoneich's account of the child of
+Lubeck.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE MANNER OF HIS BIRTH
+
+
+I
+
+Stoke-Underhill lies in the flat of the valley that separates the
+Hampden from the Quainton Hills. The main road from London to Ailesworth
+does not pass through Stoke, but from the highway you can see the ascent
+of the bridge over the railway, down the vista of a straight mile of
+side road; and, beyond, a glimpse of scattered cottages. That is all,
+and as a matter of fact, no one who is not keeping a sharp look-out
+would ever notice the village, for the eye is drawn to admire the bluff
+of Deane Hill, the highest point of the Hampdens, which lowers over the
+little hamlet of Stoke and gives it a second name; and to the church
+tower of Chilborough Beacon, away to the right, another landmark.
+
+The attraction which Stoke-Underhill held for Stott, lay not in its
+seclusion or its picturesqueness but in its nearness to the County
+Ground. Stott could ride the two flat miles which separated him from the
+scene of his work in ten minutes, and Ailesworth station is only a mile
+beyond. So when he found that there was a suitable cottage to let in
+Stoke, he looked no farther for a home; he was completely satisfied.
+
+Stott's absorption in any matter that was occupying his mind made him
+exceedingly careless about the detail of his affairs. He took the first
+cottage that offered when he looked for a home, he took the first woman
+who offered when he looked for a wife.
+
+Stott was not an attractive man to women. He was short and plain, and he
+had an appearance of being slightly deformed, a "monkeyish" look, due to
+his build and his long arms. Still, he was famous, and might, doubtless,
+have been accepted by a dozen comely young women for that reason, even
+after his accident. But if Stott was unattractive to women, women were
+even more unattractive to Stott. "No opinion of women?" he used to say.
+"Ever seen a gel try to throw a cricket ball? You 'ave? Well, ain't that
+enough to put you off women?" That was Stott's intellectual standard;
+physically, he had never felt drawn to women.
+
+Ellen Mary Jakes exhibited no superiority over her sisters in the matter
+of throwing a cricket ball. She was a friend of Ginger's mother, and
+she was a woman of forty-two, who had long since been relegated to some
+remote shelf of the matrimonial exchange. But her physical disadvantages
+were outbalanced by her mental qualities. Ellen Mary was not a
+book-worm, she read nothing but the evening and Sunday papers, but she
+had a reasoning and intelligent mind.
+
+She had often contemplated the state of matrimony, and had made more
+than one tentative essay in that direction. She had walked out with
+three or four sprigs of the Ailesworth bourgeoisie in her time, and the
+shadow of middle-age had crept upon her before she realised that however
+pliant her disposition, her lack of physical charm put her at the mercy
+of the first bright-eyed rival. At thirty-five Ellen had decided, with
+admirable philosophy, that marriage was not for her, and had assumed,
+with apparent complacency, the outward evidences of a dignified
+spinsterhood. She had discarded gay hats and ribbons, imitation
+jewellery, unreliable cheap shoes, and chill diaphanous stockings, and
+had found some solace for her singleness in more comfortable and
+suitable apparel.
+
+When Ellen, a declared spinster of seven years' standing, was first
+taken into the confidence of Ginger Stott's mother, the scheme which she
+afterwards elaborated immediately presented itself to her mind. This
+fact is a curious instance of Ellen Mary's mobility of intellect, and
+the student of heredity may here find matter for careful thought.[3]
+
+The confidence in question was Ginger's declared intention of becoming
+the father of the world's greatest bowler. Mrs. Stott was a dark,
+garrulous, rather deaf little woman, with a keen eye for the main
+chance; she might have become a successful woman of business if she had
+not been by nature both stingy and a cheat. When her son presented his
+determination, her first thought was to find some woman who would not
+dissipate her son's substance, and in her opinion--not expressed to
+Ginger--the advertised purpose of the contemplated marriage evidenced a
+wasteful disposition.
+
+Mrs. Stott did not think of Ellen Mary as a possible daughter-in-law,
+but she did hold forth for an hour and three-quarters on the
+contemptible qualities of the young maidens, first of Ailesworth, and
+then with a wider swoop that was not justified by her limited
+experience, of the girls of England, Scotland, and Ireland at large.
+
+It required the flexible reasoning powers of Ellen Mary to find a
+solution of the problem. Any ordinary, average woman of forty-two, a
+declared spinster of seven years' standing, who had lived all her life
+in a provincial town, would have been mentally unable to realise the
+possibilities of the situation. Such a representative of the decaying
+sexual instinct would have needed the stimulus of courtship, at the
+least of some hint of preference displayed by the suitor. Ruled by the
+conventions which hold her sex in bondage, she would have deemed it
+unwomanly to make advances by any means other than innuendo, the subtle
+suggestions which are the instruments of her sex, but which are often
+too delicate to pierce the understanding of the obtuse and slow-witted
+male.
+
+Ellen Mary stood outside the ruck that determines the destinies of all
+such typical representatives. She considered the idea presented to her
+by Mrs. Stott with an open and mobile intelligence. She weighed the
+character of Ginger, the possibilities of rejection, and the influence
+of Mrs. Stott; and she gave no thought to the conventions, nor to the
+criticisms of Ailesworth society. When she had decided that such chances
+as she could calculate were in her favour, Ellen made up her mind,
+walked out to the County Ground one windy October forenoon, and
+discovered Ginger experimenting with grass seed in a shed off the
+pavilion.
+
+In this shed she offered herself, while Ginger worked on, attentive but
+unresponsive. Perhaps she did not make an offer so much as state a case.
+A masterly case, without question; for who can doubt that Stott, however
+procrastinating and unwilling to make a definite overture, must already
+have had some type of womanhood in his mind; some conception, the seed
+of an ideal.
+
+I find a quality of romance in this courageous and unusual wooing of
+Ellen Mary's; but more, I find evidences of the remarkable quality of
+her intelligence. In other circumstances the name of Ellen Mary Jakes
+might have stood for individual achievement; instead of that, she is
+remembered as a common woman who _happened_ to be the mother of Victor
+Stott. But when the facts are examined, can we say that chance entered?
+If ever the birth of a child was deliberately designed by both parents,
+it was in the case under consideration. And in what a strange setting
+was the inception first displayed.
+
+Ellen Mary, a gaunt, tall, somewhat untidy woman, stood at the narrow
+door of the little shed off the Ailesworth pavilion; with one hand,
+shoulder-high, she steadied herself against the door frame, with the
+other she continually pushed forward the rusty bonnet which had been
+loosened during her walk by the equinoctial gale that now tore at the
+door of the shed, and necessitated the employment of a wary foot to keep
+the door from slamming. With all these distractions she still made good
+her case, though she had to raise her voice above the multitudinous
+sounds of the wind, and though she had to address the unresponsive
+shoulders of a man who bent over shallow trays of earth set on a trestle
+table under the small and dirty window. It is heroic, but she had her
+reward in full measure. Presently her voice ceased, and she waited in
+silence for the answer that should decide her destiny. There was an
+interval broken only by the tireless passion of the wind, and then
+Ginger Stott, the best-known man in England, looked up and stared
+through the incrusted pane of glass before him at the dim vision of
+stooping grass and swaying hedge. Unconsciously his hand strayed to his
+pockets, and then he said in a low, thoughtful voice: "Well! I dunno why
+not."
+
+
+II
+
+Dr. O'Connell's face was white and drawn, and the redness of his eyelids
+more pronounced than ever as he faced Stott in the pale October dawn. He
+clutched at his beard with a nervous, combing movement, as he shook his
+head decidedly in answer to the question put to him.
+
+"If it's not dead, now, 'twill be in very few hours," he said.
+
+Stott was shaken by the feeble passion of a man who has spent many weary
+hours of suspense. His anger thrilled out in a feeble stream of
+hackneyed profanities.
+
+O'Connell looked down on him with contempt. At sunrise, after a
+sleepless night, a man is a creature of unrealised emotions.
+
+"Damn it, control yourself, man!" growled O'Connell, himself
+uncontrolled, "your wife'll pull through with care, though she'll never
+have another child." O'Connell did not understand; he was an Irishman,
+and no cricketer; he had been called in because he had a reputation for
+his skill in obstetrics.
+
+Stott stared at him fiercely. The two men seemed as if about to grapple
+desperately for life in the windy, grey twilight.
+
+O'Connell recovered his self-control first, and began again to claw
+nervously at his beard. "Don't be a fool," he said, "it's only what you
+could expect. Her first child, and her a woman of near fifty." He
+returned to the upstairs room; Stott seized his cap and went out into
+the chill world of sunrise.
+
+"She'll do, if there are no complications," said O'Connell to the
+nurse, as he bent over the still, exhausted figure of Mrs. Stott. "She's
+a wonderful woman to have delivered such a child alive."
+
+The nurse shivered, and avoiding any glance at the huddle that lay on an
+improvised sofa-bed, she said: "It can't live, can it?"
+
+O'Connell, still intent on his first patient, shook his head. "Never
+cried after delivery," he muttered--"the worst sign." He was silent for
+a moment and then he added: "But, to be sure, it's a freak of some
+kind." His scientific curiosity led him to make a further investigation.
+He left the bed and began to examine the huddle on the sofa-couch.
+Victor Stott owed his life, in the first instance, to this scientific
+curiosity of O'Connell's.
+
+The nurse, a capable, but sentimental woman, turned to the window and
+looked out at the watery trickle of feeble sunlight that now illumined
+the wilderness of Stott's garden.
+
+"Nurse!" The imperative call startled her; she turned nervously.
+
+"Yes, doctor?" she said, making no movement towards him.
+
+"Come here!" O'Connell was kneeling by the sofa. "There seems to be
+complete paralysis of all the motor centres," he went on; "but the
+child's not dead. We'll try artificial respiration."
+
+The nurse overcame her repugnance by a visible effort. "Is it ... is it
+worth while?" she asked, regarding the flaccid, tumbled, wax-like thing,
+with its bloated, white globe of a skull. Every muscle of it was relaxed
+and limp, its eyes shut, its tiny jaw hanging. "Wouldn't it be better to
+let it die...?"
+
+O'Connell did not seem to hear her. He waved an impatient hand for her
+assistance. "Outside my experience," he muttered, "no heart-beat
+discernible, no breath ... yet it is indubitably alive." He depressed
+the soft, plastic ribs and gave the feeble heart a gentle squeeze.
+
+"It's beating," he ejaculated, after a pause, with an ear close to the
+little chest, "but still no breath! Come!"
+
+The diminutive lungs were as readily open to suggestion as the wee
+heart: a few movements of the twigs they called arms, and the breath
+came. O'Connell closed the mouth and it remained closed, adjusted the
+limbs, and they stayed in the positions in which they were placed. At
+last he gently lifted the lids of the eyes.
+
+The nurse shivered and drew back. Even O'Connell was startled, for the
+eyes that stared into his own seemed to be heavy with a brooding
+intelligence....
+
+Stott came back at ten o'clock, after a morose trudge through the misty
+rain. He found the nurse in the sitting-room.
+
+"Doctor gone?" he asked.
+
+The nurse nodded.
+
+"Dead, I suppose?" Stott gave an upward twist of his head towards the
+room above.
+
+The nurse shook her head.
+
+"Can't live though?" There was a note of faint hope in his voice.
+
+The nurse drew herself together and sighed deeply. "Yes! we believe
+it'll live, Mr. Stott," she said. "But ... it's a very remarkable baby."
+
+How that phrase always recurred!
+
+
+III
+
+There were no complications, but Mrs. Stott's recovery was not rapid. It
+was considered advisable that she should not see the child. She thought
+that they were lying to her, that the child was dead and, so, resigned
+herself. But her husband saw it.
+
+He had never seen so young an infant before, and, just for one moment,
+he believed that it was a normal child.
+
+"What an 'ead!" was his first ejaculation, and then he realised the
+significance of that sign. Fear came into his eyes, and his mouth fell
+open. "'Ere, I say, nurse, it's ... it's a wrong 'un, ain't it?" he
+gasped.
+
+"I'm _sure_ I can't tell you, Mr. Stott," broke out the nurse
+hysterically. She had been tending that curious baby for three hours,
+and she was on the verge of a break-down. There was no wet-nurse to be
+had, but a woman from the village had been sent for. She was expected
+every moment.
+
+"More like a tadpole than anything," mused the unhappy father.
+
+"Oh! Mr. Stott, for goodness' sake, _don't_," cried the nurse. "If you
+only knew...."
+
+"Knew what?" questioned Stott, still staring at the motionless figure of
+his son, who lay with closed eyes, apparently unconscious.
+
+"There's something--I don't know," began the nurse, and then after a
+pause, during which she seemed to struggle for some means of expression,
+she continued with a sigh of utter weariness, "You'll know when it opens
+its eyes. Oh! Why doesn't that woman come, the woman you sent for?"
+
+"She'll be 'ere directly," replied Stott. "What d'you mean about there
+bein' something ... something what?"
+
+"Uncanny," said the nurse without conviction. "I do wish that woman
+would come. I've been up the best part of the night, and now ..."
+
+"Uncanny? As how?" persisted Stott.
+
+"Not normal," explained the nurse. "I can't tell you more than that."
+
+"But 'ow? What way?"
+
+He did not receive an answer then, for the long expected relief came at
+last, a great hulk of a woman, who became voluble when she saw the child
+she had come to nurse.
+
+"Oh! dear, oh! dear," the stream began. "How unforchnit, and 'er first,
+too. It'll be a idjit, I'm afraid. Mrs. 'Arrison's third was the very
+spit of it...."
+
+The stream ran on, but Stott heard no more. An idiot! He had fathered an
+idiot! That was the end of his dreams and ambitions! He had had an
+hour's sleep on the sitting-room sofa. He went out to his work at the
+County Ground with a heart full of blasphemy.
+
+When he returned at four o'clock he met the stout woman on the doorstep.
+She put up a hand to her rolling breast, closed her eyes tightly, and
+gasped as though completely overcome by this trifling rencounter.
+
+"'Ow is it?" questioned the obsessed Stott.
+
+"Oh dear! Oh dear!" panted the stout woman, "the leas' thing upsets me
+this afternoon...." She wandered away into irrelevant fluency, but Stott
+was autocratic; his insistent questions overcame the inertia of even
+Mrs. Reade at last. The substance of her information, freed from
+extraneous matter, was as follows:
+
+"Oh! 'ealthy? It'll live, I've no doubt, if that's what you mean; but
+'elpless...! There, 'elpless is no word.... Learn 'im to open his mouth,
+learn 'im to close 'is 'ands, learn 'im to go to sleep, learn 'im
+everythink. I've never seen nothink like it, never in all my days, and
+I've 'elped to bring a few into the world.... I can't begin to tell you
+about it, Mr. Stott, and that's the solemn truth. When 'e first looked
+at me, I near 'ad a faint. A old-fashioned, wise sort of look as 'e
+might 'a been a 'undred. 'Lord 'elp us, nurse,' I says, 'Lord 'elp us.'
+I was that opset, I didn't rightly know what I was a-saying...."
+
+Stott pushed past the agitated Mrs. Reade, and went into the
+sitting-room. He had had neither breakfast nor lunch; there was no sign
+of any preparation for his tea, and the fireplace was grey with the
+cinders of last night's fire. For some minutes he sat in deep
+despondency, a hero faced with the uncompromising detail of domestic
+neglect. Then he rose and called to the nurse.
+
+She appeared at the head of the steep, narrow staircase. "Sh!" she
+warned, with a finger to her lips.
+
+"I'm goin' out again," said Stott in a slightly modulated voice.
+
+"Mrs. Reade's coming back presently," replied the nurse, and looked over
+her shoulder.
+
+"Want me to wait?" asked Stott.
+
+The nurse came down a few steps. "It's only in case any one was wanted,"
+she began, "I've got two of 'em on my hands, you see. They're both doing
+well as far as that goes. Only ..." She broke off and drifted into small
+talk. Ever and again she stopped and listened intently, and looked back
+towards the half-open door of the upstairs room.
+
+Stott fidgeted, and then, as the flow of conversation gave no sign of
+running dry, he dammed it abruptly. "Look 'ere, miss," he said, "I've
+'ad nothing to eat since last night."
+
+"Oh! dear!" ejaculated the nurse. "If--perhaps, if you'd just stay here
+and listen, I could get you something." She seemed relieved to have some
+excuse for coming down.
+
+While she bustled about the kitchen, Stott, half-way upstairs, stayed
+and listened. The house was very silent, the only sound was the hushed
+clatter made by the nurse in the kitchen. There was an atmosphere of
+wariness about the place that affected even so callous a person as
+Stott. He listened with strained attention, his eyes fixed on the
+half-open door. He was not an imaginative man, but he was beset with
+apprehension as to what lay behind that door. He looked for something
+inhuman that might come crawling through the aperture, something
+grotesque, preternaturally wise and threatening--something horribly
+unnatural.
+
+The window of the upstairs room was evidently open, and now and again
+the door creaked faintly. When that happened Stott gripped the handrail,
+and grew damp and hot. He looked always at the shadows under the door.
+If it crawled ...
+
+The nurse stood at the door of the sitting-room while Stott ate, and
+presently Mrs. Reade came grunting and panting up the brick path.
+
+"I'm going out, now," said Stott resolutely, and he rose to his feet,
+though his meal was barely finished.
+
+"You'll be back before Mrs. Reade goes?" asked the nurse, and passed a
+hand over her tired eyes. "She'll be here till ten o'clock. I'm going to
+lie down."
+
+"I'll be back by ten," Stott assured her as he went out.
+
+He did come back at ten o'clock, but he was stupidly drunk.
+
+
+IV
+
+The Stotts' cottage was no place to live in during the next few days,
+but the nurse made one stipulation: Mr. Stott must come home to sleep.
+He slept on an improvised bed in the sitting-room, and during the night
+the nurse came down many times and listened to the sound of his snores.
+She would put her ear against the door, and rest her nerves with the
+thought of human companionship. Sometimes she opened the door quietly
+and watched him as he slept. Except at night, when he was rarely quite
+sober, Stott only visited his cottage once a day, at lunch time; from
+seven in the morning till ten at night he remained in Ailesworth save
+for this one call of inquiry.
+
+It was such a still house. Ellen Mary only spoke when speech was
+absolutely required, and then her words were the fewest possible, and
+were spoken in a whisper. The child made no sound of any kind. Even Mrs.
+Reade tried to subdue her stertorous breathing, to move with less
+ponderous quakings. The neighbours told her she looked thinner.
+
+Little wonder that during the long night vigil the nurse, moving
+silently between the two upstairs rooms, should pause on the landing and
+lean over the handrail; little wonder that she should give a long sigh
+of relief when she heard the music of Stott's snore ascend from the
+sitting-room.
+
+O'Connell called twice every day during the first week, not because it
+was necessary for him to visit his two patients, but because the infant
+fascinated him. He would wait for it to open its eyes, and then he
+would get up and leave the room hurriedly. Always he intended to return
+the infant's stare, but when the opportunity was given to him, he always
+rose and left the room--no matter how long and deliberately he had
+braced himself to another course of action.
+
+It was on a Thursday that the baby was born, and it was on the following
+Thursday that the circumstance of the household was reshaped.
+
+O'Connell came in the morning, full of resolution. After he had
+pronounced Mrs. Stott well on the way to recovery, he paid the usual
+visit to his younger patient. The child lay, relaxed, at full length, in
+the little cot which had been provided for him. His eyes were, as usual,
+closed, and he had all the appearance of the ordinary hydrocephalic
+idiot.
+
+O'Connell sat down by the cot, listened to the child's breathing and
+heart-beat, lifted and let fall again the lax wrist, turned back the
+eyelid, revealing only the white of the upturned eyeball, and then
+composed himself to await the natural waking of the child, if it were
+asleep--always a matter of uncertainty.
+
+The nurse stood near him, silent, but she looked away from the cot.
+
+"Hydrocephalus!" murmured O'Connell, staring at his tiny patient,
+"hydrocephalus, without a doubt. Eh? nurse!"
+
+"Yes, perhaps! I don't know, doctor."
+
+"Oh, not a doubt of it, not a doubt," repeated O'Connell, and then came
+a flicker of the child's eyelids and a weak crumpling of the tiny hand.
+
+O'Connell caught his breath and clawed at his beard. "Hydrocephalus," he
+muttered with set jaw and drawn eyebrows.
+
+The tiny hand straightened with a movement that suggested the recovery
+of crushed grass, the mouth opened in a microscopic yawn, and then the
+eyelids were slowly raised and a steady unwavering stare of profoundest
+intelligence met O'Connell's gaze.
+
+He clenched his hands, shifted in his chair, and then rose abruptly and
+turned to the window.
+
+"I--it won't be necessary for me to come again, nurse," he said curtly;
+"they are both doing perfectly well."
+
+"Not come again?" There was dismay in the nurse's question.
+
+"No! No! It's unnecessary ..." He broke off, and made for the door
+without another glance in the direction of the cot.
+
+Nurse followed him downstairs.
+
+"If I'm wanted--you can easily send for me," said O'Connell, as he went
+out. As he moved away he dragged at his beard and murmured:
+"Hydrocephalus, not a doubt of it."
+
+Following his departure, Mrs. Reade heard curious and most unwonted
+laughter, and cautiously blundered downstairs to investigate. She found
+the nurse in an advanced condition of hysteria, laughing, gurgling,
+weeping, and intermittently crying in a shrill voice: "Oh! Lord have
+mercy; Lord ha' mercy!"
+
+"Now, see you 'ere, my dear," said Mrs. Reade, when nurse had been
+recovered to a red-eyed sanity, "it's time she was told. I've never 'eld
+with keepin' it from 'er, myself, and I've 'ad more experience than
+many...." Mrs. Reade argued with abundant recourse to parenthesis.
+
+"Is she strog edough?" asked the nurse, still with tears in her voice;
+"cad she bear the sight of hib?" She blew her nose vigorously, and then
+continued with greater clearness: "I'm afraid it may turn her head."
+
+Out of her deep store of wisdom, Mrs. Reade produced a fact which she
+elaborated and confirmed by apt illustration, adducing more particularly
+the instance of Mrs. Harrison's third. "She's 'is mother," was the
+essence of her argument, a fact of deep and strange significance.
+
+The nurse yielded, and so the circumstance of Stott's household was
+changed, and Stott himself was once more able to come home to meals.
+
+The nurse, wisely, left all diplomacy to the capable Mrs. Reade, a woman
+specially fitted by nature for the breaking of news. She delivered a
+long, a record-breaking circumlocution, and it seemed that Ellen Mary,
+who lay with closed eyes, gathered no hint of its import. But when the
+impressive harangue was slowly rustling to collapse like an exhausted
+balloon, she opened her eyes and said quite clearly,
+
+"What's wrong with 'im, then?"
+
+The question had the effect of reinflation, but at last the child itself
+was brought, and it was open-eyed.
+
+The supreme ambition of all great women--and have not all women the
+potentialities of greatness?--is to give birth to a god. That ambition
+it is which is marred by the disappointing birth of a female child--when
+the man-child is born, there is always hope, and slow is the realisation
+of failure. That realisation never came to Ellen Mary. She accepted her
+child with the fear that is adoration. When she dropped her eyes before
+her god's searching glance, she did it in reverence. She hid her faith
+from the world, but in her heart she believed that she was blessed above
+all women. In secret, she worshipped the inscrutable wonder that had
+used her as the instrument of his incarnation. Perhaps she was
+right....
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] A study of genius shows that in a percentage of cases so large as to
+exclude the possibility of coincidence, the exceptional man, whether in
+the world of action, of art, or of letters, seems to inherit his
+magnificent powers through the female line. Sir Francis Galton, it is
+true, did not make a great point of this curious observation, but the
+tendency of more recent analyses is all in the direction of confirming
+the hypothesis; and it would seem to hold good in the converse
+proposition, namely, that the exceptional woman inherits her qualities
+from her father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HIS DEPARTURE FROM STOKE-UNDERHILL
+
+
+I
+
+The village of Stoke was no whit intimidated by the news that Mrs. Reade
+sowed abroad. The women exclaimed and chattered, the men gaped and shook
+their heads, the children hung about the ruinous gate that shut them out
+from the twenty-yard strip of garden which led up to Stott's cottage.
+Curiosity was the dominant emotion. Any excuse was good enough to make
+friendly overtures, but the baby remained invisible to all save Mrs.
+Reade; and the village community kept open ears while the lust of its
+eyes remained, perforce, unsatisfied. If Stott's gate slammed in the
+wind, every door that commanded a view of that gate was opened, and
+heads appeared, and bare arms--the indications of women who nodded to
+each other, shook their heads, pursed their lips and withdrew for the
+time to attend the pressure of household duty. Later, even that gate
+slamming would reinvigorate the gossip of backyards and front doorways.
+
+The first stranger to force an entry was the rector. He was an Oxford
+man who, in his youth, had been an ardent disciple of the school that
+attempts the reconciliation of Religion and Science. He had been
+ambitious, but nature had predetermined his career by giving him a head
+of the wrong shape. At Oxford his limitations had not been clearly
+defined, and on the strength of a certain speech at the Union, he crept
+into a London west-end curacy. There he attempted to demonstrate the
+principle of reconciliation from the pulpit, but his vicar and his
+bishop soon recognised that excellent as were his intentions, he was
+doing better service to agnosticism than to his own religion. As a
+result of this clerical intrigue he was vilely marooned on the savage
+island of Stoke-Underhill, where he might preach as much science as he
+would to the natives, for there was no fear of their comprehending him.
+Fifteen years of Stoke had brought about a reaction. Nature had made him
+a feeble fanatic, and he was now as ardent an opponent of science as he
+had once been a defender. In his little mind he believed that his early
+reading had enabled him to understand all the weaknesses of the
+scientific position. His name was Percy Crashaw.
+
+Mrs. Stott could not deny her rector the right of entry, and he insisted
+on seeing the infant, who was not yet baptised--a shameful neglect,
+according to Crashaw, for the child was nearly six weeks old. Nor had
+Mrs. Stott been "churched." Crashaw had good excuse for pressing his
+call.
+
+Mrs. Stott refused to face the village. She knew that the place was all
+agape, eager to stare at what they considered some "new kind of idiot."
+Let them wait, was Ellen Mary's attitude. Her pride was a later
+development. In those early weeks she feared criticism.
+
+But she granted Crashaw's request to see the child, and after the
+interview (the term is precise) the rector gave way on the question of a
+private ceremony, though he had indignantly opposed the scheme when it
+was first mooted. It may be that he conceived an image of himself with
+that child in his arms, the cynosure of a packed congregation....
+
+Crashaw was one of the influences that hastened the Stotts' departure
+from Stoke. He was so indiscreet. After the christening he would talk.
+His attitude is quite comprehensible. He, the lawgiver of Stoke, had
+been thwarted. He had to find apology for the private baptism he had
+denied to many a sickly infant. Moreover, the Stotts had broken another
+of his ordinances, for father and mother had stood as godparents to
+their own child, and Crashaw himself had been the second godfather
+ordained as necessary by the rubric. He had given way on these important
+points so weakly; he had to find excuse, and he talked himself into a
+false belief with regard to the child he had baptised.
+
+He began with his wife. "I would allow more latitude to medical men," he
+said. "In such a case as this child of the Stotts, for instance; it
+becomes a burden on the community, I might say a danger, yes, a positive
+danger. I am not sure whether I was right in administering the holy
+sacrament of baptism...."
+
+"Oh! Percy! Surely ..." began Mrs. Crashaw.
+
+"One moment, my dear," protested the rector, "I have not fully explained
+the circumstances of the case." And as he warmed to his theme the image
+of Victor Stott grew to a fearful grotesqueness. It loomed as a threat
+over the community and the church. Crashaw quoted, inaccurately,
+statistics of the growth of lunacy, and then went off at a tangent into
+the theory of possession by evil spirits. Since his rejection of
+science, he had lapsed into certain forms of mediævalism, and he now
+began to dally with the theory of a malign incarnation which he
+elaborated until it became an article of his faith.
+
+To his poorer parishioners he spoke in vague terms, but he changed their
+attitude; he filled them with overawed terror. They were intensely
+curious still, but, now, when the gate was slammed, one saw a face
+pressed to the window, the door remained fast; and the children no
+longer clustered round that gate, but dared each other to run past it;
+which they did, the girls with a scream, the boys with a jeering
+"Yah--ah!" a boast of intrepidity.
+
+This change of temper was soon understood by the persons most concerned.
+Stott grumbled and grew more morose. He had never been intimate with the
+villagers, and now he avoided any intercourse with them. His wife kept
+herself aloof, and her child sheltered from profane observation.
+Naturally, this attitude of the Stotts fostered suspicion. Even the
+hardiest sceptic in the taproom of the Challis Arms began to shake his
+head, to concede that there "moight be soomething in it."
+
+Yet the departure from Stoke might have been postponed indefinitely, if
+it had not been for another intrusion. Both Stott and his wife were
+ready to take up a new idea, but they were slow to conceive it.
+
+
+II
+
+The intruder was the local magnate, the landlord of Stoke, Wenderby,
+Chilborough, a greater part of Ailesworth, two or three minor parishes,
+and, incidentally, of Pym.
+
+This magnate, Henry Challis, was a man of some scholarship, whose
+ambition had been crushed by the weight of his possessions. He had a
+remarkably fine library at Challis Court, but he made little use of it,
+for he spent the greater part of his time in travel. In appearance he
+was rather an ungainly man; his great head and the bulk of his big
+shoulders were something too heavy for his legs.
+
+Crashaw regarded his patron with mixed feelings. For Challis, the man of
+property, the man of high connections, of intimate associations with the
+world of science and letters, Crashaw had a feeling of awed respect; but
+in private he inveighed against the wickedness of Challis, the agnostic,
+the decadent.
+
+When Victor Stott was nearly three months old, the rector met his patron
+one day on the road between Chilborough and Stoke. It was three years
+since their last meeting, and Crashaw noticed that in the interval
+Challis's pointed beard had become streaked with grey.
+
+"Hallo! How d'ye do, Crashaw?" was the squire's casual greeting. "How is
+the Stoke microcosm?"
+
+Crashaw smiled subserviently; he was never quite at his ease in
+Challis's presence. "Rari nantes in gurgite vasto," was the tag he found
+in answer to the question put. However great his contempt for Challis's
+way of life, in his presence Crashaw was often oppressed with a feeling
+of inferiority, a feeling which he fought against but could not subdue.
+The Latin tag was an attempt to win appreciation, it represented a boast
+of equality.
+
+Challis correctly evaluated the rector's attitude; it was with something
+of pity in his mind that he turned and walked beside him.
+
+There was but one item of news from Stoke, and it soon came to the
+surface. Crashaw phrased his description of Victor Stott in terms other
+than those he used in speaking to his wife or to his parishioners; but
+the undercurrent of his virulent superstition did not escape Challis,
+and the attitude of the villagers was made perfectly plain.
+
+"Hm!" was Challis's comment, when the flow of words ceased, "nigroque
+simillima cygno, eh?"
+
+"Ah! of course, you sneer at our petty affairs," said Crashaw.
+
+"By no means. I should like to see this black swan of Stoke," replied
+Challis. "Anything so exceptional interests me."
+
+"No doubt Mrs. Stott would be proud to exhibit the horror," said
+Crashaw. He had a gleam of satisfaction in the thought that even the
+great Henry Challis might be scared. That would, indeed, be a triumph.
+
+"If Mrs. Stott has no objection, of course," said Challis. "Shall we go
+there, now?"
+
+
+III
+
+The visit of Henry Challis marked the first advent of Ellen Mary's pride
+in the exhibition of her wonder. After the King and the Royal
+Family--superhuman beings, infinitely remote--the great landlord of the
+neighbourhood stood as a symbol of temporal power to the whole district.
+The budding socialist of the taproom might sneer, and make threat that
+the time was coming when he, the boaster, and Challis, the landlord,
+would have equal rights; but in public the socialist kow-towed to his
+master with a submission no less obsequious than that of the humblest
+conservative on the estate.
+
+Mrs. Stott dropped a deep curtsy when, opening the door to the
+autocratic summons of Crashaw's rat-a-tat, she saw the great man of the
+district at her threshold. Challis raised his hat. Crashaw did not
+imitate his example; he was all officiousness, he had the air of a chief
+superintendent of police.
+
+"Oh! Mrs. Stott, we should like to come in for a few minutes. Mr.
+Challis would like to see your child."
+
+"Damn the fool!" was Challis's thought, but he gave it less abrupt
+expression. "That is, of course, if it is quite convenient to you, Mrs.
+Stott. I can come at some other time...."
+
+"Please walk in, sir," replied Mrs. Stott, and curtsied again as she
+stood aside.
+
+Superintendent Crashaw led the way....
+
+Challis called again next day, by himself this time; and the day after
+he dropped in at six o'clock while Mr. and Mrs. Stott were at tea. He
+put them at their ease by some magic of his personality, and insisted
+that they should continue their meal while he sat among the collapsed
+springs of the horsehair armchair. He leaned forward, swinging his stick
+as a pendulum between his knees, and shot out questions as to the
+Stotts' relations with the neighbours. And always he had an attentive
+eye on the cradle that stood near the fire.
+
+"The neighbours are not highly intelligent, I suspect," said Challis.
+"Even Mr. Crashaw, I fancy, does not appreciate the--peculiarities of
+the situation."
+
+"He's worse than any," interpolated Stott. Ellen Mary sat in the shadow;
+there was a new light in her eyes, a foretaste of glory.
+
+"Ah! a little narrow, a little dogmatic, no doubt," replied Challis. "I
+was going to propose that you might prefer to live at Pym."
+
+"Much farther for me," muttered Stott. He had mixed with nobility on the
+cricket field, and was not overawed.
+
+"No doubt; but you have other interests to consider, interests of far
+greater importance." Challis shifted his gaze from the cradle, and
+looked Stott in the face. "I understand that Mrs. Stott does not care to
+take her child out in the village. Isn't that so?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Ellen, to whom this question was addressed. "I don't
+care to make an exhibition of 'im."
+
+"Quite right, quite right," went on Challis, "but it is very necessary
+that the child should have air. I consider it very necessary, a matter
+of the first importance that the child should have air," he repeated.
+His gaze had shifted back to the cradle again. The child lay with open
+eyes, staring up at the ceiling.
+
+"Now, there is an excellent cottage at Pym which I will have put in
+repair for you at once," continued Challis. "It is one of two together,
+but next door there are only old Metcalfe and his wife and daughter, who
+will give you no trouble. And really, Mrs. Stott," he tore his regard
+from the cradle for a moment, "there is no reason in the world why you
+should fear the attention of your neighbours. Here, in Stoke, I admit,
+they have been under a complete misapprehension, but I fancy that there
+were special reasons for that. In Pym you will have few neighbours, and
+you need not, I'm sure, fear their criticism."
+
+"They got one idiot there, already," Stott remarked somewhat sulkily.
+
+"You surely do not regard your own child as likely to develop into an
+idiot, Stott!" Challis's tone was one of rebuke.
+
+Stott shifted in his chair and his eyes flickered uncertainly in the
+direction of the cradle. "Dr. O'Connell says 'twill," he said.
+
+"When did he see the child last?" asked Challis.
+
+"Not since 'twere a week old, sir," replied Ellen.
+
+"In that case his authority goes for nothing, and, then, by the way, I
+suppose the child has not been vaccinated?"
+
+"Not yet, sir."
+
+"Better have that done. Get Walters. I'll make myself responsible. I'll
+get him to come."
+
+Before Challis left, it was decided that the Stotts should move to Pym
+in February.
+
+When the great landowner had gone, Mrs. Stott looked wistfully at her
+husband.
+
+"You ain't fair to the child, George," she said. "There's more than you
+or any one sees, more than Mr. Challis, even."
+
+Stott stared moodily into the fire.
+
+"And it won't be so out of the way far for you, at Pym, with your bike,"
+she continued; "and we _can't_ stop 'ere."
+
+"We might 'a took a place in Ailesworth," said Stott.
+
+"But it'll be so much 'ealthier for 'im up at Pym," protested Ellen.
+"It'll be fine air up there for 'im."
+
+"Oh! _'im_. Yes, all right for _'im_," said Stott, and spat into the
+fire. Then he took his cap and went out. He kept his eyes away from the
+cradle.
+
+
+IV
+
+Harvey Walters lived in Wenderby, but his consulting-rooms were in
+Harley Street, and he did not practise in his own neighbourhood;
+nevertheless he vaccinated Victor Stott to oblige Challis.
+
+"Well?" asked Challis a few days later, "what do you make of him,
+Walters? No clichés, now, and no professional jargon."
+
+"Candidly, I don't know," replied Walters, after a thoughtful interval.
+
+"How many times have you seen him?"
+
+"Four, altogether."
+
+"Good patient? Healthy flesh and that sort of thing?"
+
+"Splendid."
+
+"Did he look you in the eyes?"
+
+"Once, only once, the first time I visited the house."
+
+Challis nodded. "My own experience, exactly. And did you return that
+look of his?"
+
+"Not willingly. It was, I confess, not altogether a pleasant
+experience."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Challis was silent for a few moments, and it was Walters who took up the
+interrogatory.
+
+"Challis!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Have you, now, some feeling of, shall I say, distaste for the child? Do
+you feel that you have no wish to see it again?"
+
+"Is it that exactly?" parried Challis.
+
+"If not, what is it?" asked Walters.
+
+"In my own case," said Challis, "I can find an analogy only in my
+attitude towards my 'head' at school. In his presence I was always
+intimidated by my consciousness of his superior learning. I felt
+unpleasantly ignorant, small, negligible. Curiously enough, I see
+something of the same expression of feeling in the attitude of that
+feeble Crashaw to myself. Well, one makes an attempt at self-assertion,
+a kind of futile bragging; and one knows the futility of it--at the
+time. But, afterwards, one finds excuse and seeks to belittle the
+personality and attainment of the person one feared. At school we did
+not love the 'head,' and, as schoolboys will, we were always trying to
+run him down. 'Next time he rags me, I'll cheek him,' was our usual
+boast--but we never did. Let's be honest, Walters, are not you and I
+exhibiting much the same attitude towards this extraordinary child?
+Didn't he produce the effect upon you that I've described? Didn't you
+have a little of the 'fifth form' feeling,--a boy under examination?"
+
+Walters smiled and screwed his mouth on one side. "The thing is so
+absurd," he said.
+
+"That is what we used to say at school," replied Challis.
+
+
+V
+
+The Stotts' move to Pym was not marked by any incident. Mrs. Stott and
+her boy were not unduly stared upon as they left Stoke--the children
+were in school--and their entry into the new cottage was uneventful.
+
+They moved on a Thursday. On Sunday morning they had their first
+visitor.
+
+He came mooning round the fence that guarded the Stotts' garden from the
+little lane--it was hardly more than a footpath. He had a great
+shapeless head that waggled heavily on his shoulders, his eyes were
+lustreless, and his mouth hung open, frequently his tongue lagged out.
+He made strange, inhuman noises. "A-ba-ba," was his nearest approach to
+speech.
+
+"Now, George," called Mrs. Stott, "look at that. It's Mrs. 'Arrison's
+boy what Mrs. Reade's spoke about. Now, is 'e anythink like ..." she
+paused, "anythink like 'im?" and she indicated the cradle in the
+sitting-room.
+
+"What's 'e want, 'angin' round 'ere?" replied Stott, disregarding the
+comparison. "'Ere, get off," he called, and he went into the garden and
+picked up a stick.
+
+The idiot shambled away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HIS FATHER'S DESERTION
+
+
+I
+
+The strongest of all habits is that of acquiescence. It is this habit of
+submission that explains the admired patience and long-suffering of the
+abjectly poor. The lower the individual falls, the more unconquerable
+becomes the inertia of mind which interferes between him and revolt
+against his condition. All the miseries of the flesh, even starvation,
+seem preferable to the making of an effort great enough to break this
+habit of submission.
+
+Ginger Stott was not poor. For a man in his station of life he was
+unusually well provided for, but in him the habit of acquiescence was
+strongly rooted. Before his son was a year old, Stott had grown to
+loathe his home, to dread his return to it, yet it did not occur to him
+until another year had passed that he could, if he would, set up another
+establishment on his own account; that he could, for instance, take a
+room in Ailesworth, and leave his wife and child in the cottage. For two
+years he did not begin to think of this idea, and then it was suddenly
+forced upon him.
+
+Ever since they had overheard those strangely intelligent
+self-communings, the Stotts had been perfectly aware that their
+wonderful child could talk if he would. Ellen Mary, pondering that
+single expression, had read a world of meaning into her son's murmurs of
+"learning." In her simple mind she understood that his deliberate
+withholding of speech was a reserve against some strange manifestation.
+
+The manifestation, when it came, was as remarkable as it was unexpected.
+
+The armchair in which Henry Challis had once sat was a valued
+possession, dedicated by custom to the sole use of George Stott. Ever
+since he had been married, Stott had enjoyed the full and undisputed use
+of that chair. Except at his meals, he never sat in any other, and he
+had formed a fixed habit of throwing himself into that chair immediately
+on his return from his work at the County Ground.
+
+One evening in November, however, when his son was just over two years
+old, Stott found his sacred chair occupied. He hesitated a moment, and
+then went in to the kitchen to find his wife.
+
+"That child's in my chair," he said.
+
+Ellen was setting the tray for her husband's tea. "Yes ... I know," she
+replied. "I--I did mention it, but 'e 'asn't moved."
+
+"Well, take 'im out," ordered Stott, but he dropped his voice.
+
+"Does it matter?" asked his wife. "Tea's just ready. Time that's done
+'e'll be ready for 'is bath."
+
+"Why can't you move 'im?" persisted Stott gloomily. "'E knows it's my
+chair."
+
+"There! kettle's boilin', come in and 'ave your tea," equivocated the
+diplomatic Ellen.
+
+During the progress of the meal, the child still sat quietly in his
+father's chair, his little hands resting on his knees, his eyes wide
+open, their gaze abstracted, as usual, from all earthly concerns.
+
+But after tea Stott was heroic. He had reached the limit of his
+endurance. One of his deep-seated habits was being broken, and with it
+snapped his habit of acquiescence. He rose to his feet and faced his son
+with determination, and Stott had a bull-dog quality about him that was
+not easily defeated.
+
+"Look 'ere! Get out!" he said. "That's _my_ chair!"
+
+The child very deliberately withdrew his attention from infinity and
+regarded the dogged face and set jaw of his father. Stott returned the
+stare for the fraction of a second, and then his eyes wavered and
+dropped, but he maintained his resolution.
+
+"You got to get out," he said, "or I'll make you."
+
+Ellen Mary gripped the edge of the table, but she made no attempt to
+interfere.
+
+There was a tense, strained silence. Then Stott began to breathe
+heavily. He lifted his long arms for a moment and raised his eyes, he
+even made a tentative step towards the usurped throne.
+
+The child sat calm, motionless; his eyes were fixed upon his father's
+face with a sublime, undeviating confidence.
+
+Stott's arms fell to his sides again, he shuffled his feet. One more
+effort he made, a sudden, vicious jerk, as though he would do the thing
+quickly and be finished with it; then he shivered, his resolution broke,
+and he shambled evasively to the door.
+
+"God damn," he muttered. At the door he turned for an instant, swore
+again in the same words, and went out into the night.
+
+To Stott, moodily pacing the Common, this thing was incomprehensible,
+some horrible infraction of the law of normal life, something to be
+condemned; altered, if possible. It was unprecedented, and it was,
+therefore, wrong, unnatural, diabolic, a violation of the sound
+principles which uphold human society.
+
+To Ellen Mary it was merely a miracle, the foreshadowing of greater
+miracles to come. And to her was manifested, also, a minor miracle, for
+when his father had gone, the child looked at his mother and gave out
+his first recorded utterance.
+
+"'Oo _is_ God?" he said.
+
+Ellen Mary tried to explain, but before she had stammered out many
+words, her son abstracted his gaze, climbed down out of the chair, and
+intimated with his usual grunt that he desired his bath and his bed.
+
+
+II
+
+The depths of Stott were stirred that night. He had often said that "he
+wouldn't stand it much longer," but the words were a mere formula: he
+had never even weighed their intention. As he paced the Common, he
+muttered them again to the night, with new meaning; he saw new
+possibilities, and saw that they were practicable. "I've 'ad enough,"
+was his new phrase, and he added another that gave evidence of a new
+attitude. "Why not?" he said again and again. "And why not?"
+
+Stott's mind was not analytical. He did not examine his problem, weigh
+this and that and draw a balanced deduction. He merely saw a picture of
+peace and quiet, in a room at Ailesworth, in convenient proximity to his
+work (he made an admirable groundsman and umpire, his work absorbed him)
+and, perhaps, he conceived some dim ideal of pleasant evenings spent in
+the companionship of those who thought in the same terms as himself;
+who shared in his one interest; whose speech was of form, averages, the
+preparation of wickets, and all the detail of cricket.
+
+Stott's ambition to have a son and to teach him the mysteries of his
+father's success had been dwindling for some time past. On this night it
+was finally put aside. Stott's "I've 'ad enough" may be taken to include
+that frustrated ideal. No more experiments for him, was the
+pronouncement that summed up his decision.
+
+Still there were difficulties. Economically he was free, he could allow
+his wife thirty shillings a week, more than enough for her support and
+that of her child; but--what would she say, how would she take his
+determination? A determination it was, not a proposal. And the
+neighbours, what would they say? Stott anticipated a fuss. "She'll say
+I've married 'er, and it's my duty to stay by 'er," was his anticipation
+of his wife's attitude. He did not profess to understand the ways of the
+sex, but some rumours of misunderstandings between husbands and wives of
+his own class had filtered through his absorption in cricket.
+
+He stumbled home with a mind prepared for dissension.
+
+He found his wife stitching by the fire. The door at the foot of the
+stairs was closed. The room presented an aspect of cleanly, cheerful
+comfort; but Stott entered with dread, not because he feared to meet his
+wife, but because there was a terror sleeping in that house.
+
+His armchair was empty now, but he hesitated before he sat down in it.
+He took off his cap and rubbed the seat and back of the chair
+vigorously: a child of evil had polluted it, the chair might still hold
+enchantment....
+
+"I've 'ad enough," was his preface, and there was no need for any
+further explanation.
+
+Ellen Mary let her hands fall into her lap, and stared dreamily at the
+fire.
+
+"I'm sorry it's come to this, George," she said, "but it 'asn't been my
+fault no more'n it's been your'n. Of course I've seen it a-comin', and I
+knowed it _'ad_ to be, some time; but I don't think there need be any
+'ard words over it. I don't expec' you to understand 'im, no more'n I do
+myself--it isn't in nature as you should, but all said and done, there's
+no bones broke, and if we 'ave to part, there's no reason as we
+shouldn't part peaceable."
+
+That speech said nearly everything. Afterwards it was only a question of
+making arrangements, and in that there was no difficulty.
+
+Another man might have felt a little hurt, a little neglected by the
+absence of any show of feeling on his wife's part, but Stott passed it
+by. He was singularly free from all sentimentality; certain primitive,
+human emotions seem to have played no part in his character. At this
+moment he certainly had no thought that he was being carelessly treated;
+he wanted to be free from the oppression of that horror upstairs--so he
+figured it--and the way was made easy for him.
+
+He nodded approval, and made no sign of any feeling.
+
+"I shall go to-morrer," he said, and then, "I'll sleep down 'ere
+to-night." He indicated the sofa upon which he had slept for so many
+nights at Stoke, after his tragedy had been born to him.
+
+Ellen Mary had said nearly everything, but when she had made up a bed
+for her husband in the sitting-room, she paused, candle in hand, before
+she bade him good-night.
+
+"Don't wish 'im 'arm, George," she said. "'E's different from us, and we
+don't understand 'im proper, but some day----"
+
+"I don't wish 'im no 'arm," replied Stott, and shuddered. "I don't wish
+'im no 'arm," he repeated, as he kicked off the boot he had been
+unlacing.
+
+"You mayn't never see 'im again," added Ellen Mary.
+
+Stott stood upright. In his socks, he looked noticeably shorter than his
+wife. "I suppose not," he said, and gave a deep sigh of relief. "Well,
+thank Gawd for that, anyway."
+
+Ellen Mary drew her lips together. For some dim, unrealised reason, she
+wished her husband to leave the cottage with a feeling of goodwill
+towards the child, but she saw that her wish was little likely to be
+fulfilled.
+
+"Well, good-night, George," she said, after a few seconds of silence,
+and she added pathetically, as she turned at the foot of the stairs:
+"Don't wish 'im no harm."
+
+"I won't," was all the assurance she received.
+
+When she had gone, and the door was closed behind her, Stott padded
+silently to the window and looked out. A young moon was dipping into a
+bank of cloud, and against the feeble brightness he could see an
+uncertain outline of bare trees. He pulled the curtain across the
+window, and turned back to the warm cheerfulness of the room.
+
+"Shan't never see 'im again," he murmured, "thank Gawd!" He undressed
+quietly, blew out the lamp and got between the sheets of his improvised
+bed. For some minutes he stared at the leaping shadows on the ceiling.
+He was wondering why he had ever been afraid of the child. "After all,
+'e's only a blarsted freak," was the last thought in his mind before he
+fell asleep.
+
+And with that pronouncement Stott passes out of the history of the
+Hampdenshire Wonder. He was in many ways an exceptional man, and his
+name will always be associated with the splendid successes of
+Hampdenshire cricket, both before and after the accident that destroyed
+his career as a bowler. He was not spoiled by his triumphs: those two
+years of celebrity never made Stott conceited, and there are undoubtedly
+many traits in his character which call for our admiration. He is still
+in his prime, an active agent in finding talent for his county, and in
+developing that talent when found. Hampdenshire has never come into the
+field with weak bowling, and all the credit belongs to Ginger Stott.
+
+One sees that he was not able to appreciate the wonderful gifts of his
+own son, but Stott was an ignorant man, and men of intellectual
+attainment failed even as Stott failed in this respect. Ginger Stott was
+a success in his own walk of life, and that fact should command our
+admiration. It is not for us to judge whether his attainments were more
+or less noble than the attainments of his son.
+
+
+III
+
+One morning, two days after Stott had left the cottage, Ellen Mary was
+startled by the sudden entrance of her child into the sitting-room. He
+toddled in hastily from the garden, and pointed with excitement through
+the window.
+
+Ellen Mary was frightened; she had never seen her child other than
+deliberate, calm, judicial, in all his movements. In a sudden spasm of
+motherly love she bent to pick him up, to caress him.
+
+"No," said the Wonder, with something that approached disgust in his
+tone and attitude. "No," he repeated. "What's 'e want 'angin' round
+'ere? Send 'im off." He pointed again to the window.
+
+Ellen Mary looked out and saw a grinning, slobbering obscenity at the
+gate. Stott had scared the idiot away, but in some curious, inexplicable
+manner he had learned that his persecutor and enemy had gone, and he had
+returned, and had made overtures to the child that walked so sedately up
+and down the path of the little garden.
+
+Ellen Mary went out. "You be off," she said.
+
+"A-ba, a-ba-ba," bleated the idiot, and pointed at the house.
+
+"Be off, I tell you!" said Ellen Mary fiercely. But still the idiot
+babbled and pointed.
+
+Ellen Mary stooped to pick up a stick. The idiot blenched; he understood
+that movement well enough, though it was a stone he anticipated, not a
+stick; with a foolish cry he dropped his arms and slouched away down the
+lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HIS DEBT TO HENRY CHALLIS
+
+
+I
+
+Challis was out of England for more than three years after that one
+brief intrusion of his into the affairs of Mr. and Mrs. Stott. During
+the interval he was engaged upon those investigations, the results of
+which are embodied in his monograph on the primitive peoples of the
+Melanesian Archipelago. It may be remembered that he followed Dr. W. H.
+R. Rivers' and Dr. C. G. Seligmann's inquiry into the practice and
+theory of native customs. Challis developed his study more particularly
+with reference to the earlier evolution of Totemism, and he was able by
+his patient work among the Polynesians of Tikopia and Ontong Java, and
+his comparisons of those sporadic tribes with the Papuasians of Eastern
+New Guinea, to correct some of the inferences with regard to the origins
+of exogamy made by Dr. J. G. Frazer in his great work on that subject,
+published some years before. A summary of Challis's argument may be
+found in vol. li. of the _Journal of the Royal Anthropological
+Institute_.
+
+When he returned to England, Challis shut himself up at Chilborough. He
+had engaged a young Cambridge man, Gregory Lewes, as his secretary and
+librarian, and the two devoted all their time to planning, writing, and
+preparing the monograph referred to.
+
+In such circumstances it is hardly remarkable that Challis should have
+completely forgotten the existence of the curious child which had
+intrigued his interest nearly four years earlier, and it was not until
+he had been back at Challis Court for more than eight months, that the
+incursion of Percy Crashaw revived his memory of the phenomenon.
+
+The library at Challis Court occupies a suite of three rooms. The first
+and largest of the three is part of the original structure of the house.
+Its primitive use had been that of a chapel, a one-storey building
+jutting out from the west wing. This Challis had converted into a very
+practicable library with a continuous gallery running round at a height
+of seven feet from the floor, and in it he had succeeded in arranging
+some 20,000 volumes. But as his store of books grew--and at one period
+it had grown very rapidly--he had been forced to build, and so he had
+added first one and then the other of the two additional rooms which
+became necessary. Outside, the wing had the appearance of an unduly
+elongated chapel, as he had continued the original roof over his
+addition, and copied the style of the old chapel architecture. The only
+external alteration he had made had been the lowering of the sills of
+the windows.
+
+It was in the furthest of these three rooms that Challis and his
+secretary worked, and it was from here that they saw the gloomy figure
+of the Rev. Percy Crashaw coming up the drive.
+
+This was the third time he had called. His two former visits had been
+unrewarded, but that morning a letter had come from him, couched in
+careful phrases, the purport of which had been a request for an
+interview on a "matter of some moment."
+
+Challis frowned, and rose from among an ordered litter of manuscripts.
+
+"I shall have to see this man," he said to Lewes, and strode hastily out
+of the library.
+
+Crashaw was perfunctorily apologetic, and Challis, looking somewhat out
+of place, smoking a heavy wooden pipe in the disused, bleak
+drawing-room, waited, almost silent, until his visitor should come to
+the point.
+
+"... and the--er--matter of some moment, I mentioned," Crashaw mumbled
+on, "is, I should say, not altogether irrelevant to the work you are at
+present engaged upon."
+
+"Indeed!" commented Challis, with a lift of his thick eyebrows, "no
+Polynesians come to settle in Stoke, I trust?"
+
+"On broad lines, relevant on broad, anthropological lines, I mean," said
+Crashaw.
+
+Challis grunted. "Go on!" he said.
+
+"You may remember that curious--er--abnormal child of the Stotts?" asked
+Crashaw.
+
+"Stotts? Wait a minute. Yes! Curious infant with an abnormally
+intelligent expression and the head of a hydrocephalic?"
+
+Crashaw nodded. "Its development has upset me in a most unusual way," he
+continued. "I must confess that I am entirely at a loss, and I really
+believe that you are the only person who can give me any intelligent
+assistance in the matter."
+
+"Very good of you," murmured Challis.
+
+"You see," said Crashaw, warming to his subject and interlacing his
+fingers, "I happen, by the merest accident, I may say, to be the child's
+godfather."
+
+"Ah! you have responsibilities!" commented Challis, with the first glint
+of amusement in his eyes.
+
+"I have," said Crashaw, "undoubtedly I have." He leaned forward with his
+hands still clasped together, and rested his forearms on his thighs. As
+he talked he worked his hands up and down from the wrists, by way of
+emphasis. "I am aware," he went on, "that on one point I can expect
+little sympathy from you, but I make an appeal to you, nevertheless, as
+a man of science and--and a magistrate; for ... for assistance."
+
+He paused and looked up at Challis, received a nod of encouragement and
+developed his grievance.
+
+"I want to have the child certified as an idiot, and sent to an asylum."
+
+"On what grounds?"
+
+"He is undoubtedly lacking mentally," said Crashaw, "and his influence
+is, or may be, malignant."
+
+"Explain," suggested Challis.
+
+For a few seconds Crashaw paused, intent on the pattern of the carpet,
+and worked his hands slowly. Challis saw that the man's knuckles were
+white, that he was straining his hands together.
+
+"He has denied God," he said at last with great solemnity.
+
+Challis rose abruptly, and went over to the window; the next words were
+spoken to his back.
+
+"I have, myself, heard this infant of four years use the most abhorrent
+blasphemy."
+
+Challis had composed himself. "Oh! I say; that's bad," he said as he
+turned towards the room again.
+
+Crashaw's head was still bowed. "And whatever may be your own
+philosophic doubts," he said, "I think you will agree with me that in
+such a case as this, something should be done. To me it is horrible,
+most horrible."
+
+"Couldn't you give me any details?" asked Challis.
+
+"They are most repugnant to me," answered Crashaw.
+
+"Quite, quite! I understand. But if you want any assistance.... Or do
+you expect me to investigate?"
+
+"I thought it my duty, as his godfather, to see to the child's spiritual
+welfare," said Crashaw, ignoring the question put to him, "although he
+is not, now, one of my parishioners. I first went to Pym some few months
+ago, but the mother interposed between me and the child. I was not
+permitted to see him. It was not until a few weeks back that I met
+him--on the Common, alone. Of course, I recognised him at once. He is
+quite unmistakable."
+
+"And then?" prompted Challis.
+
+"I spoke to him, and he replied with, with--an abstracted air, without
+looking at me. He has not the appearance in any way of a normal child. I
+made a few ordinary remarks to him, and then I asked him if he knew his
+catechism. He replied that he did not know the word 'catechism.' I may
+mention that he speaks the dialect of the common people, but he has a
+much larger vocabulary. His mother has taught him to read, it appears."
+
+"He seems to have a curiously apt intelligence," interpolated Challis.
+
+Crashaw wrung his clasped hands and put the comment on one side. "I
+then spoke to him of some of the broad principles of the Church's
+teaching," he continued. "He listened quietly, without interruption, and
+when I stopped, he prompted me with questions."
+
+"One minute!" said Challis. "Tell me; what sort of questions? That is
+most important."
+
+"I do not remember precisely," returned Crashaw, "but one, I think, was
+as to the sources of the Bible. I did not read anything beyond simple
+and somewhat unusual curiosity into those questions, I may say.... I
+talked to him for some considerable time--I dare say for more than an
+hour...."
+
+"No signs of idiocy, apparently, during all this?"
+
+"I consider it less a case of idiocy than one of possession, maleficent
+possession," replied Crashaw. He did not see his host's grim smile.
+
+"Well, and the blasphemy?" prompted Challis.
+
+"At the end of my instruction, the child, still looking away from me,
+shook his head and said that what I had told him was not true. I confess
+that I was staggered. Possibly I lost my temper, somewhat. I may have
+grown rather warm in my speech. And at last ..." Crashaw clenched his
+hands and spoke in such a low voice that Challis could hardly hear him.
+"At last he turned to me and said things which I could not possibly
+repeat, which I pray that I may never hear again from the mouth of any
+living being."
+
+"Profanities, obscenities, er--swear-words," suggested Challis.
+
+"Blasphemy, _blasphemy_," cried Crashaw. "Oh! I wonder that I did not
+injure the child."
+
+Challis moved over to the window again. For more than a minute there was
+silence in that big, neglected-looking room. Then Crashaw's feelings
+began to find vent in words, in a long stream of insistent
+asseverations, pitched on a rising note that swelled into a diapason of
+indignation. He spoke of the position and power of his Church, of its
+influence for good among the uneducated, agricultural population among
+which he worked. He enlarged on the profound necessity for a living
+religion among the poorer classes; and on the revolutionary tendency
+towards socialism, which would be encouraged if the great restraining
+power of a creed that enforced subservience to temporal power was once
+shaken. And, at last, he brought his arguments to a head by saying that
+the example of a child of four years old, openly defying a minister of
+the Church, and repudiating the very conception of the Deity, was an
+example which might produce a profound effect upon the minds of a
+slow-thinking people; that such an example might be the leaven which
+would leaven the whole lump; and that for the welfare of the whole
+neighbourhood it was an instant necessity that the child should be put
+under restraint, his tongue bridled, and any opportunity to proclaim his
+blasphemous doctrines forcibly denied to him. Long before he had
+concluded, Crashaw was on his feet, pacing the room, declaiming, waving
+his arms.
+
+Challis stood, unanswering, by the window. He did not seem to hear; he
+did not even shrug his shoulders. Not till Crashaw had brought his
+argument to a culmination, and boomed into a dramatic silence, did
+Challis turn and look at him.
+
+"But you cannot confine a child in an asylum on those grounds," he said;
+"the law does not permit it."
+
+"The Church is above the law," replied Crashaw.
+
+"Not in these days," said Challis; "it is by law established!"
+
+Crashaw began to speak again, but Challis waved him down. "Quite, quite.
+I see your point," he said, "but I must see this child myself. Believe
+me, I will see what can be done. I will, at least, try to prevent his
+spreading his opinions among the yokels." He smiled grimly. "I quite
+agree with you that that is a consummation which is not to be desired."
+
+"You will see him soon?" asked Crashaw.
+
+"To-day," returned Challis.
+
+"And you will let me see you again, afterwards?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Crashaw still hesitated for a moment. "I might, perhaps, come with you,"
+he ventured.
+
+"On no account," said Challis.
+
+
+II
+
+Gregory Lewes was astonished at the long absence of his chief; he was
+more astonished when his chief returned.
+
+"I want you to come up with me to Pym, Lewes," said Challis; "one of my
+tenants has been confounding the rector of Stoke. It is a matter that
+must be attended to."
+
+Lewes was a fair-haired, hard-working young man, with a bent for science
+in general that had not yet crystallised into any special study. He had
+a curious sense of humour, that proved something of an obstacle in the
+way of specialisation. He did not take Challis's speech seriously.
+
+"Are you going as a magistrate?" he asked; "or is it a matter for
+scientific investigation?"
+
+"Both," said Challis. "Come along!"
+
+"Are you serious, sir?" Lewes still doubted.
+
+"Intensely. I'll explain as we go," said Challis.
+
+It is not more than a mile and a half from Challis Court to Pym. The
+nearest way is by a cart track through the beech woods, that winds up
+the hill to the Common. In winter this track is almost impassable, over
+boot-top in heavy mud; but the early spring had been fairly dry, and
+Challis chose this route.
+
+As they walked, Challis went through the early history of Victor Stott,
+so far as it was known to him. "I had forgotten the child," he said; "I
+thought it would die. You see, it is by way of being an extraordinary
+freak of nature. It has, or had, a curious look of intelligence. You
+must remember that when I saw it, it was only a few months old. But even
+then it conveyed in some inexplicable way a sense of power. Every one
+felt it. There was Harvey Walters, for instance--he vaccinated it; I
+made him confess that the child made him feel like a school-boy. Only,
+you understand, it had not spoken then----"
+
+"What conveyed that sense of power?" asked Lewes.
+
+"The way it had of looking at you, staring you out of countenance,
+sizing you up and rejecting you. It did that, I give you my word; it did
+all that at a few months old, and without the power of speech. Only, you
+see, I thought it was merely a freak of some kind, some abnormality that
+disgusted one in an unanalysed way. And I thought it would die. I
+certainly thought it would die. I am most eager to see this new
+development."
+
+"I haven't heard. It confounded Crashaw, you say? And it cannot be more
+than four or five years old now?"
+
+"Four; four and a half," returned Challis, and then the conversation was
+interrupted by the necessity of skirting a tiny morass of wet leaf-mould
+that lay in a hollow.
+
+"Confounded Crashaw? I should think so," Challis went on, when they had
+found firm going again. "The good man would not soil his devoted tongue
+by any condescension to oratio recta, but I gathered that the child had
+made light of his divine authority."
+
+"Great Cæsar!" ejaculated Lewes; "but that is immense. What did Crashaw
+do--shake him?"
+
+"No; he certainly did not lay hands on him at all. His own expression
+was that he did not know how it was he did not do the child an injury.
+That is one of the things that interest me enormously. That power I
+spoke of must have been retained. Crashaw must have been blue with
+anger; he could hardly repeat the story to me, he was so agitated. It
+would have surprised me less if he had told me he had murdered the
+child. That I could have understood, perfectly."
+
+"It is, of course, quite incomprehensible to me, as yet," commented
+Lewes.
+
+When they came out of the woods on to the stretch of common from which
+you can see the great swelling undulations of the Hampden Hills, Challis
+stopped. A spear of April sunshine had pierced the load of cloud towards
+the west, and the bank of wood behind them gave shelter from the cold
+wind that had blown fiercely all the afternoon.
+
+"It is a fine prospect," said Challis, with a sweep of his hand. "I
+sometimes feel, Lewes, that we are over-intent on our own little narrow
+interests. Here are you and I, busying ourselves in an attempt to throw
+some little light--a very little it must be--on some petty problems of
+the origin of our race. We are looking downwards, downwards always;
+digging in old muck-heaps; raking up all kinds of unsavoury rubbish to
+prove that we are born out of the dirt. And we have never a thought for
+the future in all our work,--a future that may be glorious, who knows?
+Here, perhaps in this village, insignificant from most points of view,
+but set in a country that should teach us to raise our eyes from the
+ground; here, in this tiny hamlet, is living a child who may become a
+greater than Socrates or Shakespeare, a child who may revolutionise our
+conceptions of time and space. There have been great men in the past who
+have done that, Lewes; there is no reason for us to doubt that still
+greater men may succeed them."
+
+"No; there is no reason for us to doubt that," said Lewes, and they
+walked on in silence towards the Stotts' cottage.
+
+
+III
+
+Challis knocked and walked in. They found Ellen Mary and her son at the
+tea-table.
+
+The mother rose to her feet and dropped a respectful curtsy. The boy
+glanced once at Gregory Lewes and then continued his meal as if he were
+unaware of any strange presence in the room.
+
+"I'm sorry. I am afraid we are interrupting you," Challis apologised.
+"Pray sit down, Mrs. Stott, and go on with your tea."
+
+"Thank you, sir. I'd just finished, sir," said Ellen Mary, and remained
+standing with an air of quiet deference.
+
+Challis took the celebrated armchair, and motioned Lewes to the
+window-sill, the nearest available seat for him. "Please sit down, Mrs.
+Stott," he said, and Ellen Mary sat, apologetically.
+
+The boy pushed his cup towards his mother, and pointed to the teapot; he
+made a grunting sound to attract her attention.
+
+"You'll excuse me, sir," murmured Ellen Mary, and she refilled the cup
+and passed it back to her son, who received it without any
+acknowledgment. Challis and Lewes were observing the boy intently, but
+he took not the least notice of their scrutiny. He discovered no trace
+of self-consciousness; Henry Challis and Gregory Lewes appeared to have
+no place in the world of his abstraction.
+
+The figure the child presented to his two observers was worthy of
+careful scrutiny.
+
+At the age of four and a half years, the Wonder was bald, save for a few
+straggling wisps of reddish hair above the ears and at the base of the
+skull, and a weak, sparse down, of the same colour, on the top of his
+head. The eyebrows, too, were not marked by any line of hair, but the
+eyelashes were thick, though short, and several shades darker than the
+hair on the skull.
+
+The face is not so easily described. The mouth and chin were relatively
+small, overshadowed by that broad cliff of forehead, but they were firm,
+the chin well moulded, the lips thin and compressed. The nose was
+unusual when seen in profile. There was no sign of a bony bridge, but it
+was markedly curved and jutted out at a curious angle from the line of
+the face. The nostrils were wide and open. None of these features
+produced any effect of childishness; but this effect was partly achieved
+by the contours of the cheeks, and by the fact that there was no
+indication of any lines on the face.
+
+The eyes nearly always wore their usual expression of abstraction. It
+was very rarely that the Wonder allowed his intelligence to be exhibited
+by that medium. When he did, the effect was strangely disconcerting,
+blinding. One received an impression of extraordinary concentration: it
+was as though for an instant the boy was able to give one a glimpse of
+the wonderful force of his intellect. When he looked one in the face
+with intention, and suddenly allowed one to realise, as it were, all the
+dominating power of his brain, one shrank into insignificance, one felt
+as an ignorant, intelligent man may feel when confronted with some
+elaborate theorem of the higher mathematics. "Is it possible that any
+one can really understand these things?" such a man might think with
+awe, and in the same way one apprehended some vast, inconceivable
+possibilities of mind-function when the Wonder looked at one with, as I
+have said, intention.
+
+He was dressed in a little jacket-suit, and wore a linen collar; the
+knickerbockers, loose and badly cut, fell a little below the knees. His
+stockings were of worsted, his boots clumsy and thick-soled, though
+relatively tiny. One had the impression always that his body was fragile
+and small, but as a matter of fact the body and limbs were, if anything,
+slightly better developed than those of the average child of four and a
+half years.
+
+Challis had ample opportunity to make these observations at various
+periods. He began them as he sat in the Stotts' cottage. At first he did
+not address the boy directly.
+
+"I hear your son has been having a religious controversy with Mr.
+Crashaw," was his introduction to the object of his visit.
+
+"Indeed, sir!" Plainly this was not news to Mrs. Stott.
+
+"Your son told you?" suggested Challis.
+
+"Oh! no, sir, 'e never told me," replied Mrs. Stott, "'twas Mr. Crashaw.
+'E's been 'ere several times lately."
+
+Challis looked sharply at the boy, but he gave no sign that he heard
+what was passing.
+
+"Yes; Mr. Crashaw seems rather upset about it."
+
+"I'm sorry, sir, but----"
+
+"Yes; speak plainly," prompted Challis. "I assure you that you will have
+no cause to regret any confidence you may make to me."
+
+"I can't see as it's any business of Mr. Crashaw's, sir, if you'll
+forgive me for sayin' so."
+
+"He has been worrying you?"
+
+"'E 'as, sir, but 'e ..." she glanced at her son--she laid a stress on
+the pronoun always when she spoke of him that differentiated its
+significance--"'e 'asn't seen Mr. Crashaw again, sir."
+
+Challis turned to the boy. "You are not interested in Mr. Crashaw, I
+suppose?" he asked.
+
+The boy took no notice of the question.
+
+Challis was piqued. If this extraordinary child really had an
+intelligence, surely it must be possible to appeal to that intelligence
+in some way. He made another effort, addressing Mrs. Stott.
+
+"I think we must forgive Mr. Crashaw, you know, Mrs. Stott. As I
+understand it, your boy at the age of four years and a half has
+defied--his cloth, if I may say so." He paused, and as he received no
+answer, continued: "But I hope that matter may be easily arranged."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Mrs. Stott. "It's very kind of you. I'm sure, I'm
+greatly obliged to you, sir."
+
+"That's only one reason of my visit to you, however," Challis hesitated.
+"I've been wondering whether I might not be able to help you and your
+son in some other way. I understand that he has unusual power of--of
+intelligence."
+
+"Indeed 'e 'as, sir," responded Mrs. Stott.
+
+"And he can read, can't he?"
+
+"I've learned 'im what I could, sir: it isn't much."
+
+"Well, perhaps I could lend him a few books."
+
+Challis made a significant pause, and again he looked at the boy; but as
+there was no response, he continued: "Tell me what he has read."
+
+"We've no books, sir, and we never 'ardly see a paper now. All we 'ave
+in the 'ouse is a Bible and two copies of Lillywhite's cricket annual as
+my 'usband left be'ind."
+
+Challis smiled. "Has he read those?" he asked.
+
+"The Bible 'e 'as, I believe," replied Mrs. Stott.
+
+It was a conversation curious in its impersonality. Challis was
+conscious of the anomaly that he was speaking in the boy's presence,
+crediting him with a remarkable intelligence, and yet addressing a
+frankly ignorant woman as though the boy was not in the room. Yet how
+could he break that deliberate silence? It seemed to him as though there
+must, after all, be some mistake; yet how account for Crashaw's story if
+the boy were indeed an idiot?
+
+With a slight show of temper he turned to the Wonder.
+
+"Do you want to read?" he asked. "I have between forty and fifty
+thousand books in my library. I think it possible that you might find
+one or two which would interest you."
+
+The Wonder lifted his hand as though to ask for silence. For a minute,
+perhaps, no one spoke. All waited, expectant; Challis and Lewes with
+intent eyes fixed on the detached expression of the child's face, Ellen
+Mary with bent head. It was a strange, yet very logical question that
+came at last:
+
+"What should I learn out of all them books?" asked the Wonder. He did
+not look at Challis as he spoke.
+
+
+IV
+
+Challis drew a deep breath and turned towards Lewes. "A difficult
+question, that, Lewes," he said.
+
+Lewes lifted his eyebrows and pulled at his fair moustache. "If you take
+the question literally," he muttered.
+
+"You might learn--the essential part ... of all the knowledge that has
+been ... discovered by mankind," said Challis. He phrased his sentence
+carefully, as though he were afraid of being trapped.
+
+"Should I learn what I am?" asked the Wonder.
+
+Challis understood the question in its metaphysical acceptation. He had
+the sense of a powerful but undirected intelligence working from the
+simple premisses of experience; of a cloistered mind that had functioned
+profoundly; a mind unbound by the tradition of all the speculations and
+discoveries of man, the essential conclusions of which were contained in
+that library at Challis Court.
+
+"No!" said Challis, after a perceptible interval, "that you will not
+learn from any books in my possession, but you will find grounds for
+speculation."
+
+"Grounds for speculation?" questioned the Wonder. He repeated the words
+quite clearly.
+
+"Material--matter from which you can--er--formulate theories of your
+own," explained Challis.
+
+The Wonder shook his head. It was evident that Challis's sentence
+conveyed little or no meaning to him.
+
+He got down from his chair and took up an old cricket cap of his
+father's, a cap which his mother had let out by the addition of another
+gore of cloth that did not match the original material. He pulled this
+cap carefully over his bald head, and then made for the door.
+
+At the threshold the strange child paused, and without looking at any
+one present said: "I'll coom to your library," and went out.
+
+Challis joined Lewes at the window, and they watched the boy make his
+deliberate way along the garden path and up the lane towards the fields
+beyond.
+
+"You let him go out by himself?" asked Challis.
+
+"He likes to be in the air, sir," replied Ellen Mary.
+
+"I suppose you have to let him go his own way?"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir."
+
+"I will send the governess cart up for him to-morrow morning," said
+Challis, "at ten o'clock. That is, of course, if you have no objection
+to his coming."
+
+"'E said 'e'd coom, sir," replied Ellen Mary. Her tone implied that
+there was no appeal possible against her son's statement of his wishes.
+
+
+V
+
+"His methods do not lack terseness," remarked Lewes, when he and Challis
+were out of earshot of the cottage.
+
+"His methods and manners are damnable," said Challis, "but----"
+
+"You were going to say?" prompted Lewes.
+
+"Well, what is your opinion?"
+
+"I am not convinced, as yet," said Lewes.
+
+"Oh, surely," expostulated Challis.
+
+"Not from objective, personal evidence. Let us put Crashaw out of our
+minds for the moment."
+
+"Very well; go on, state your case."
+
+"He has, so far, made four remarks in our presence," said Lewes,
+gesticulating with his walking stick. "Two of them can be neglected; his
+repetition of your words, which he did not understand, and his
+condescending promise to study your library."
+
+"Yes; I'm with you, so far."
+
+"Now, putting aside the preconception with which we entered the cottage,
+was there really anything in the other two remarks? Were they not the
+type of simple, unreasoning questions which one may often hear from the
+mouth of a child of that age? 'What shall I learn from your books?'
+Well, it is the natural question of the ignorant child, who has no
+conception of the contents of books, no experience which would furnish
+material for his imagination."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The second remark is more explicable still. It is a remark we all make
+in childhood, in some form or another. I remember quite well at the age
+of six or seven asking my mother: 'Which is me, my soul or my body?' I
+was brought up on the Church catechism. But you at once accepted these
+questions--which, I maintain, were questions possible in the mouth of a
+simple, ignorant child--in some deep, metaphysical acceptation. Don't
+you think, sir, we should wait for further evidence before we attribute
+any phenomenal intelligence to this child?"
+
+"Quite the right attitude to take, Lewes--the scientific attitude,"
+replied Challis. "Let's go by the lane," he added, as they reached the
+entrance to the wood.
+
+For some few minutes they walked in silence; Challis with his head down,
+his heavy shoulders humped. His hands were clasped behind him, dragging
+his stick as it were a tail, which he occasionally cocked. He walked
+with a little stumble now and again, his eyes on the ground. Lewes
+strode with a sure foot, his head up, and he slashed at the tangle of
+last year's growth on the bank whenever he passed some tempting butt for
+the sword-play of his stick.
+
+"Do you think, then," said Challis at last, "that much of the
+atmosphere--you must have marked the atmosphere--of the child's
+personality, was a creation of our own minds, due to our
+preconceptions?"
+
+"Yes, I think so," Lewes replied, a touch of defiance in his tone.
+
+"Isn't that what you _want_ to believe?" asked Challis.
+
+Lewes hit at a flag of dead bracken and missed. "You mean...?" he
+prevaricated.
+
+"I mean that that is a much stronger influence than any preconception,
+my dear Lewes. I'm no pragmatist, as you know; but there can be no doubt
+that with the majority of us the wish to believe a thing is true
+constitutes the truth of that thing for us. And that is, in my opinion,
+the wrong attitude for either scientist or philosopher. Now, in the case
+we are discussing, I suppose at bottom I should like to agree with you.
+One does not like to feel that a child of four and a half has greater
+intellectual powers than oneself. Candidly, I do not like it at all."
+
+"Of course not! But I can't think that----"
+
+"You can if you try; you would at once if you wished to," returned
+Challis, anticipating the completion of Lewes's sentence.
+
+"I'll admit that there are some remarkable facts in the case of this
+child," said Lewes, "but I do not see why we should, as yet, take the
+whole proposition for granted."
+
+"No! I am with you there," returned Challis. And no more was said until
+they were nearly home.
+
+Just before they turned into the drive, however, Challis stopped. "Do
+you know, Lewes," he said, "I am not sure that I am doing a wise thing
+in bringing that child here!"
+
+Lewes did not understand. "No, sir? Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Why, think of the possibilities of that child, if he has all the powers
+I credit him with," said Challis. "Think of his possibilities for
+original thought if he is kept away from all the traditions of this
+futile learning." He waved an arm in the direction of the elongated
+chapel.
+
+"Oh! but surely," remonstrated Lewes, "that is a necessary groundwork.
+Knowledge is built up step by step."
+
+"Is it? I wonder. I sometimes doubt," said Challis. "Yes, I sometimes
+doubt whether we have ever learned anything at all that is worth
+knowing. And, perhaps, this child, if he were kept away from books....
+However, the thing is done now, and in any case he would never have been
+able to dodge the School attendance officer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HIS FIRST VISIT TO CHALLIS COURT
+
+
+I
+
+"Shall you be able to help me in collating your notes of the Tikopia
+observations to-day, sir?" Lewes asked next morning. He rose from the
+breakfast-table and lit a cigarette. There was no ceremony between
+Challis and his secretary.
+
+"You forget our engagement for ten o'clock," said Challis.
+
+"Need that distract us?"
+
+"It need not, but doesn't it seem to you that it may furnish us with
+valuable material?"
+
+"Hardly pertinent, sir, is it?"
+
+"What line do you think of taking up, Lewes?" asked Challis with
+apparent irrelevance.
+
+"With regard to this--this phenomenon?"
+
+"No, no. I was speaking of your own ambitions." Challis had sauntered
+over to the window; he stood, with his back to Lewes, looking out at the
+blue and white of the April sky.
+
+Lewes frowned. He did not understand the gist of the question. "I
+suppose there is a year's work on this book before me yet," he said.
+
+"Quite, quite," replied Challis, watching a cloud shadow swarm up the
+slope of Deane Hill. "Yes, certainly a year's work. I was thinking of
+the future."
+
+"I have thought of laboratory work in connection with psychology," said
+Lewes, still puzzled.
+
+"I thought I remembered your saying something of the kind," murmured
+Challis absently. "We are going to have more rain. It will be a late
+spring this year."
+
+"Had the question any bearing on our engagement of this morning?" Lewes
+was a little anxious, uncertain whether this inquiry as to his future
+had not some particular significance; a hint, perhaps, that his services
+would not be required much longer.
+
+"Yes; I think it had," said Challis. "I saw the governess cart go up the
+road a few minutes since."
+
+"I suppose the boy will be here in a quarter of an hour?" said Lewes by
+way of keeping up the conversation. He was puzzled; he did not know
+Challis in this mood. He did not conceive it possible that Challis could
+be nervous about the arrival of so insignificant a person as this Stott
+child.
+
+"It's all very ridiculous," broke out Challis suddenly; and he turned
+away from the window, and joined Lewes by the fire. "Don't you think
+so?"
+
+"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
+
+Challis laughed. "I'm not surprised," he said; "I was a trifle
+inconsecutive. But I wish you were more interested in this child, Lewes.
+The thought of him engrosses me, and yet I don't want to meet him. I
+should be relieved to hear that he wasn't coming. Surely you, as a
+student of psychology ..." he broke off with a lift of his heavy
+shoulders.
+
+"Oh! Yes! I _am_ interested, certainly, as you say, as a student of
+psychology. We ought to take some measurements. The configuration of the
+skull is not abnormal otherwise than in its relation to the development
+of the rest of his body, but ..." Lewes meandered off into somewhat
+abstruse speculation with regard to the significance of craniology.
+
+Challis nodded his head and murmured: "Quite, quite," occasionally. He
+seemed glad that Lewes should continue to talk.
+
+The lecture was interrupted by the appearance of the governess cart.
+
+"By Jove, he _has_ come," ejaculated Challis in the middle of one of
+Lewes's periods. "You'll have to see me through this, my boy. I'm damned
+if I know how to take the child."
+
+Lewes flushed, annoyed at the interruption of his lecture. He had
+believed that he had been interesting. "Curse the kid," was the thought
+in his mind as he followed Challis to the window.
+
+
+II
+
+Jessop, the groom deputed to fetch the Wonder from Pym, looked a little
+uneasy, perhaps a little scared. When he drew up at the porch, the child
+pointed to the door of the cart and indicated that it was to be opened
+for him. He was evidently used to being waited upon. When this command
+had been obeyed, he descended deliberately and then pointed to the front
+door.
+
+"Open!" he said clearly, as Jessop hesitated. The Wonder knew nothing of
+bells or ceremony.
+
+Jessop came down from the cart and rang.
+
+The butler opened the door. He was an old servant and accustomed to his
+master's eccentricities, but he was not prepared for the vision of that
+strange little figure, with a large head in a parti-coloured
+cricket-cap, an apparition that immediately walked straight by him into
+the hall, and pointed to the first door he came to.
+
+"Oh, dear! Well, to be sure," gasped Heathcote. "Why, whatever----"
+
+"Open!" commanded the Wonder, and Heathcote obeyed, weak-kneed.
+
+The door chanced to be the right one, the door of the breakfast-room,
+and the Wonder walked in, still wearing his cap.
+
+Challis came forward to meet him with a conventional greeting. "I'm
+glad you were able to come ..." he began, but the child took no notice;
+he looked rapidly round the room, and not finding what he wanted,
+signified his desire by a single word.
+
+"Books," he said, and looked at Challis.
+
+Heathcote stood at the door, hesitating between amazement and
+disapproval. "I've never seen the like," was how he phrased his
+astonishment later, in the servants' hall, "never in all my born days.
+To see that melon-'eaded himp in a cricket-cap hordering the master
+about. Well, there----"
+
+"Jessop says he fair got the creeps drivin' 'im over," said the cook.
+"'E says the child's not right in 'is 'ead."
+
+Much embroidery followed in the servants' hall.
+
+
+
+
+INTERLUDE
+
+
+This brief history of the Hampdenshire Wonder is marked by a stereotyped
+division into three parts, an arbitrary arrangement dependent on the
+experience of the writer. The true division becomes manifest at this
+point. The life of Victor Stott was cut into two distinct sections,
+between which there is no correlation. The first part should tell the
+story of his mind during the life of experience, the time occupied in
+observation of the phenomena of life presented to him in fact, without
+any specific teaching on the theories of existence and progress, or on
+the speculation as to ultimate destiny. The second part should deal with
+his entry into the world of books; into that account of a long series of
+collated experiments and partly verified hypotheses we call science;
+into the imperfectly developed system of inductive and deductive logic
+which determines mathematics and philosophy; into the long, inaccurate
+and largely unverifiable account of human blindness and error known as
+history; and into the realm of idealism, symbol, and pitiful pride we
+find in the story of poetry, letters, and religion.
+
+I will confess that I once contemplated the writing of such a history.
+It was Challis who, in his courtly, gentle way, pointed out to me that
+no man living had the intellectual capacity to undertake so profound a
+work.
+
+For some three months before I had this conversation with Challis, I had
+been wrapped in solitude, dreaming, speculating. I had been uplifted in
+thought, I had come to believe myself inspired as a result of my
+separation from the world of men, and of the deep introspection and
+meditation in which I had been plunged. I had arrived at a point,
+perhaps not far removed from madness, at which I thought myself capable
+of setting out the true history of Victor Stott.
+
+Challis broke the spell. He cleared away the false glamour which was
+blinding and intoxicating me and brought me back to a condition of
+open-eyed sanity. To Challis I owe a great debt.
+
+Yet at the moment I was sunk in depression. All the glory of my vision
+had faded; the afterglow was quenched in the blackness of a night that
+drew out of the east and fell from the zenith as a curtain of utter
+darkness.
+
+Again Challis came to my rescue. He brought me a great sheaf of notes.
+
+"Look here," he said, "if you can't write a true history of that strange
+child, I see no reason why you should not write his story as it is
+known to you, as it impinges on your own life. After all, you, in many
+ways, know more of him than any one. You came nearest to receiving his
+confidence."
+
+"But only during the last few months," I said.
+
+"Does that matter?" said Challis with an upheaval of his
+shoulders--"shrug" is far too insignificant a word for that mountainous
+humping. "Is any biography founded on better material than you have at
+command?"
+
+He unfolded his bundle of notes. "See here," he said, "here is some
+magnificent material for you--first-hand observations made at the time.
+Can't you construct a story from that?"
+
+Even then I began to cast my story in a slightly biographical form. I
+wrote half a dozen chapters, and read them to Challis.
+
+"Magnificent, my dear fellow," was his comment, "magnificent; but no one
+will believe it."
+
+I had been carried away by my own prose, and with the natural vanity of
+the author, I resented intensely his criticism.
+
+For some weeks I did not see Challis again, and I persisted in my futile
+endeavour, but always as I wrote that killing suggestion insinuated
+itself: "No one will believe you." At times I felt as a man may feel who
+has spent many years in a lunatic asylum; and after his release is for
+ever engaged in a struggle to allay the doubts of a leering suspicion.
+
+I gave up the hopeless task at last, and sought out Challis again.
+
+"Write it as a story," he suggested, "and give up the attempt to carry
+conviction."
+
+And in that spirit, adopting the form of a story, I did begin, and in
+that form I hope to finish.
+
+But here as I reach the great division, the determining factor of Victor
+Stott's life, I am constrained to pause and apologise. I have become
+uncomfortably conscious of my own limitations, and the feeble, ephemeral
+methods I am using. I am trifling with a wonderful story, embroidering
+my facts with the tawdry detail of my own imagining.
+
+I saw--I see--no other way.
+
+This is, indeed, a preface, yet I prefer to put it in this place, since
+it was at this time I wrote it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the Common a faint green is coming again like a mist among the
+ash-trees, while the oak is still dead and bare. Last year the oak came
+first.
+
+They say we shall have a wet summer.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO (_Continued_)
+
+THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO (_Continued_)
+
+THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+HIS PASSAGE THROUGH THE PRISON OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+
+I
+
+Challis led the way to the library; Lewes, petulant and mutinous, hung
+in the rear.
+
+The Wonder toddled forward, unabashed, to enter his new world. On the
+threshold, however, he paused. His comprehensive stare took in a
+sweeping picture of enclosing walls of books, and beyond was a vista of
+further rooms, of more walls all lined from floor to ceiling with
+records of human discovery, endeavour, doubt, and hope.
+
+The Wonder stayed and stared. Then he took two faltering steps into the
+room and stopped again, and, finally, he looked up at Challis with doubt
+and question; his gaze no longer quelling and authoritative, but
+hesitating, compliant, perhaps a little child-like.
+
+"'Ave you read all these?" he asked.
+
+It was a curious picture. The tall figure of Challis, stooping, as
+always, slightly forward; Challis, with his seaman's eyes and scholar's
+head, his hands loosely clasped together behind his back, paying such
+scrupulous attention to that grotesque representative of a higher
+intellectuality, clothed in the dress of a villager, a patched
+cricket-cap drawn down over his globular skull, his little arms hanging
+loosely at his sides; who, nevertheless, even in this new, strange
+aspect of unwonted humility bore on his face the promise of some
+ultimate development which differentiated him from all other humanity,
+as the face of humanity is differentiated from the face of its
+prognathous ancestor.
+
+The scene is set in a world of books, and in the background lingers the
+athletic figure and fair head of Lewes, the young Cambridge
+undergraduate, the disciple of science, hardly yet across the threshold
+which divides him from the knowledge of his own ignorance.
+
+"'Ave you read all these?" asked the Wonder.
+
+"A greater part of them--in effect," replied Challis. "There is much
+repetition, you understand, and much record of experiment which becomes,
+in a sense, worthless when the conclusions are either finally accepted
+or rejected."
+
+The eyes of the Wonder shifted and their expression became abstracted;
+he seemed to lose consciousness of the outer world; he wore the look
+which you may see in the eyes of Jakob Schlesinger's portrait of the
+mature Hegel, a look of profound introspection and analysis.
+
+There was an interval of silence, and then the Wonder unknowingly gave
+expression to a quotation from Hamlet. "Words," he whispered
+reflectively, and then again "words."
+
+
+II
+
+Challis understood him. "You have not yet learned the meaning of words?"
+he asked.
+
+The brief period--the only one recorded--of amazement and submission was
+over. It may be that he had doubted during those few minutes of time
+whether he was well advised to enter into that world of books, whether
+he would not by so doing stunt his own mental growth. It may be that the
+decision of so momentous a question should have been postponed for a
+year--two years; to a time when his mind should have had further
+possibilities for unlettered expansion. However that may be, he decided
+now and finally. He walked to the table and climbed up on a chair.
+
+"Books about words," he commanded, and pointed at Challis and Lewes.
+
+They brought him the latest production of the twentieth century in many
+volumes, the work of a dozen eminent authorities on the etymology of the
+English language, and they seated him on eight volumes of the
+_Encyclopædia Britannica_ (India paper edition) in order that he might
+reach the level of the table.
+
+At first they tried to show him how his wonderful dictionary should be
+used, but he pushed them on one side, neither then nor at any future
+time would he consent to be taught--the process was too tedious for him,
+his mind worked more fluently, rapidly, and comprehensively than the
+mind of the most gifted teacher that could have been found for him.
+
+So Challis and Lewes stood on one side and watched him, and he was no
+more embarrassed by their presence than if they had been in another
+world, as, possibly, they were.
+
+He began with volume one, and he read the title page and the
+introduction, the list of abbreviations, and all the preliminary matter
+in due order.
+
+Challis noted that when the Wonder began to read, he read no faster than
+the average educated man, but that he acquired facility at a most
+astounding rate, and that when he had been reading for a few days his
+eye swept down the column, as it were at a single glance.
+
+Challis and Lewes watched him for, perhaps, half an hour, and then,
+seeing that their presence was of an entirely negligible value to the
+Wonder, they left him and went into the farther room.
+
+"Well?" asked Challis, "what do you make of him?"
+
+"Is he reading or pretending to read?" parried Lewes. "Do you think it
+possible that he could read so fast? Moreover, remember that he has
+admitted that he knows few words of the English language, yet he does
+not refer from volume to volume; he does not look up the meanings of the
+many unknown words which must occur even in the introduction."
+
+"I know. I had noticed that."
+
+"Then you think he _is_ humbugging--pretending to read?"
+
+"No; that solution seems to me altogether unlikely. He could not, for
+one thing, simulate that look of attention. Remember, Lewes, the child
+is not yet five years old."
+
+"What is your explanation, then?"
+
+"I am wondering whether the child has not a memory beside which the
+memory of a Macaulay would appear insignificant."
+
+Lewes did not grasp Challis's intention. "Even so ..." he began.
+
+"And," continued Challis, "I am wondering whether, if that is the case,
+he is, in effect, prepared to learn the whole dictionary by heart, and,
+so to speak, collate its contents later, in his mind."
+
+"Oh! Sir!" Lewes smiled. The supposition was too outrageous to be taken
+seriously. "Surely, you can't mean that." There was something in Lewes's
+tone which carried a hint of contempt for so far-fetched a hypothesis.
+
+Challis was pacing up and down the library, his hands clasped behind
+him. "Yes, I mean it," he said, without looking up. "I put it forward as
+a serious theory, worthy of full consideration."
+
+Lewes sneered. "Oh, surely not, sir," he said.
+
+Challis stopped and faced him. "Why not, Lewes; why not?" he asked, with
+a kindly smile. "Think of the gap which separates your intellectual
+powers from those of a Polynesian savage. Why, after all, should it be
+impossible that this child's powers should equally transcend our own? A
+freak, if you will, an abnormality, a curious effect of nature's, like
+the giant puff-ball--but still----"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir, I grant you the thing is not impossible from a
+theoretical point of view," argued Lewes, "but I think you are
+theorising on altogether insufficient evidence. I am willing to admit
+that such a freak is theoretically possible, but I have not yet found
+the indications of such a power in the child."
+
+Challis resumed his pacing. "Quite, quite," he assented; "your method
+is perfectly correct--perfectly correct. We must wait."
+
+At twelve o'clock Challis brought a glass of milk and some biscuits, and
+set them beside the Wonder--he was apparently making excellent progress
+with the letter "A."
+
+"Well, how are you getting on?" asked Challis.
+
+The Wonder took not the least notice of the question, but he stretched
+out a little hand and took a biscuit and ate it, without looking up from
+his reading.
+
+"I wish he'd answer questions," Challis remarked to Lewes, later.
+
+"I should prescribe a sound shaking," returned Lewes.
+
+Challis smiled. "Well, see here, Lewes," he said, "I'll take the
+responsibility; you go and experiment; go and shake him."
+
+Lewes looked through the folding doors at the picture of the Wonder,
+intent on his study of the great dictionary. "Since you've franked me,"
+he said, "I'll do it--but not now. I'll wait till he gives me some
+occasion."
+
+"Good," replied Challis, "my offer holds ... and, by the way, I have no
+doubt that an occasion will present itself. Doesn't it strike you as
+likely, Lewes, that we shall see a good deal of the child here?"
+
+They stood for some minutes, watching the picture of that intent
+student, framed in the written thoughts of his predecessors.
+
+
+III
+
+The Wonder ignored an invitation to lunch; he ignored, also, the tray
+that was sent in to him. He read on steadily till a quarter to six, by
+which time he was at the end of "B," and then he climbed down from his
+Encyclopædia, and made for the door. Challis, working in the farther
+room, saw him and came out to open the door.
+
+"Are you going now?" he asked.
+
+The child nodded.
+
+"I will order the cart for you, if you will wait ten minutes," said
+Challis.
+
+The child shook his head. "It's very necessary to have air," he said.
+
+Something in the tone and pronunciation struck Challis, and awoke a long
+dormant memory. The sentence spoken, suddenly conjured up a vision of
+the Stotts' cottage at Stoke, of the Stotts at tea, of a cradle in the
+shadow, and of himself, sitting in an uncomfortable armchair and
+swinging his stick between his knees. When the child had gone--walking
+deliberately, and evidently regarding the mile-and-a-half walk through
+the twilight wood and over the deserted Common as a trivial incident in
+the day's business--Challis set himself to analyse that curious
+association.
+
+As he strolled back across the hall to the library, he tried to
+reconstruct the scene of the cottage at Stoke, and to recall the outline
+of the conversation he had had with the Stotts.
+
+"Lewes!" he said, when he reached the room in which his secretary was
+working. "Lewes, this is curious," and he described the associations
+called up by the child's speech. "The curious thing is," he continued,
+"that I had gone to advise Mrs. Stott to take a cottage at Pym, because
+the Stoke villagers were hostile, in some way, and she did not care to
+take the child out in the street. It is more than probable that I used
+just those words, 'It is very necessary to have air,' very probable.
+Now, what about my memory theory? The child was only six months old at
+that time."
+
+Lewes appeared unconvinced. "There is nothing very unusual in the
+sentence," he said.
+
+"Forgive me," replied Challis, "I don't agree with you. It is not
+phrased as a villager would phrase it, and, as I tell you, it was not
+spoken with the local accent."
+
+"You may have spoken the sentence to-day," suggested Lewes.
+
+"I may, of course, though I don't remember saying anything of the sort,
+but that would not account for the curiously vivid association which was
+conjured up."
+
+Lewes pursed his lips. "No, no, no," he said. "But that is hardly ground
+for argument, is it?"
+
+"I suppose not," returned Challis thoughtfully; "but when you take up
+psychology, Lewes, I should much like you to specialise on a careful
+inquiry into association in connection with memory. I feel certain that
+if one can reproduce, as nearly as may be, any complex sensation one has
+experienced, no matter how long ago, one will stimulate what I may call
+an abnormal memory of all the associations connected with that
+experience. Just now I saw the interior of that room in the Stotts'
+cottage so clearly that I had an image of a dreadful oleograph of
+Disraeli hanging on the wall. But, now, I cannot for the life of me
+remember whether there was such an oleograph or not. I do not remember
+noticing it at the time."
+
+"Yes, that's very interesting," replied Lewes. "There is certainly a
+wide field for research in that direction."
+
+"You might throw much light on our mental processes," replied Challis.
+
+(It was as the outcome of this conversation that Gregory Lewes did, two
+years afterwards, take up this line of study. The only result up to the
+present time is his little brochure _Reflexive Associations_, which has
+added little to our knowledge of the subject.)
+
+
+IV
+
+Challis's anticipation that he and Lewes would be greatly favoured by
+the Wonder's company was fully realised.
+
+The child put in an appearance at half-past nine the next morning, just
+as the governess cart was starting out to fetch him. When he was
+admitted he went straight to the library, climbed on to the chair, upon
+which the volumes of the Encyclopædia still remained, and continued his
+reading where he had left off on the previous evening.
+
+He read steadily throughout the day without giving utterance to speech
+of any kind.
+
+Challis and Lewes went out in the afternoon, and left the child deep in
+study. They came in at six o'clock, and went to the library. The Wonder,
+however, was not there.
+
+Challis rang the bell.
+
+"Has little Stott gone?" he asked when Heathcote came.
+
+"I 'aven't seen 'im, sir," said Heathcote.
+
+"Just find out if any one opened the door for him, will you?" said
+Challis. "He couldn't possibly have opened that door for himself."
+
+"No one 'asn't let Master Stott hout, sir," Heathcote reported on his
+return.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Quite sure, sir. I've made full hinquiries," said Heathcote with
+dignity.
+
+"Well, we'd better find him," said Challis.
+
+"The window is open," suggested Lewes.
+
+"He would hardly ..." began Challis, walking over to the low sill of the
+open window, but he broke off in his sentence and continued, "By Jove,
+he did, though; look here!"
+
+It was, indeed, quite obvious that the Wonder had made his exit by the
+window; the tiny prints of his feet were clearly marked in the mould of
+the flower-bed; he had, moreover, disregarded all results of early
+spring floriculture.
+
+"See how he has smashed those daffodils," said Lewes. "What an
+infernally cheeky little brute he is!"
+
+"What interests me is the logic of the child," returned Challis. "I
+would venture to guess that he wasted no time in trying to attract
+attention. The door was closed, so he just got out of the window. I
+rather admire the spirit; there is something Napoleonic about him. Don't
+you think so?"
+
+Lewes shrugged his shoulders. Heathcote's expression was quite
+non-committal.
+
+"You'd better send Jessop up to Pym, Heathcote," said Challis. "Let him
+find out whether the child is safe at home."
+
+Jessop reported an hour afterwards that Master Stott had arrived home
+quite safely, and Mrs. Stott was much obliged.
+
+
+V
+
+Altogether the Wonder spent five days, or about forty hours, on his
+study of the dictionary, and in the evening of his last day's work he
+left again by the open window. Challis, however, had been keeping him
+under fairly close observation, and knew that the preliminary task was
+finished.
+
+"What can I give that child to read to-day?" he asked at breakfast next
+morning.
+
+"I should reverse the arrangement; let him sit on the Dictionary and
+read the Encyclopædia." Lewes always approached the subject of the
+Wonder with a certain supercilious contempt.
+
+"You are not convinced yet that he isn't humbugging?"
+
+"No! Frankly, I'm not."
+
+"Well, well, we must wait for more evidence, before we argue about it,"
+said Challis, but they sat on over the breakfast-table, waiting for the
+child to put in an appearance, and their conversation hovered over the
+topic of his intelligence.
+
+"Half-past ten?" Challis ejaculated at last, with surprise. "We are
+getting into slack habits, Lewes." He rose and rang the bell.
+
+"Apparently the Stott infant has had enough of it," suggested Lewes.
+"Perhaps he has exhausted the interest of dictionary illustrations."
+
+"We shall see," replied Challis, and then to a deferentially appearing
+Heathcote he said: "Has Master Stott come this morning?"
+
+"No, sir. Leastways, no one 'asn't let 'im in, sir."
+
+"It may be that he is mentally collating the results of the past two
+days' reading," said Challis, as he and Lewes made their way to the
+library.
+
+"Oh!" was all Lewes's reply, but it conveyed much of impatient contempt
+for his employer's attitude.
+
+Challis only smiled.
+
+When they entered the library they found the Wonder hard at work, and he
+had, of his own initiative, adopted the plan ironically suggested by
+Lewes, for he had succeeded in transferring the Dictionary volumes to
+the chair, and he was deep in volume one, of the eleventh edition of the
+_Encyclopædia Britannica_.
+
+The library was never cleared up by any one except Challis or his
+deputy, but an early housemaid had been sent to dust, and she had left
+the casement of one of the lower lights of the window open. The means
+of the Wonder's entrance was thus clearly in evidence.
+
+"It's Napoleonic," murmured Challis.
+
+"It's most infernal cheek," returned Lewes in a loud voice, "I should
+not be at all surprised if that promised shaking were not administered
+to-day."
+
+The Wonder took no notice. Challis says that on that morning his eyes
+were travelling down the page at about the rate at which one could count
+the lines.
+
+"He isn't reading," said Lewes. "No one could read as fast as that, and
+most certainly not a child of four and a half."
+
+"If he would only answer questions ..." hesitated Challis.
+
+"Oh! of course he won't do that," said Lewes. "He's clever enough not to
+give himself away."
+
+The two men went over to the table and looked down over the child's
+shoulder. He was in the middle of the article on "Aberration"--a
+technical treatise on optical physics.
+
+Lewes made a gesture. "Now do you believe he's humbugging?" he asked
+confidently, and made no effort to modulate his voice.
+
+Challis drew his eyebrows together. "My boy," he said, and laid his hand
+lightly on Victor Stott's shoulder, "can you understand what you are
+reading there?"
+
+But no answer was vouchsafed. Challis sighed. "Come along, Lewes," he
+said; "we must waste no more time."
+
+Lewes wore a look of smug triumph as they went to the farther room, but
+he was clever enough to refrain from expressing his triumph in speech.
+
+
+VI
+
+Challis gave directions that the window which the Wonder had found to be
+his most convenient method of entry and exit should be kept open, except
+at night; and a stool was placed under the sill inside the room, and a
+low bench was fixed outside to facilitate the child's goings and
+comings. Also, a little path was made across the flower-bed.
+
+The Wonder gave no trouble. He arrived at nine o'clock every morning,
+Sunday included, and left at a quarter to six in the evening. On wet
+days he was provided with a waterproof which had evidently been made by
+his mother out of a larger garment. This he took off when he entered the
+room and left on the stool under the window.
+
+He was given a glass of milk and a plate of bread-and-butter at twelve
+o'clock; and except for this he demanded and received no attention.
+
+For three weeks he devoted himself exclusively to the study of the
+Encyclopædia.
+
+Lewes was puzzled.
+
+Challis spoke little of the child during these three weeks, but he often
+stood at the entrance to the farther rooms and watched the Wonder's eyes
+travelling so rapidly yet so intently down the page. That sight had a
+curious fascination for him; he returned to his own work by an effort,
+and an hour afterwards he would be back again at the door of the larger
+room. Sometimes Lewes would hear him mutter: "If he would only answer a
+few questions...." There was always one hope in Challis's mind. He hoped
+that some sort of climax might be reached when the Encyclopædia was
+finished. The child must, at least, ask then for another book. Even if
+he chose one for himself, his choice might furnish some sort of a test.
+
+So Challis waited and said little; and Lewes was puzzled, because he was
+beginning to doubt whether it were possible that the child could sustain
+a pose so long. That, in itself, would be evidence of extraordinary
+abnormality. Lewes fumbled in his mind for another hypothesis.
+
+This reading craze may be symptomatic of some form of idiocy, he
+thought; "and I don't believe he does read," was his illogical
+deduction.
+
+Mrs. Stott usually came to meet her son, and sometimes she would come
+early in the afternoon and stand at the window watching him at his work;
+but neither Challis nor Lewes ever saw the Wonder display by any sign
+that he was aware of his mother's presence.
+
+During those three weeks the Wonder held himself completely detached
+from any intercourse with the world of men. At the end of that period he
+once more manifested his awareness of the human factor in existence.
+
+Challis, if he spoke little to Lewes of the Wonder during this time,
+maintained a strict observation of the child's doings.
+
+The Wonder began his last volume of the Encyclopædia one Wednesday
+afternoon soon after lunch, and on Thursday morning, Challis was
+continually in and out of the room watching the child's progress, and
+noting his nearness to the end of the colossal task he had undertaken.
+
+At a quarter to twelve he took up his old position in the doorway, and
+with his hands clasped behind his back he watched the reading of the
+last forty pages.
+
+There was no slackening and no quickening in the Wonder's rate of
+progress. He read the articles under "Z" with the same attention he had
+given to the remainder of the work, and then, arrived at the last page,
+he closed the volume and took up the Index.
+
+Challis suffered a qualm; not so much on account of the possible
+postponement of the crisis he was awaiting, as because he saw that the
+reading of the Index could only be taken as a sign that the whole study
+had been unintelligent. No one could conceivably have any purpose in
+reading through an index.
+
+And at this moment Lewes joined him in the doorway.
+
+"What volume has he got to now?" asked Lewes.
+
+"The Index," returned Challis.
+
+Lewes was no less quick in drawing his inference than Challis had been.
+
+"Well, that settles it, I should think," was Lewes's comment.
+
+"Wait, wait," returned Challis.
+
+The Wonder turned a dozen pages at once, glanced at the new opening,
+made a further brief examination of two or three headings near the end
+of the volume, closed the book, and looked up.
+
+"Have you finished?" asked Challis.
+
+The Wonder shook his head. "All this," he said--he indicated with a
+small and dirty hand the pile of volumes that were massed round
+him--"all this ..." he repeated, hesitated for a word, and again shook
+his head with that solemn, deliberate impressiveness which marked all
+his actions.
+
+Challis came towards the child, leaned over the table for a moment, and
+then sat down opposite to him. Between the two protagonists hovered
+Lewes, sceptical, inclined towards aggression.
+
+"I am most interested," said Challis. "Will you try to tell me, my boy,
+what you think of--all this?"
+
+"So elementary ... inchoate ... a disjunctive ... patchwork," replied
+the Wonder. His abstracted eyes were blind to the objective world of our
+reality; he seemed to be profoundly analysing the very elements of
+thought.
+
+
+VII
+
+Then that almost voiceless child found words. Heathcote's announcement
+of lunch was waved aside, the long afternoon waned, and still that thin
+trickle of sound flowed on.
+
+The Wonder spoke in odd, pedantic phrases; he used the technicalities of
+every science; he constructed his sentences in unusual ways, and often
+he paused for a word and gave up the search, admitting that his meaning
+could not be expressed through the medium of any language known to him.
+
+Occasionally Challis would interrupt him fiercely, would even rise from
+his chair and pace the room, arguing, stating a point of view, combating
+some suggestion that underlay the trend of that pitiless wisdom which in
+the end bore him down with its unanswerable insistence.
+
+During those long hours much was stated by that small, thin voice which
+was utterly beyond the comprehension of the two listeners; indeed, it is
+doubtful whether even Challis understood a tithe of the theory that was
+actually expressed in words.
+
+As for Lewes, though he was at the time non-plussed, quelled, he was in
+the outcome impressed rather by the marvellous powers of memory
+exhibited than by the far finer powers shown in the superhuman logic of
+the synthesis.
+
+One sees that Lewes entered upon the interview with a mind predisposed
+to criticise, to destroy. There can be no doubt that as he listened his
+uninformed mind was endeavouring to analyse, to weigh, and to oppose;
+and this antagonism and his own thoughts continually interposed between
+him and the thought of the speaker. Lewes's account of what was spoken
+on that afternoon is utterly worthless.
+
+Challis's failure to comprehend was not, at the outset, due to his
+antagonistic attitude. He began with an earnest wish to understand: he
+failed only because the thing spoken was beyond the scope of his
+intellectual powers. But he did, nevertheless, understand the trend of
+that analysis of progress; he did in some half-realised way apprehend
+the gist of that terrible deduction of a final adjustment.
+
+He must have apprehended, in part, for he fiercely combated the
+argument, only to quaver, at last, into a silence which permitted again
+that trickle of hesitating, pedantic speech, which was yet so
+overwhelming, so conclusive.
+
+As the afternoon wore on, however, Challis's attitude must have changed;
+he must have assumed an armour of mental resistance not unlike the
+resistance of Lewes. Challis perceived, however dimly, that life would
+hold no further pleasure for him if he accepted that theory of origin,
+evolution, and final adjustment; he found in this cosmogony no place for
+his own idealism; and he feared to be convinced even by that fraction of
+the whole argument which he could understand.
+
+We see that Challis, with all his apparent devotion to science, was
+never more than a dilettante. He had another stake in the world which,
+at the last analysis, he valued more highly than the acquisition of
+knowledge. Those means of ease, of comfort, of liberty, of opportunity
+to choose his work among various interests, were the ruling influence of
+his life. With it all Challis was an idealist, and unpractical. His
+genial charity, his refinement of mind, his unthinking generosity,
+indicate the bias of a character which inclined always towards a
+picturesque optimism. It is not difficult to understand that he dared
+not allow himself to be convinced by Victor Stott's appalling
+synthesis.
+
+At last, when the twilight was deepening into night, the voice ceased,
+the child's story had been told, and it had not been understood. The
+Wonder never again spoke of his theory of life. He realised from that
+time that no one could comprehend him.
+
+As he rose to go, he asked one question that, simple as was its
+expression, had a deep and wonderful significance.
+
+"Is there none of my kind?" he said. "Is this," and he laid a hand on
+the pile of books before him, "is this all?"
+
+"There is none of your kind," replied Challis; and the little figure
+born into a world that could not understand him, that was not ready to
+receive him, walked to the window and climbed out into the darkness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+(Henry Challis is the only man who could ever have given any account of
+that extraordinary analysis of life, and he made no effort to recall the
+fundamental basis of the argument, and so allowed his memory of the
+essential part to fade. Moreover, he had a marked disinclination to
+speak of that afternoon or of anything that was said by Victor Stott
+during those six momentous hours of expression. It is evident that
+Challis's attitude to Victor Stott was not unlike the attitude of
+Captain Wallis to Victor Stott's father on the occasion of
+Hampdenshire's historic match with Surrey. "This man will have to be
+barred," Wallis said. "It means the end of cricket." Challis, in effect,
+thought that if Victor Stott were encouraged, it would mean the end of
+research, philosophy, all the mystery, idealism, and joy of life. Once,
+and once only, did Challis give me any idea of what he had learned
+during that afternoon's colloquy, and the substance of what Challis then
+told me will be found at the end of this volume.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HIS PASTORS AND MASTERS
+
+
+I
+
+For many months after that long afternoon in the library, Challis was
+affected with a fever of restlessness, and his work on the book stood
+still. He was in Rome during May, and in June he was seized by a sudden
+whim and went to China by the Trans-Siberian railway. Lewes did not
+accompany him. Challis preferred, one imagines, to have no intercourse
+with Lewes while the memory of certain pronouncements was still fresh.
+He might have been tempted to discuss that interview, and if, as was
+practically certain, Lewes attempted to pour contempt on the whole
+affair, Challis might have been drawn into a defence which would have
+revived many memories he wished to obliterate.
+
+He came back to London in September--he made the return journey by
+steamer--and found his secretary still working at the monograph on the
+primitive peoples of Melanesia.
+
+Lewes had spent the whole summer in Challis's town house in Eaton
+Square, whither all the material had been removed two days after that
+momentous afternoon in the library of Challis Court.
+
+"I have been wanting your help badly for some time, sir," Lewes said on
+the evening of Challis's return. "Are you proposing to take up the work
+again? If not ..." Gregory Lewes thought he was wasting valuable time.
+
+"Yes, yes, of course; I am ready to begin again now, if you care to go
+on with me," said Challis. He talked for a few minutes of the book
+without any great show of interest. Presently they came to a pause, and
+Lewes suggested that he should give some account of how his time had
+been spent.
+
+"To-morrow," replied Challis, "to-morrow will be time enough. I shall
+settle down again in a few days." He hesitated a moment, and then said:
+"Any news from Chilborough?"
+
+"N-no, I don't think so," returned Lewes. He was occupied with his own
+interests; he doubted Challis's intention to continue his work on the
+book--the announcement had been so half-hearted.
+
+"What about that child?" asked Challis.
+
+"That child?" Lewes appeared to have forgotten the existence of Victor
+Stott.
+
+"That abnormal child of Stott's?" prompted Challis.
+
+"Oh! Of course, yes. I believe he still goes nearly every day to the
+library. I have been down there two or three times, and found him
+reading. He has learned the use of the index-catalogue. He can get any
+book he wants. He uses the steps."
+
+"Do you know what he reads?"
+
+"No; I can't say I do."
+
+"What do you think will become of him?"
+
+"Oh! these infant prodigies, you know," said Lewes with a large air of
+authority, "they all go the same way. Most of them die young, of course,
+the others develop into ordinary commonplace men rather under than over
+the normal ability. After all, it is what one would expect. Nature
+always maintains her average by some means or another. If a child like
+this with his abnormal memory were to go on developing, there would be
+no place for him in the world's economy. The idea is inconceivable."
+
+"Quite, quite," murmured Challis, and after a short silence he added:
+"You think he will deteriorate, that his faculties will decay
+prematurely?"
+
+"I should say there could be no doubt of it," replied Lewes.
+
+"Ah! well. I'll go down and have a look at him, one day next week," said
+Challis; but he did not go till the middle of October.
+
+The immediate cause of his going was a letter from Crashaw, who offered
+to come up to town, as the matter was one of "really peculiar urgency."
+
+"I wonder if young Stott has been blaspheming again," Challis remarked
+to Lewes. "Wire the man that I'll go down and see him this afternoon. I
+shall motor. Say I'll be at Stoke about half-past three."
+
+
+II
+
+Challis was ushered into Crashaw's study on his arrival, and found the
+rector in company with another man--introduced as Mr. Forman--a
+jolly-looking, high-complexioned man of sixty or so, with a great
+quantity of white hair on his head and face; he was wearing an
+old-fashioned morning-coat and grey trousers that were noticeably too
+short for him.
+
+Crashaw lost no time in introducing the subject of "really peculiar
+urgency," but he rambled in his introduction.
+
+"You have probably forgotten," he said, "that last spring I had to bring
+a most horrible charge against a child called Victor Stott, who has
+since been living, practically, as I may say, under your ægis, that is,
+he has, at least, spent a greater part of his day, er--playing in your
+library at Challis Court."
+
+"Quite, quite; I remember perfectly," said Challis. "I made myself
+responsible for him up to a certain point. I gave him an occupation. It
+was intended, was it not, to divert his mind from speaking against
+religion to the yokels?"
+
+"Quite a character, if I may say so," put in Mr. Forman cheerfully.
+
+Crashaw was seated at his study table; the affair had something the
+effect of an examining magistrate taking the evidence of witnesses.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said testily; "I did ask your help, Mr. Challis, and I
+did, in a way, receive some assistance from you. That is, the child has
+to some extent been isolated by spending so much of his time at your
+house."
+
+"Has he broken out again?" asked Challis.
+
+"If I understand you to mean has the child been speaking openly on any
+subject connected with religion, I must say 'No,'" said Crashaw. "But he
+never attends any Sunday school, or place of worship; he has received no
+instruction in--er--any sacred subject, though I understand he is able
+to read; and his time is spent among books which, pardon me, would not,
+I suppose, be likely to give a serious turn to his thoughts."
+
+"Serious?" questioned Challis.
+
+"Perhaps I should say 'religious,'" replied Crashaw. "To me the two
+words are synonymous."
+
+Mr. Forman bowed his head slightly with an air of reverence, and nodded
+two or three times to express his perfect approval of the rector's
+sentiments.
+
+"You think the child's mind is being perverted by his intercourse with
+the books in the library where he--he--'plays' was your word, I
+believe?"
+
+"No, not altogether," replied Crashaw, drawing his eyebrows together.
+"We can hardly suppose that he is able at so tender an age to read, much
+less to understand, those works of philosophy and science which would
+produce an evil effect on his mind. I am willing to admit, since I, too,
+have had some training in scientific reading, that writers on those
+subjects are not easily understood even by the mature intelligence."
+
+"Then why, exactly, do you wish me to prohibit the child from coming to
+Challis Court?"
+
+"Possibly you have not realised that the child is now five years old?"
+said Crashaw with an air of conferring illumination.
+
+"Indeed! Yes. An age of some discretion, no doubt," returned Challis.
+
+"An age at which the State requires that he should receive the elements
+of education," continued Crashaw.
+
+"Eh?" said Challis.
+
+"Time he went to school," explained Mr. Forman. "I've been after him,
+you know. I'm the attendance officer for this district."
+
+Challis for once committed a breach of good manners. The import of the
+thing suddenly appealed to his sense of humour: he began to chuckle and
+then he laughed out a great, hearty laugh, such as had not been stirred
+in him for twenty years.
+
+"Oh! forgive me, forgive me," he said, when he had recovered his
+self-control. "But you don't know; you can't conceive the utter,
+childish absurdity of setting that child to recite the multiplication
+table with village infants of his own age. Oh! believe me, if you could
+only guess, you would laugh with me. It's so funny, so inimitably
+funny."
+
+"I fail to see, Mr. Challis," said Crashaw, "that there is anything in
+any way absurd or--or unusual in the proposition."
+
+"Five is the age fixed by the State," said Mr. Forman. He had relaxed
+into a broad smile in sympathy with Challis's laugh, but he had now
+relapsed into a fair imitation of Crashaw's intense seriousness.
+
+"Oh! How can I explain?" said Challis. "Let me take an instance. You
+propose to teach him, among other things, the elements of arithmetic?"
+
+"It is a part of the curriculum," replied Mr. Forman.
+
+"I have only had one conversation with this child," went on Challis--and
+at the mention of that conversation his brows drew together and he
+became very grave again; "but in the course of that conversation this
+child had occasion to refer, by way of illustration, to some abstruse
+theorem of the differential calculus. He did it, you will understand, by
+way of making his meaning clear--though the illustration was utterly
+beyond me: that reference represented an act of intellectual
+condescension."
+
+"God bless me, you don't say so?" said Mr. Forman.
+
+"I cannot see," said Crashaw, "that this instance of yours, Mr. Challis,
+has any real bearing on the situation. If the child is a mathematical
+genius--there have been instances in history, such as Blaise Pascal--he
+would not, of course, receive elementary instruction in a subject with
+which he was already acquainted."
+
+"You could not find any subject, believe me, Crashaw, in which he could
+be instructed by any teacher in a Council school."
+
+"Forgive me, I don't agree with you," returned Crashaw. "He is sadly in
+need of some religious training."
+
+"He would not get that at a Council school," said Challis, and Mr.
+Forman shook his head sadly, as though he greatly deprecated the fact.
+
+"He must learn to recognise authority," said Crashaw. "When he has been
+taught the necessity of submitting himself to all his governors,
+teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters: ordering himself lowly and
+reverently to all his betters; when, I say, he has learnt that lesson,
+he may be in a fit and proper condition to receive the teachings of the
+Holy Church."
+
+Mr. Forman appeared to think he was attending divine service. If the
+rector had said "Let us pray," there can be no doubt that he would
+immediately have fallen on his knees.
+
+Challis shook his head. "You can't understand, Crashaw," he said.
+
+"I _do_ understand," said Crashaw, rising to his feet, "and I intend to
+see that the statute is not disobeyed in the case of this child, Victor
+Stott."
+
+Challis shrugged his shoulders; Mr. Forman assumed an expression of
+stern determination.
+
+"In any case, why drag me into it?" asked Challis.
+
+Crashaw sat down again. The flush which had warmed his sallow skin
+subsided as his passion died out. He had worked himself into a condition
+of righteous indignation, but the calm politeness of Challis rebuked
+him. If Crashaw prided himself on his devotion to the Church, he did not
+wish that attitude to overshadow the pride he also took in the belief
+that he was Challis's social equal. Crashaw's father had been a lawyer,
+with a fair practice in Derby, but he had worked his way up to a
+partnership from the position of office-boy, and Percy Crashaw seldom
+forgot to be conscious that he was a gentleman by education and
+profession.
+
+"I did not wish to _drag_ you into this business," he said quietly,
+putting his elbows on the writing-table in front of him, and reassuming
+the judicial attitude he had adopted earlier; "but I regard this child
+as, in some sense, your protégé." Crashaw put the tips of his fingers
+together, and Mr. Forman watched him warily, waiting for his cue. If
+this was to be a case for prayer, Mr. Forman was ready, with a clean
+white handkerchief to kneel upon.
+
+"In some sense, perhaps," returned Challis. "I haven't seen him for some
+months."
+
+"Cannot you see the necessity of his attending school?" asked Crashaw,
+this time with an insinuating suavity; he believed that Challis was
+coming round.
+
+"Oh!" Challis sighed with a note of expostulation. "Oh! the thing's
+grotesque, ridiculous."
+
+"If that's so," put in Mr. Forman, who had been struck by a brilliant
+idea, "why not bring the child here, and let the Reverend Mr. Crashaw,
+or myself, put a few general questions to 'im?"
+
+"Ye-es," hesitated Crashaw, "that might be done; but, of course, the
+decision does not rest with us."
+
+"It rests with the Local Authority," mused Challis. He was running over
+three or four names of members of that body who were known to him.
+
+"Certainly," said Crashaw, "the Local Education Authority alone has the
+right to prosecute, but----" He did not state his antithesis. They had
+come to the crux which Crashaw had wished to avoid. He had no influence
+with the committee of the L.E.A., and Challis's recommendation would
+have much weight. Crashaw intended that Victor Stott should attend
+school, but he had bungled his preliminaries; he had rested on his own
+authority, and forgotten that Challis had little respect for that
+influence. Conciliation was the only card to play now.
+
+"If I brought him, he wouldn't answer your questions," sighed Challis.
+"He's very difficult to deal with."
+
+"Is he, indeed?" sympathised Mr. Forman. "I've 'ardly seen 'im myself;
+not to speak to, that is."
+
+"He might come with his mother," suggested Crashaw.
+
+Challis shook his head. "By the way, it is the mother whom you would
+proceed against?" he asked.
+
+"The parent is responsible," said Mr. Forman. "She will be brought
+before a magistrate and fined for the first offence."
+
+"I shan't fine her if she comes before me," replied Challis.
+
+Crashaw smiled. He meant to avoid that eventuality.
+
+The little meeting lapsed into a brief silence. There seemed to be
+nothing more to say.
+
+"Well," said Crashaw, at last, with a rising inflexion that had a
+conciliatory, encouraging, now-my-little-man kind of air, "We-ll, of
+course, no one wishes to proceed to extremes. I think, Mr. Challis, I
+think I may say that you are the person who has most influence in this
+matter, and I cannot believe that you will go against the established
+authority both of the Church and the State. If it were only for the sake
+of example."
+
+Challis rose deliberately. He shook his head, and unconsciously his
+hands went behind his back. There was hardly room for him to pace up and
+down, but he took two steps towards Mr. Forman, who immediately rose to
+his feet; and then turned and went over to the window. It was from there
+that he pronounced his ultimatum.
+
+"Regulations, laws, religious and lay authorities," he said, "come into
+existence in order to deal with the rule, the average. That must be so.
+But if we are a reasoning, intellectual people we must have some means
+of dealing with the exception. That means rests with a consensus of
+intelligent opinion strong enough to set the rule upon one side. In an
+overwhelming majority of cases there _is_ no such consensus of opinion,
+and the exceptional individual suffers by coming within the rule of a
+law which should not apply to him. Now, I put it to you, as reasoning,
+intelligent men" ('ear, 'ear, murmured Mr. Forman automatically), "are
+we, now that we have the power to perform a common act of justice, to
+exempt an unfortunate individual exception who has come within the rule
+of a law that holds no application for him, or are we to exhibit a crass
+stupidity by enforcing that law? Is it not better to take the case into
+our own hands, and act according to the dictates of common sense?"
+
+"Very forcibly put," murmured Mr. Forman.
+
+"I'm not finding any fault with the law or the principle of the law,"
+continued Challis; "but it is, it must be, framed for the average. We
+must use our discretion in dealing with the exception--and this is an
+exception such as has never occurred since we have had an Education
+Act."
+
+"I don't agree with you," said Crashaw, stubbornly. "I do not consider
+this an exception."
+
+"But you _must_ agree with me, Crashaw. I have a certain amount of
+influence and I shall use it."
+
+"In that case," replied Crashaw, rising to his feet, "I shall fight you
+to the bitter end. I am _determined_"--he raised his voice and struck
+the writing-table with his fist--"I am _determined_ that this infidel
+child shall go to school. I am prepared, if necessary, to spend all my
+leisure in seeing that the law is carried out."
+
+Mr. Forman had also risen. "Very right, very right, indeed," he said,
+and he knitted his mild brows and stroked his patriarchal white beard
+with an appearance of stern determination.
+
+"I think you would be better advised to let the matter rest," said
+Challis.
+
+Mr. Forman looked inquiringly at the representative of the Church.
+
+"I shall fight," replied Crashaw, stubbornly, fiercely.
+
+"Ha!" said Mr. Forman.
+
+"Very well, as you think best," was Challis's last word.
+
+As Challis walked down to the gate, where his motor was waiting for him,
+Mr. Forman trotted up from behind and ranged himself alongside.
+
+"More rain wanted yet for the roots, sir," he said. "September was a
+grand month for 'arvest, but we want rain badly now."
+
+"Quite, quite," murmured Challis, politely. He shook hands with Mr.
+Forman before he got into the car.
+
+Mr. Forman, standing politely bareheaded, saw that Mr. Challis's car
+went in the direction of Ailesworth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HIS EXAMINATION
+
+
+I
+
+Challis's first visit was paid to Sir Deane Elmer,[4] that man of many
+activities, whose name inevitably suggests his favourite phrase of
+"Organised Progress"--with all its variants.
+
+This is hardly the place in which to criticise a man of such diverse
+abilities as Deane Elmer, a man whose name still figures so prominently
+in the public press in connection with all that is most modern in
+eugenics; with the Social Reform programme of the moderate party; with
+the reconstruction of our penal system; with education, and so many
+kindred interests; and, finally, of course, with colour photography and
+process printing. This last Deane Elmer always spoke of as his hobby,
+but we may doubt whether all his interests were not hobbies in the same
+sense. He is the natural descendant of those earlier amateur
+scientists--the adjective conveys no reproach--of the nineteenth
+century, among whom we remember such striking figures as those of Lord
+Avebury and Sir Francis Galton.
+
+In appearance Deane Elmer was a big, heavy, rather corpulent man, with a
+high complexion, and his clean-shaven jowl and his succession of chins
+hung in heavy folds. But any suggestion of material grossness was
+contradicted by the brightness of his rather pale-blue eyes, by his
+alertness of manner, and by his ready, whimsical humour.
+
+As chairman of the Ailesworth County Council, and its most prominent
+unpaid public official--after the mayor--Sir Deane Elmer was certainly
+the most important member of the Local Authority, and Challis wisely
+sought him at once. He found him in the garden of his comparatively
+small establishment on the Quainton side of the town. Elmer was very
+much engaged in photographing flowers from nature through the ruled
+screen and colour filter--in experimenting with the Elmer process, in
+fact; by which the intermediate stage of a coloured negative is rendered
+unnecessary. His apparatus was complicated and cumbrous.
+
+"Show Mr. Challis out here," he commanded the man who brought the
+announcement.
+
+"You must forgive me, Challis," said Elmer, when Challis appeared. "We
+haven't had such a still day for weeks. It's the wind upsets us in this
+process. Screens create a partial vacuum."
+
+He was launched on a lecture upon his darling process before Challis
+could get in a word. It was best to let him have his head, and Challis
+took an intelligent interest.
+
+It was not until the photographs were taken, and his two assistants
+could safely be trusted to complete the mechanical operations, that
+Elmer could be divorced from his hobby. He was full of jubilation. "We
+should have excellent results," he boomed--he had a tremendous
+voice--"but we shan't be able to judge until we get the blocks made. We
+do it all on the spot. I have a couple of platens in the shops here; but
+we shan't be able to take a pull until to-morrow morning, I'm afraid.
+You shall have a proof, Challis. We _should_ get magnificent results."
+He looked benignantly at the vault of heaven, which had been so
+obligingly free from any current of air.
+
+Challis was beginning to fear that even now he would be allowed no
+opportunity to open the subject of his mission. But quite suddenly Elmer
+dropped the shutter on his preoccupation, and with that ready
+adaptability which was so characteristic of the man, forgot his hobby
+for the time being, and turned his whole attention to a new subject.
+
+"Well?" he said, "what is the latest news in anthropology?"
+
+"A very remarkable phenomenon," replied Challis. "That is what I have
+come to see you about."
+
+"I thought you were in Paraguay pigging it with the Guaranis----"
+
+"No, no; I don't touch the Americas," interposed Challis. "I want all
+your attention, Elmer. This is important."
+
+"Come into my study," said Elmer, "and let us have the facts. What will
+you have--tea, whisky, beer?"
+
+Challis's résumé of the facts need not be reported. When it was
+accomplished, Elmer put several keen questions, and finally delivered
+his verdict thus:
+
+"We must see the boy, Challis. Personally I am, of course, satisfied,
+but we must not give Crashaw opportunity to raise endless questions, as
+he can and will. There is Mayor Purvis, the grocer, to be reckoned with,
+you must remember. He represents a powerful Nonconformist influence.
+Crashaw will get hold of him--and work him if we see Purvis first.
+Purvis always stiffens his neck against any breach of conventional
+procedure. If Crashaw saw him first, well and good, Purvis would
+immediately jump to the conclusion that Crashaw intended some subtle
+attack on the Nonconformist position, and would side with us."
+
+"I don't think I know Purvis," mused Challis.
+
+"Purvis & Co. in the Square," prompted Elmer. "Black-and-white fellow;
+black moustache and side whiskers, black eyes and white face. There's a
+suggestion of the Methodist pulpit about him. Doesn't appear in the shop
+much, and when he does, always looks as if he'd sooner sell you a Bible
+than a bottle of whisky."
+
+"Ah, yes! I know," said Challis. "I daresay you're right, Elmer; but it
+will be difficult to persuade this child to answer any questions his
+examiners may put to him."
+
+"Surely he must be open to reason," roared Elmer. "You tell me he has an
+extraordinary intelligence, and in the next sentence you imply that the
+child's a fool who can't open his mouth to serve his own interests.
+What's your paradox?"
+
+"Sublimated material. Intellectual insight and absolute spiritual
+blindness," replied Challis, getting to his feet. "The child has gone
+too far in one direction--in another he has made not one step. His mind
+is a magnificent, terrible machine. He has the imagination of a
+mathematician and a logician developed beyond all conception, he has not
+one spark of the imagination of a poet. And so he cannot deal with men;
+he can't understand their weaknesses and limitations; they are geese and
+hens to him, creatures to be scared out of his vicinity. However, I will
+see what I can do. Could you arrange for the members of the Authority to
+come to my place?"
+
+"I should think so. Yes," said Elmer. "I say, Challis, are you sure
+you're right about this child? Sounds to me like some--some freak."
+
+"You'll see," returned Challis. "I'll try and arrange an interview. I'll
+let you know."
+
+"And, by the way," said Elmer, "you had better invite Crashaw to be
+present. He will put Purvis's back up, and that'll enlist the difficult
+grocer on our side probably."
+
+When Challis had gone, Elmer stood for a few minutes, thoughtfully
+scratching the ample red surface of his wide, clean-shaven cheek. "I
+don't know," he ejaculated at last, addressing his empty study, "I don't
+know." And with that expression he put all thought of Victor Stott away
+from him, and sat down to write an exhaustive article on the necessity
+for a broader basis in primary education.
+
+
+II
+
+Challis called at the rectory of Stoke-Underhill on the way back to his
+own house.
+
+"I give way," was the characteristic of his attitude to Crashaw, and the
+rector suppled his back again, remembered the Derby office-boy's
+tendency to brag, and made the amende honorable. He even overdid his
+magnanimity and came too near subservience--so lasting is the influence
+of the lessons of youth.
+
+Crashaw did not mention that in the interval between the two interviews
+he had called upon Mr. Purvis in the Square. The ex-mayor had refused to
+commit himself to any course of action.
+
+But Challis forgot the rectory and all that it connoted before he was
+well outside the rectory's front door. Challis had a task before him
+that he regarded with the utmost distaste. He had warmly championed a
+cause; he had been heated by the presentation of a manifest injustice
+which was none the less tyrannical because it was ridiculous. And now he
+realised that it was only the abstract question which had aroused his
+enthusiastic advocacy, and he shrank from the interview with Victor
+Stott--that small, deliberate, intimidating child.
+
+Henry Challis, the savant, the man of repute in letters, the respected
+figure in the larger world; Challis, the proprietor and landlord;
+Challis, the power among known men, knew that he would have to plead, to
+humble himself, to be prepared for a rebuff--worst of all, to
+acknowledge the justice of taking so undignified a position. Any
+aristocrat may stoop with dignity when he condescends of his own free
+will; but there are few who can submit gracefully to deserved contempt.
+
+Challis was one of the few. He had many admirable qualities.
+Nevertheless, during that short motor ride from Stoke to his own house,
+he resented the indignity he anticipated, resented it intensely--and
+submitted.
+
+
+III
+
+He was allowed no respite. Victor Stott was emerging from the library
+window as Challis rolled up to the hall door. It was one of Ellen Mary's
+days--she stood respectfully in the background while her son descended;
+she curtsied to Challis as he came forward.
+
+He hesitated a moment. He would not risk insult in the presence of his
+chauffeur and Mrs. Stott. He confronted the Wonder; he stood before him,
+and over him like a cliff.
+
+"I must speak to you for a moment on a matter of some importance," said
+Challis to the little figure below him, and as he spoke he looked over
+the child's head at the child's mother. "It is a matter that concerns
+your own welfare. Will you come into the house with me for a few
+minutes?"
+
+Ellen Mary nodded, and Challis understood. He turned and led the way. At
+the door, however, he stood aside and spoke again to Mrs. Stott. "Won't
+you come in and have some tea, or something?" he asked.
+
+"No, sir, thank you, sir," replied Ellen Mary; "I'll just wait 'ere till
+'e's ready."
+
+"At least come in and sit down," said Challis, and she came in and sat
+in the hall. The Wonder had already preceded them into the house. He had
+walked into the morning-room--probably because the door stood open,
+though he was now tall enough to reach the handles of the Challis Court
+doors. He stood in the middle of the room when Challis entered.
+
+"Won't you sit down?" said Challis.
+
+The Wonder shook his head.
+
+"I don't know if you are aware," began Challis, "that there is a system
+of education in England at the present time, which requires that every
+child should attend school at the age of five years, unless the parents
+are able to provide their children with an education elsewhere."
+
+The Wonder nodded.
+
+Challis inferred that he need proffer no further information with regard
+to the Education Act.
+
+"Now, it is very absurd," he continued, "and I have, myself, pointed out
+the absurdity; but there is a man of some influence in this
+neighbourhood who insists that you should attend the elementary school."
+He paused, but the Wonder gave no sign.
+
+"I have argued with this man," continued Challis, "and I have also seen
+another member of the Local Education Authority--a man of some note in
+the larger world--and it seems that you cannot be exempted unless you
+convince the Authority that your knowledge is such that to give you a
+Council school education would be the most absurd farce."
+
+"Cannot you stand in loco parentis?" asked the Wonder suddenly, in his
+still, thin voice.
+
+"You mean," said Challis, startled by this outburst, "that I am in a
+sense providing you with an education? Quite true; but there is Crashaw
+to deal with."
+
+"Inform him," said the Wonder.
+
+Challis sighed. "I have," he said, "but he can't understand." And then,
+feeling the urgent need to explain something of the motives that govern
+this little world of ours--the world into which this strangely logical
+exception had been born--Challis attempted an exposition.
+
+"I know," he said, "that these things must seem to you utterly absurd,
+but you must try to realise that you are an exception to the world about
+you; that Crashaw or I, or, indeed, the greatest minds of the present
+day, are not ruled by the fine logic which you are able to exercise. We
+are children compared to you. We are swayed even in the making of our
+laws by little primitive emotions and passions, self-interests, desires.
+And at the best we are not capable of ordering our lives and our
+government to those just ends which we may see, some of us, are
+abstractly right and fine. We are at the mercy of that great mass of the
+people who have not yet won to an intellectual and discriminating
+judgment of how their own needs may best be served, and whose
+representatives consider the interests of a party, a constituency, and
+especially of their own personal ambitions and welfare, before the needs
+of humanity as a whole, or even the humanity of these little islands.
+
+"Above all, we are divided man against man. We are split into parties
+and factions, by greed and jealousies, petty spites and self-seeking, by
+unintelligence, by education, and by our inability--a mental
+inability--'to see life steadily and see it whole,' and lastly, perhaps
+chiefly, by our intense egotisms, both physical and intellectual.
+
+"Try to realise this. It is necessary, because whatever your wisdom, you
+have to live in a world of comparative ignorance, a world which cannot
+appreciate you, but which can and will fall back upon the compelling
+power of the savage--the resort to physical, brute force."
+
+The Wonder nodded. "You suggest----?" he said.
+
+"Merely that you should consent to answer certain elementary questions
+which the members of the Local Authority will put to you," replied
+Challis. "I can arrange that these questions be asked here--in the
+library. Will you consent?"
+
+The Wonder nodded, and made his way into the hall, without another word.
+His mother rose and opened the front door for him.
+
+As Challis watched the curious couple go down the drive, he sighed
+again, perhaps with relief, perhaps at the impotence of the world of
+men.
+
+
+IV
+
+There were four striking figures on the Education Committee selected by
+the Ailesworth County Council.
+
+The first of these was Sir Deane Elmer, who was also chairman of the
+Council at this time. The second was the vice-chairman, Enoch Purvis,
+the ex-mayor, commonly, if incorrectly, known as "Mayor" Purvis.
+
+The third was Richard Standing, J.P., who owned much property on the
+Quainton side of the town. He was a bluff, hearty man, devoted to sport
+and agriculture; a Conservative by birth and inclination, a staunch
+upholder of the Church and the Tariff Reform movement.
+
+The fourth was the Rev. Philip Steven, a co-opted member of the
+Committee, head master of the Ailesworth Grammar School. Steven was a
+tall, thin man with bent shoulders, and he had a long, thin face, the
+length of which was exaggerated by his square brown beard. He wore
+gold-mounted spectacles which, owing to his habit of dropping his head,
+always needed adjustment whenever he looked up. The movement of lifting
+his head and raising his hand to his glasses had become so closely
+associated, that his hand went up even when there was no apparent need
+for the action. Steven spoke of himself as a Broad Churchman, and in his
+speech on prize-day he never omitted some allusion to the necessity for
+"marching" or "keeping step" with the times. But Elmer was inclined to
+laugh at this assumption of modernity. "Steven," he said, on one
+occasion, "marks time and thinks he is keeping step. And every now and
+then he runs a little to catch up." The point of Elmer's satire lay in
+the fact that Steven was usually to be seen either walking very slowly,
+head down, lost in abstraction; or--when aroused to a sense of present
+necessity--going with long-strides as if intent on catching up with the
+times without further delay. Very often, too, he might be seen running
+across the school playground, his hand up to those elusive glasses of
+his. "There goes Mr. Steven, catching up with the times," had become an
+accepted phrase.
+
+There were other members of the Education Committee, notably Mrs. Philip
+Steven, but they were subordinate. If those four striking figures were
+unanimous, no other member would have dreamed of expressing a contrary
+opinion. But up to this time they had not yet been agreed upon any
+important line of action.
+
+This four, Challis and Crashaw met in the morning-room of Challis Court
+one Thursday afternoon in November. Elmer had brought a stenographer
+with him for scientific purposes.
+
+"Well," said Challis, when they were all assembled. "The--the subject--I
+mean, Victor Stott is in the library. Shall we adjourn?" Challis had not
+felt so nervous since the morning before he had sat for honours in the
+Cambridge Senate House.
+
+In the library they found a small child, reading.
+
+
+V
+
+He did not look up when the procession entered, nor did he remove his
+cricket cap. He was in his usual place at the centre table.
+
+Challis found chairs for the Committee, and the members ranged
+themselves round the opposite side of the table. Curiously, the effect
+produced was that of a class brought up for a viva voce examination, and
+when the Wonder raised his eyes and glanced deliberately down the line
+of his judges, this effect was heightened. There was an audible
+fidgeting, a creak of chairs, an indication of small embarrassments.
+
+"Her--um!" Deane Elmer cleared his throat with noisy vigour; looked at
+the Wonder, met his eyes and looked hastily away again; "Hm!--her--rum!"
+he repeated, and then he turned to Challis. "So this little fellow has
+never been to school?" he said.
+
+Challis frowned heavily. He looked exceedingly uncomfortable and
+unhappy. He was conscious that he could take neither side in this
+controversy--that he was in sympathy with no one of the seven other
+persons who were seated in his library.
+
+He shook his head impatiently in answer to Sir Deane Elmer's question,
+and the chairman turned to the Rev. Philip Steven, who was gazing
+intently at the pattern of the carpet.
+
+"I think, Steven," said Elmer, "that your large experience will probably
+prompt you to a more efficient examination than we could conduct. Will
+you initiate the inquiry?"
+
+Steven raised his head slightly, put a readjusting hand up to his
+glasses, and then looked sternly at the Wonder over the top of them.
+Even the sixth form quailed when the head master assumed this
+expression, but the small child at the table was gazing out of the
+window.
+
+Doubtless Steven was slightly embarrassed by the detachment of the
+examinee, and blundered. "What is the square root of 226?" he asked--he
+probably intended to say 225.
+
+"15·03329--to five places," replied the Wonder.
+
+Steven started. Neither he nor any other member of the Committee was
+capable of checking that answer without resort to pencil and paper.
+
+"Dear me!" ejaculated Squire Standing.
+
+Elmer scratched the superabundance of his purple jowl, and looked at
+Challis, who thrust his hands into his pockets and stared at the
+ceiling.
+
+Crashaw leaned forward and clasped his hands together. He was biding his
+time.
+
+"Mayor" Purvis alone seemed unmoved. "What's that book he's got open in
+front of him?" he asked.
+
+"May I see?" interposed Challis hurriedly, and he rose from his chair,
+picked up the book in question, glanced at it for a moment, and then
+handed it to the grocer. The book was Van Vloten's Dutch text and Latin
+translation of Spinoza's Short Treatise.
+
+The grocer turned to the title-page. "Ad--beany--dick--ti--de--Spy--nozer,"
+he read aloud and then: "What's it all about, Mr. Challis?" he asked.
+"German or something, I take it?"
+
+"In any case it has nothing to do with elementary arithmetic," replied
+Challis curtly, "Mr. Steven will set your mind at ease on that point."
+
+"Certainly, certainly," murmured Steven.
+
+Grocer Purvis closed the book carefully and replaced it on the desk.
+"What does half a stone o' loaf sugar at two-three-farthings come to?"
+he asked.
+
+The Wonder shook his head. He did not understand the grocer's
+phraseology.
+
+"What is seven times two and three quarters?" translated Challis.
+
+"19·25," answered the Wonder.
+
+"What's that in shillin's?" asked Purvis.
+
+"1·60416."
+
+"Wrong!" returned the grocer triumphantly.
+
+"Er--excuse me, Mr. Purvis," interposed Steven, "I think not.
+The--the--er--examinee has given the correct mathematical answer to five
+places of decimals--that is, so far as I can check him mentally."
+
+"Well, it seems to me," persisted the grocer, "as he's gone a long way
+round to answer a simple question what any fifth-standard child could do
+in his head. I'll give him another."
+
+"Cast it in another form," put in the chairman. "Give it as a
+multiplication sum."
+
+Purvis tucked his fingers carefully into his waistcoat pockets. "I put
+the question, Mr. Chairman," he said, "as it'll be put to the youngster
+when he has to tot up a bill. That seems to be a sound and practical
+form for such questions to be put in."
+
+Challis sighed impatiently. "I thought Mr. Steven had been delegated to
+conduct the first part of the examination," he said. "It seems to me
+that we are wasting a lot of time."
+
+Elmer nodded. "Will you go on, Mr. Steven?" he said.
+
+Challis was ashamed for his compeers. "What children we are," he
+thought.
+
+Steven got to work again with various arithmetical questions, which were
+answered instantly, and then he made a sudden leap and asked: "What is
+the binomial theorem?"
+
+"A formula for writing down the coefficient of any stated term in the
+expansion of any stated power of a given binomial," replied the Wonder.
+
+Elmer blew out his cheeks and looked at Challis, but met the gaze of Mr.
+Steven, who adjusted his glasses and said, "I am satisfied under this
+head."
+
+"It's all beyond me," remarked Squire Standing frankly.
+
+"I think, Mr. Chairman, that we've had enough theoretical arithmetic,"
+said Purvis. "There's a few practical questions I'd like to put."
+
+"No more arithmetic, then," assented Elmer, and Crashaw exchanged a
+glance of understanding with the grocer.
+
+"Now, how old was our Lord when He began His ministry?" asked the
+grocer.
+
+"Uncertain," replied the Wonder.
+
+Mr. Purvis smiled. "Any Sunday-school child knows that!" he said.
+
+"Of course, of course," murmured Crashaw.
+
+But Steven looked uncomfortable. "Are you sure you understand the
+purport of the answer, Mr. Purvis?" he asked.
+
+"Can there be any doubt about it?" replied the grocer. "I asked how old
+our Lord was when He began His ministry, and he"--he made an indicative
+gesture with one momentarily released hand towards the Wonder--"and he
+says he's 'uncertain.'"
+
+"No, no," interposed Challis impatiently, "he meant that the answer to
+your question was uncertain."
+
+"How's that?" returned the grocer. "I've always understood----"
+
+"Quite, quite," interrupted Challis. "But what we have always understood
+does not always correspond to the actual fact."
+
+"What did you intend by your answer?" put in Elmer quickly, addressing
+the Wonder.
+
+"The evidence rests mainly on Luke's Gospel," answered the Wonder, "but
+the phrase '{archomenos hôsei etôn triakonta}' is vague--it allows
+latitude in either direction. According to the chronology of John's
+Gospel the age might have been about thirty-two."
+
+"It says 'thirty' in the Bible, and that's good enough for me," said the
+grocer, and Crashaw muttered "Heresy, heresy," in an audible under tone.
+
+"Sounds very like blarsphemy to me," said Purvis, "like doubtin' the
+word of God. I'm for sending him to school."
+
+Deane Elmer had been regarding the face of the small abstracted child
+with considerable interest. He put aside for the moment the grocer's
+intimation of his voting tendency.
+
+"How many elements are known to chemists?" asked Elmer of the examinee.
+
+"Eighty-one well characterised; others have been described," replied the
+Wonder.
+
+"Which has the greatest atomic weight?" asked Elmer.
+
+"Uranium."
+
+"And that weight is?"
+
+"On the oxygen basis of 16--238·5."
+
+"Extraordinary powers of memory," muttered Elmer, and there was silence
+for a moment, a silence broken by Squire Standing, who, in a loud voice,
+asked suddenly and most irrelevantly, "What's your opinion of Tariff
+Reform?"
+
+"An empirical question that cannot be decided from a theoretical basis,"
+replied the Wonder.
+
+Elmer laughed out, a great shouting guffaw. "Quite right, quite right,"
+he said, his cheeks shaking with mirth. "What have you to say to that,
+Standing?"
+
+"I say that Tariff Reform's the only way to save the country," replied
+Squire Standing, looking very red and obstinate, "and if this
+Government----"
+
+Challis rose to his feet. "Oh! aren't you all satisfied?" he said. "Is
+this Committee here to argue questions of present politics? What more
+evidence do you need?"
+
+"I'm not satisfied," put in Purvis resolutely, "nor is the Rev. Mr.
+Crashaw, I fancy."
+
+"He has no vote," said Challis. "Elmer, what do you say?"
+
+"I think we may safely say that the child has been, and is being,
+provided with an education elsewhere, and that he need not therefore
+attend the elementary school," replied Elmer, still chuckling.
+
+"On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, is that what you put to the
+meeting?" asked Purvis.
+
+"This is quite informal," replied Elmer. "Unless we are all agreed, the
+question must be put to the full Committee."
+
+"Shall we argue the point in the other room?" suggested Challis.
+
+"Certainly, certainly," said Elmer. "We can return, if necessary."
+
+And the four striking figures of the Education Committee filed out,
+followed by Crashaw and the stenographer.
+
+Challis, coming last, paused at the door and looked back.
+
+The Wonder had returned to his study of Spinoza.
+
+Challis waved a hand to the unconscious figure. "I must join my
+fellow-children," he said grimly, "or they will be quarrelling."
+
+
+VI
+
+But when he joined his fellow-children, Challis stood at the window of
+the morning-room, attending little to the buzz of voices and the clatter
+of glasses which marked the relief from the restraint of the
+examination-room. Even the stenographer was talking; he had joined
+Crashaw and Purvis--a lemonade group; the other three were drinking
+whisky. The division, however, is arbitrary, and in no way significant.
+
+Challis caught a fragment of the conversation here and there: a
+bull-roar from Elmer or Squire Standing; an occasional blatancy from
+Purvis; a vibrant protest from Crashaw; a hesitating tenor pronouncement
+from Steven.
+
+"Extraordinary powers of memory.... It isn't facts, but what they stand
+for that I.... Don't know his Bible--that's good enough for me....
+Heresy, heresy.... An astounding memory, of course, quite astounding,
+but----"
+
+The simple exposition of each man's theme was dogmatically asserted, and
+through it all Challis, standing alone, hardly conscious of each
+individual utterance, was still conscious that the spirits of those six
+men were united in one thing, had they but known it. Each was
+endeavouring to circumscribe the powers of the child they had just
+left--each was insistent on some limitation he chose to regard as vital.
+
+They came to no decision that afternoon. The question as to whether the
+Authority should prosecute or not had to be referred to the Committee.
+
+At the last, Crashaw entered his protest and announced once more that he
+would fight the point to the bitter end.
+
+Crashaw's religious hatred was not, perhaps, altogether free from a
+sense of affronted dignity, but it was nevertheless a force to be
+counted; and he had that obstinacy of the bigot which has in the past
+contributed much fire and food to the pyre of martyrdom. He had, too, a
+power of initiative within certain limits. It is true that the bird on a
+free wing could avoid him with contemptuous ease, but along his own path
+he was a terrifying juggernaut. Crashaw, thus circumscribed, was a
+power, a moving force.
+
+But now he was seeking to crush, not some paralysed rabbit on the road,
+but an elusive spirit of swiftness which has no name, but may be figured
+as the genius of modernity. The thing he sought to obliterate ran ahead
+of him with a smiling facility and spat rearwards a vaporous jet of
+ridicule.
+
+Crashaw might crush his clerical wideawake over his frowning eyebrows,
+arm himself with a slightly dilapidated umbrella, and seek with long,
+determined strides the members of the Local Education Authority, but far
+ahead of him had run an intelligence that represented the instructed
+common sense of modernity.
+
+It was for Crashaw to realise--as he never could and never did
+realise--that he was no longer the dominant force of progress; that he
+had been outstripped, left toiling and shouting vain words on a road
+that had served its purpose, and though it still remained and was used
+as a means of travel, was becoming year by year more antiquated and
+despised.
+
+Crashaw toiled to the end, and no one knows how far his personal purpose
+and spite were satisfied, but he could never impede any more that
+elusive spirit of swiftness; it had run past him.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] Afterwards Lord Quainton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HIS INTERVIEW WITH HERR GROSSMANN
+
+
+I
+
+Crashaw must have suffered greatly just at that time; and the
+anticipation of his defeat by the Committee was made still more bitter
+by the wonderful visit of Herr Grossmann. It is true that that visit
+feebly helped Crashaw's cause at the moment by further enlisting the
+sympathies and strenuous endeavour of the Nonconformist Purvis; but no
+effort of the ex-mayor could avail to upset the majority of the Local
+Education Authority and the grocer, himself, was not a person acceptable
+to Crashaw. The two men were so nearly allied by their manner of thought
+and social origin; and Crashaw instinctively flaunted the splendid
+throne of his holy office, whenever he and Purvis were together. Purvis
+was what the rector might have described as an ignorant man. It is a
+fact that, until Crashaw very fully and inaccurately informed him, he
+had never even heard of Hugo Grossmann.
+
+In that conversation between Crashaw and Purvis, the celebrated German
+Professor figured as the veritable Anti-Christ, the Devil's personal
+representative on earth; but Crashaw was not a safe authority on Science
+and Philosophy.
+
+Herr Grossmann's world-wide reputation was certainly not won in the
+field of religious controversy. He had not at that time reached the
+pinnacle of achievement which placed him so high above his brilliant
+contemporaries, and now presents him as the unique figure and
+representative of twentieth-century science. But his very considerable
+contributions to knowledge had drawn the attention of Europe for ten
+years, and he was already regarded by his fellow-scientists with that
+mixture of contempt and jealousy which inevitably precedes the world's
+acceptance of its greatest men.
+
+Sir Deane Elmer, for example, was a generous and kindly man; he had
+never been involved in any controversy with the professional scientists
+whose ground he continually encroached upon, and yet he could not hear
+the name of Grossmann without frowning. Grossmann had the German vice of
+thoroughness. He took up a subject and exhausted it, as far as is
+possible within the limits of our present knowledge; and his monograph
+on Heredity had demonstrated with a detestable logic that much of
+Elmer's treatise on Eugenics was based on evidence that must be viewed
+with the gravest suspicion. Not that Grossmann had directly attacked
+that treatise; he had made no kind of reference to it in his own book;
+but his irrefutable statements had been quoted by every reviewer of
+"Eugenics" who chanced to have come across the English translation of
+"Heredity and Human Development," to the confounding of Elmer's somewhat
+too optimistic prophecies concerning the possibility of breeding a race
+that should approximate to a physical and intellectual perfection.
+
+And it happened that Elmer met Grossmann at an informal gathering of
+members of the Royal Society a few days after the examination of the
+Wonder in the Challis Court Library. Herr Grossmann was delivering an
+impromptu lecture on the limits of variation from the normal type, when
+Elmer came in and joined the group of the great Professor's listeners,
+every one of whom was seeking some conclusive argument to confute their
+guest's overwhelmingly accurate collation of facts.
+
+Elmer realised instantly that his opportunity had come at last. He
+listened patiently for a few minutes to the flow of the German's
+argument, and then broke in with a loud exclamation of dissent. All the
+learned members of the Society turned to him at once, with a movement of
+profound relief and expectation.
+
+"You said what?" asked Grossmann with a frown of great annoyance.
+
+Elmer thrust out his lower lip and looked at his antagonist with the
+expression of a man seeking a vital spot for the coup de grace.
+
+"I said, Herr Professor," Elmer returned, "that there are exceptions
+which confound your argument."
+
+"For example?" Grossmann said, putting his hands behind him and gently
+nodding his head like a tolerant schoolmaster awaiting the inevitable
+confusion of the too intrepid scholar.
+
+"Christian Heinecken?" suggested Elmer.
+
+"Ah! You have not then read my brochure on certain abnormalities
+reported in history?" Grossmann said, and continued, "Mr. Aylmer, is it
+not? To whom I am speaking? Yes? We have met, I believe, once in
+Leipzig. I thought so. But in my brochure, Mr. Aylmer, I have examined
+the Heinecken case and shown my reasons to regard it as not so departing
+from the normal."
+
+Elmer shook his head. "Your reasons are not valid, Herr Professor," he
+said and held up a corpulent forefinger to enforce Grossmann's further
+attention. "They seemed convincing at the time, I admit, but this new
+prodigy completely upsets your case."
+
+"Eh! What is that? What new prodigy?" sneered Grossmann; and two or
+three savants among the little ring of listeners, although they had not
+that perfect confidence in Elmer which would have put them at ease,
+nodded gravely as if they were aware of the validity of his instance.
+
+Elmer blew out his cheeks and raised his eyebrows. "Ah! you haven't
+heard of him!" he remarked with a rather fleshy surprise. "Victor Stott,
+you know, son of a professional cricketer, protégé of Henry Challis, the
+anthropologist. Oh! you ought to investigate that case, Herr Professor.
+It is most remarkable, most remarkable."
+
+"Ach! What form does the abnormality take?" asked Grossmann
+suspiciously, and his tone made it clear that he had little confidence
+in the value of any report made to him by such an observer as Sir Deane
+Elmer.
+
+"I can't pretend to give you anything like a full account of it," Elmer
+returned. "I have only seen the child once. But, honestly, Herr
+Professor, you cannot use that brochure of yours in any future argument
+until you have investigated this case of young Stott. It confutes you."
+
+"I can see him, then?" Grossmann asked, frowning. In that company he
+could not afford to decline the challenge that had been thrown down.
+There were, at least, five men present who would, he believed,
+immediately conduct the examination on their own account, should he
+refuse the opportunity; men who would not fail to use their material for
+the demolition of that pamphlet on the type of abnormality, more
+particularly represented by the amazing precocity of Christian
+Heinecken.
+
+To the layman such an attack may seem a small matter, and likely to have
+little effect on such a reputation as that already won by Hugo
+Grossmann; and it should be explained that in the Professor's great work
+on "Heredity and Human Development," an essential argument was based on
+the absence of any considerable _progressive_ variation from the normal.
+Indeed it was from this premise that he developed the celebrated
+"variation" theory which is, now, generally admitted to have compromised
+the whole principle of "Natural Selection" while it has given a
+wonderful impetus to all recent investigations and experiments on the
+lines first indicated by Mendel.
+
+"I can see him, then?" asked Grossmann, with the faintly annoyed air of
+one who is compelled by circumstances to undertake a futile task.
+
+"Certainly, I will arrange an interview for you," Elmer replied, and
+went on to give an account of his own experience, an account that lost
+nothing in the telling.
+
+Elmer created a mild sensation in the rooms of the Royal Society that
+evening.
+
+
+II
+
+He found Challis at his house in Eaton Square the next morning, but it
+became evident from the outset that the plan of confounding Grossmann
+did not appeal to the magnate of Stoke-Underhill. Challis frowned and
+prevaricated. "It's a thousand to one, the child won't condescend to
+answer," was his chief evasion.
+
+Elmer was not to be frustrated in the development of his scheme by any
+such trivial excuse as that. He began to display a considerable
+annoyance at last.
+
+"Oh! nonsense; nonsense, Challis," he said. "You make altogether too
+much fuss about this prodigy of yours."
+
+"Not mine," Challis interrupted. "Take him over yourself, Elmer. Bring
+him out. Exhibit him. I make you a gift of all my interest in him."
+
+Elmer looked thoughtful for a moment, as if he were seriously
+considering that proposition, and then he said, "I recognise that there
+are--difficulties. The child seems--er--to have a queer, morose temper,
+doesn't he?"
+
+Challis shook his head. "It isn't that," he said.
+
+Elmer scratched his cheek. "I understand," he began, and then broke off
+and went on, "I'm putting this as a personal favour, Challis; but it is
+more than that. You know my theories with regard to the future of the
+race. I have a steady faith in our enormous potentialities for real
+progress. But it must be organised, and Grossmann is just now standing
+in our way. That stubborn materialism of his has infected many fine
+intelligences; and I would make very great sacrifices in order to clear
+this great and terrible obstacle out of the way."
+
+"And you believe that this interview ..." interrupted Challis.
+
+"I do, indeed," Elmer said. "It will destroy one of Grossmann's most
+vital premisses. This prodigy of yours--he is unquestionably a
+prodigy--demonstrates the fact of an immense progressive variation. Once
+that is conceded, the main argument of Grossmann's 'Heredity' is
+invalidated. We shall have knocked away the keystone of his mechanistic
+theory of evolution...."
+
+"But suppose that the boy refuses...."
+
+"He did not refuse to see us."
+
+"That was to save himself from further trouble."
+
+"But isn't he susceptible to argument?"
+
+"Not the kind of argument you have been using to me," Challis said
+gravely.
+
+Elmer blew like a porpoise; looked very thoughtful for a moment, and
+then said:
+
+"You could represent Grossmann as the final court of appeal--the High
+Lord Muck-a-muck of the L.E.A."
+
+"I should have to do something of the sort," Challis admitted, and
+continued with a spurt of temper. "But understand, Elmer, I don't do it
+again; no, not to save the reputation of the Royal Society."
+
+
+III
+
+Unhappily, no record exists of the conversation between the Wonder and
+Herr Grossmann.
+
+The Professor seems at the last moment to have had some misgiving as to
+the nature of the interview that was before him, and refused to have a
+witness to the proceedings.
+
+Challis made the introduction, and he says that the Wonder regarded
+Grossmann with perhaps rather more attention than he commonly conceded
+to strangers; and that the Professor exhibited the usual signs of
+embarrassment.
+
+Altogether, Grossmann was in the library for about half an hour, and he
+displayed no sign of perturbation when he rejoined Challis and Elmer in
+the breakfast-room. Indeed, only one fact of any significance emerges to
+throw suspicion on Grossmann's attitude during the progress of that
+secluded half-hour with the greatest intellect of all time--the
+Professor's spectacles had been broken.
+
+He spoke of the accident with a casual air when he was in the
+breakfast-room, but Challis remarked a slight flush on the great
+scientist's face as he referred, perhaps a trifle too ostentatiously, to
+the incident. And although it is worthless as evidence, there is
+something rather suspicious in Challis's discovery of finely powdered
+glass in his library--a mere pinch on the parquet near the further
+window of the big room, several feet away from the table at which the
+Wonder habitually sat. Challis would never have noticed the glass, had
+not one larger atom that had escaped pulverisation, caught the light
+from the window and drawn his attention.
+
+But even this find is in no way conclusive. The Professor may quite well
+have walked over to the window, taken off his spectacles to wipe them
+and dropped them as he, himself, explained. While the crushing of some
+fragment of one of the lenses was probably due to the chance of his
+stepping upon it, as he turned on his heel to continue the momentarily
+interrupted conversation. It is hard to believe that so great a man as
+Grossmann could have been convulsed by a petty rage that found
+expression in some act of wanton destruction.
+
+His own brief account of the interview accords very well with the single
+reference to the Wonder which exists in the literature of the world.
+This reference is a footnote to a second edition of Grossmann's
+brochure entitled "An Explanation of Certain Intellectual Abnormalities
+reported in History" ("Eine Erklärung gewisser Intellektueller
+geschichtlich überlieferter Anormalen Erscheinungen"). This footnote
+comes at the end of Grossmann's masterly analysis of the Heinecken case
+and reads: "I recently examined a similar case of abnormality in
+England, but found that it presented no such marked divergence from the
+type as would demand serious investigation."
+
+And in his brief account of the interview rendered to Challis and Elmer,
+Herr Grossmann, in effect, did no more than draft that footnote.
+
+
+IV
+
+It must remain uncertain, now, whether or not Elmer would have persisted
+in his endeavour to exploit the Wonder to the confounding of Grossmann,
+despite Challis's explicit statement that he would do no more, not even
+if it were to save the reputation of the Royal Society. Elmer certainly
+had the virtue of persistence and might have made the attempt. But in
+one of his rare moments of articulate speech, the Wonder decided the
+fate of that threatened controversy beyond the possibility of appeal.
+
+He spoke to Challis that same afternoon. He put up his tiny hand to
+command attention and made the one clear statement on record of his own
+interests and ambitions in the world.
+
+Challis, turning from his discovery of the Professor's crushed glasses,
+listened in silence.
+
+"This Grossmann," the Wonder said, "was not concerned in my exemption?"
+
+Challis shook his head. "He is the last," the Wonder concluded with a
+fine brevity. "You and your kind have no interest in truth."
+
+That last statement may have had a double intention. It is obvious from
+the Wonder's preliminary question,--which had, indeed, also the quality
+of an assertion,--how plainly he had recognised that Grossmann had been
+introduced under false pretences. But, it is permissible to infer that
+the pronouncement went deeper than that. The Wonder's logic penetrated
+far into the mysteries of life and he may have seen that Grossmann's
+attitude was warped by the human limitations of his ambition to shine as
+a great exponent of science; that he dared not follow up a line of
+research which might end in the invalidation of his great theory of
+heredity.
+
+Victor Stott had once before expounded his philosophy and Challis, on
+that occasion, had deliberately refused to listen. And we may guess that
+Grossmann, also, might have received some great illumination, had he
+chosen to pay deference to a mind so infinitely greater than his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+FUGITIVE
+
+
+Meanwhile a child of five--all unconscious that his quiet refusal to
+participate in the making and breaking of reputations was temporarily a
+matter of considerable annoyance to a Fellow of the Royal Society--ran
+through a well-kept index of the books in the library of Challis
+Court--an index written clearly on cards that occupied a great nest of
+accessible drawers; two cards with a full description to each book,
+alphabetically arranged, one card under the title of the work and one
+under the author's name.
+
+The child made no notes as he studied--he never wrote a single line in
+all his life; but when a drawer of that delightful index had been
+searched, he would walk here and there among the three rooms at his
+disposal, and by the aid of the flight of framed steps that ran smoothly
+on rubber-tyred wheels, he would take down now and again some book or
+another until, returning to the table at last to read, he sat in an
+enceinte of piled volumes that had been collected round him.
+
+Sometimes he read a book from beginning to end, more often he glanced
+through it, turning a dozen pages at a time, and then pushed it on one
+side with a gesture displaying the contempt that was not shown by any
+change of expression.
+
+On many afternoons the sombrely clad figure of a tall, gaunt woman would
+stand at the open casement of a window in the larger room, and keep a
+mystic vigil that sometimes lasted for hours. She kept her gaze fixed on
+that strange little figure whenever it roved up and down the suite of
+rooms or clambered the pyramid of brown steps that might have made such
+a glorious plaything for any other child. And even when her son was
+hidden behind the wall of volumes he had built, the woman would still
+stare in his direction, but then her eyes seemed to look inwards; at
+such times she appeared to be wrapped in an introspective devotion.
+
+Very rarely, the heavy-shouldered figure of a man would come to the
+doorway of the larger room, and also keep a silent vigil--a man who
+would stand for some minutes with thoughtful eyes and bent brows and
+then sigh, shake his head and move away, gently closing the door behind
+him.
+
+There were few other interruptions to the silence of that chapel-like
+library. Half a dozen times in the first few months a fair-haired,
+rather supercilious young man came and fetched away a few volumes; but
+even he evidenced an inclination to walk on tiptoe, a tendency that
+mastered him whenever he forgot for a moment his self-imposed rôle of
+scorn....
+
+Outside, over the swelling undulations of rich grass the sheep came back
+with close-cropped, ungainly bodies to a land that was yellow with
+buttercups. But when one looked again, their wool hung about them, and
+they were snatching at short turf that was covered at the woodside by a
+sprinkle of brown leaves. Then the sheep have gone, and the wood is
+black with February rain. And, again, the unfolding of the year is about
+us; a thickening of high twigs in the wood, a glint of green on the
+blackthorn....
+
+Nearly three cycles of death and birth have run their course, and then
+the strange little figure comes no more to the library at Challis
+Court.
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK
+
+
+I
+
+The circumstance that had intrigued me for so long was determined with
+an abruptness only less remarkable than the surprise of the onset. Two
+deaths within six months brought to me, the first, a competence, the
+second, release from gall and bitterness. For the first time in my life
+I was a free man. At forty one can still look forward, and I put the
+past behind me and made plans for the future. There was that book of
+mine still waiting to be written.
+
+It was wonderful how the detail of it all came back to me--the plan of
+it, the thread of development, even the very phrases that I had toyed
+with. The thought of the book brought back a train of associations.
+There was a phrase I had coined as I had walked out from Ailesworth to
+Stoke-Underhill; a chapter I had roughed out the day I went to see
+Ginger Stott at Pym. It seemed to me that the whole conception of the
+book was associated in some way with that neighbourhood. I remembered at
+last that I had first thought of writing it after my return from
+America, on the day that I had had that curious experience with the
+child in the train. It occurred to me that by a reversal of the process,
+I might regain many more of my original thoughts; that by going to live,
+temporarily perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Ailesworth, I might revive
+other associations.
+
+The picture of Pym presented itself to me very clearly. I remembered
+that I had once thought that Pym was a place to which I might retire one
+day in order to write the things I wished to write. I decided to make
+the dream a reality, and I wrote to Mrs. Berridge at the Wood Farm,
+asking her if she could let me have her rooms for the spring, summer,
+and autumn.
+
+
+II
+
+I was all aglow with excitement on the morning that I set out for the
+Hampden Hills. This was change, I thought, freedom, adventure. This was
+the beginning of life, my real entry into the joy of living.
+
+The world was alight with the fire of growth. May had come with a clear
+sky and a torrent of green was flowing over field, hedge, and wood. I
+remember that I thanked "whatever gods there be," that one could live so
+richly in the enjoyment of these things.
+
+
+III
+
+Farmer Bates met me at Great Hittenden Station. His was the only
+available horse and cart at Pym, for the Berridges were in a very small
+way, and it is doubtful if they could have made both ends meet if Mrs.
+Berridge had not done so well by letting her two spare rooms.
+
+I have a great admiration for Farmer Bates and Mrs. Berridge. I regret
+intensely that they should both have been unhappily married. If they had
+married each other they would undoubtedly have made a success of life.
+
+Bates was a Cockney by birth, but always he had had an ambition to take
+a farm, and after twenty years of work as a skilled mechanic he had
+thrown up a well-paid job, and dared the uncertainties which beset the
+English farmer. That venture was a constant bone of strife between him
+and his wife. Mrs. Bates preferred the town. It has always seemed to me
+that there was something fine about Bates and his love for the land.
+
+"Good growing weather, Mr. Bates," I said, as I climbed up into the
+cart.
+
+"Shouldn't be sorry to see some more rain," replied Bates, and damped my
+ardour for a moment.
+
+Just before we turned into the lane that leads up the long hill to Pym,
+we passed a ramshackle cart, piled up with a curious miscellany of
+ruinous furniture. A man was driving, and beside him sat a slatternly
+woman and a repulsive-looking boy of ten or twelve years old, with a
+great swollen head and an open, slobbering mouth.
+
+I was startled. I jumped to the conclusion that this was the child I had
+seen in the train, the son of Ginger Stott.
+
+As we slowed down to the ascent of the long hill, I said to Bates: "Is
+that Stott's boy?"
+
+Bates looked at me curiously. "Why, no," he said. "Them's the 'Arrisons.
+'Arrison's dead now; he was a wrong 'un, couldn't make a job of it,
+nohow. They used to live 'ere, five or six year ago, and now 'er
+'usband's dead, Mrs. 'Arrison's coming back with the boy to live. Worse
+luck. We thought we was shut of 'em."
+
+"Oh!" I said. "The boy's an idiot, I suppose."
+
+"'Orrible," replied Bates, shaking his head, "'orrible; can't speak nor
+nothing; goes about bleating and baa-ing like an old sheep."
+
+I looked round, but the ramshackle cart was hidden by the turn of the
+road. "Does Stott still live at Pym?" I asked.
+
+"Not Ginger," replied Bates. "He lives at Ailesworth. Mrs. Stott and 'er
+son lives here."
+
+"The boy's still alive then?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," said Bates.
+
+"Intelligent child?" I asked.
+
+"They say," replied Bates. "Book-learnin' and such. They say 'e's read
+every book in Mr. Challis's librairy."
+
+"Does he go to school?"
+
+"No. They let 'im off. Leastways Mr. Challis did. They say the Reverend
+Crashaw, down at Stoke, was fair put out about it."
+
+I thought that Bates emphasised the "on dit" nature of his information
+rather markedly. "What do _you_ think of him?" I asked.
+
+"Me?" said Bates. "I don't worry my 'ead about him. I've got too much to
+_do_." And he went off into technicalities concerning the abundance of
+charlock on the arable land of Pym. He called it "garlic." I saw that it
+was typical of Bates that he should have too much to _do_. I reflected
+that his was the calling which begot civilisation.
+
+
+IV
+
+The best and surest route from Pym to the Wood Farm is, appropriately,
+by way of the wood; but in wet weather the alternative of various cart
+tracks that wind among the bracken and shrub of the Common, is
+preferable in many ways. May had been very dry that year, however, and
+Farmer Bates chose the wood. The leaves were still light on the beeches.
+I remember that as I tried to pierce the vista of stems that dipped over
+the steep fall of the hill, I promised myself many a romantic
+exploration of the unknown mysteries beyond.
+
+Everything was so bright that afternoon that nothing, I believe, could
+have depressed me. When I had reached the farm and looked round the low,
+dark room with its one window, a foot from the ground and two from the
+ceiling, I only thought that I should be out-of-doors all the time. It
+amused me that I could touch the ceiling with my head by standing on
+tiptoe, and I laughed at the framed "presentation plates" from old
+Christmas numbers on the walls. These things are merely curious when the
+sun is shining and it is high May, and one is free to do the desired
+work after twenty years in a galley.
+
+
+V
+
+At a quarter to eight that evening I saw the sun set behind the hills.
+As I wandered reflectively down the lane that goes towards Challis
+Court, a blackbird was singing ecstatically in a high elm; here and
+there a rabbit popped out and sat up, the picture of precocious
+curiosity. Nature seemed to be standing in her doorway for a careless
+half-hour's gossip, before putting up the shutters to bar the robbers
+who would soon be about their work of the night.
+
+It was still quite light as I strolled back over the Common, and I chose
+a path that took me through a little spinney of ash, oak, and beech,
+treading carefully to avoid crushing the tender crosiers of bracken that
+were just beginning to break their way through the soil.
+
+As I emerged from the little clump of wood, I saw two figures going away
+from me in the direction of Pym.
+
+One was that of a boy wearing a cricket-cap; he was walking
+deliberately, his hands hanging at his sides; the other figure was a
+taller boy, and he threw out his legs in a curious, undisciplined way,
+as though he had little control over them. At first sight I thought he
+was not sober.
+
+The two passed out of sight behind a clump of hawthorn, but once I saw
+the smaller figure turn and face the other, and once he made a repelling
+gesture with his hands.
+
+It occurred to me that the smaller boy was trying to avoid his
+companion; that he was, in one sense, running away from him, that he
+walked as one might walk away from some threatening animal,
+deliberately--to simulate the appearance of courage.
+
+I fancied the bigger boy was the idiot Harrison I had seen that
+afternoon, and Farmer Bates's "We hoped we were shut of him" recurred to
+me. I wondered if the idiot were dangerous or only a nuisance.
+
+I took the smaller boy to be one of the villagers' children. I noticed
+that his cricket-cap had a dark patch as though it had been mended with
+some other material.
+
+The impression which I received from this trivial affair was one of
+disappointment. The wood and the Common had been so deserted by
+humanity, so given up to nature, that I felt the presence of the idiot
+to be a most distasteful intrusion. "If that horrible thing is going to
+haunt the Common there will be no peace or decency," was the idea that
+presented itself. "I must send him off, the brute," was the corollary.
+But I disliked the thought of being obliged to drive him away.
+
+
+VI
+
+The next morning I did not go on the Common; I was anxious to avoid a
+meeting with the Harrison idiot. I had been debating whether I should
+drive him away if I met him. Obviously I had no more right on the Common
+than he had--on the other hand, he was a nuisance, and I did not see why
+I should allow him to spoil all my pleasure in that ideal stretch of
+wild land which pressed on three sides of the Wood Farm. It was a stupid
+quandary of my own making; but I am afraid it was rather typical of my
+mental attitude. I am prone to set myself tasks, such as this eviction
+of the idiot from common ground, and equally prone to avoid them by a
+process of procrastination.
+
+By way of evasion I walked over to Deane Hill and surveyed the wonderful
+panorama of neat country that fills the basin between the Hampden and
+the Quainton Hills. Seen from that height, it has something the effect
+of a Dutch landscape, it all looks so amazingly tidy. Away to the left I
+looked over Stoke-Underhill. Ailesworth was a blur in the hollow, but I
+could distinguish the high fence of the County Ground.
+
+I sat all the morning on Deane Hill, musing and smoking, thinking of
+such things as Ginger Stott, and the match with Surrey. I decided that I
+must certainly go and see Stott's queer son, the phenomenon who had,
+they say, read all the books in Mr. Challis's library. I wondered what
+sort of a library this Challis had, and who he was. I had never heard of
+him before. I think I must have gone to sleep for a time.
+
+When Mrs. Berridge came to clear away my dinner--I dined, without shame,
+at half-past twelve--I detained her with conversation. Presently I asked
+about little Stott.
+
+"He's a queer one, that's what he is," said Mrs. Berridge. She was a
+neat, comely little woman, rather superior to her station, and it seemed
+to me, certainly superior to her clod of a husband.
+
+"A great reader, Farmer Bates tells me," I said.
+
+Mrs. Berridge passed that by. "His mother's in trouble about him this
+morning," she said. "She's such a nice, respectable woman, and has all
+her milk and eggs and butter off of us. She was here this morning while
+you were out, sir, and, what I could make of it that 'Arrison boy had
+been chasing her boy on the Common last night."
+
+"Oh!" I said with sudden enlightenment. "I believe I saw them." At the
+back of my mind I was struggling desperately with a vague remembrance.
+It may sound incredible, but I had only the dimmest memory of my later
+experience of the child. The train incident was still fresh in my mind,
+but I could not remember what Stott had told me when I talked with him
+by the pond. I seemed to have an impression that the child had some
+strange power of keeping people at a distance; or was I mixing up
+reality with some Scandinavian fairy tale?
+
+"Very likely, sir," Mrs. Berridge went on. "What upset Mrs. Stott was
+that her boy's never upset by anything--he has a curious way of looking
+at you, sir, that makes you wish you wasn't there; but from what Mrs.
+Stott says, this 'Arrison boy wasn't to be drove off, anyhow, and her
+son came in quite flurried like. Mrs. Stott seemed quite put out about
+it."
+
+Doubtless I might have had more information from my landlady, but I was
+struggling to reconstruct that old experience which had slipped away
+from me, and I nodded and turned back to the book I had been pretending
+to read. Mrs. Berridge was one of those unusual women--for her station
+in life--who know when to be silent, and she finished her clearing away
+without initiating any further remarks.
+
+When she had finished I went out onto the Common and looked for the pond
+where I had talked with Ginger Stott.
+
+I found it after a time, and then I began to gather up the threads I had
+dropped.
+
+It all came back to me, little by little. I remembered that talk I had
+had with him, his very gestures; I remembered how he had spoken of
+habits, or the necessity for the lack of them, and that took me back to
+the scene in the British Museum Reading Room, and to my theory. I was
+suddenly alive to that old interest again.
+
+I got up and walked eagerly in the direction of Mrs. Stott's cottage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE INCIPIENCE OF MY SUBJECTION TO THE WONDER
+
+
+I
+
+Victor Stott was in his eighth year when I met him for the third time. I
+must have stayed longer than I imagined by the pond on the Common, for
+Mrs. Stott and her son had had tea, and the boy was preparing to go out.
+He stopped when he saw me coming; an unprecedented mark of recognition,
+so I have since learned.
+
+As I saw him then, he made a remarkable, but not a repulsively abnormal
+figure. His baldness struck one immediately, but it did not give him a
+look of age. Then one noticed that his head was unmistakably out of
+proportion to his body, yet the disproportion was not nearly so marked
+as it had been in infancy. These two things were conspicuous; the less
+salient peculiarities were observed later; the curious little beaky nose
+that jutted out at an unusual angle from the face, the lips that were
+too straight and determined for a child, the laxity of the limbs when
+the body was in repose--lastly, the eyes.
+
+When I met Victor Stott on this, third, occasion, there can be no doubt
+that he had lost something of his original power. This may have been due
+to his long sojourn in the world of books, a sojourn that had, perhaps,
+altered the strange individuality of his thought; or it may have been
+due, in part at least, to his recent recognition of the fact that the
+power of his gaze exercised no influence over creatures such as the
+Harrison idiot. Nevertheless, though something of the original force had
+abated, he still had an extraordinary, and, so far as I can learn,
+altogether unprecedented power of enforcing his will without word or
+gesture; and I may say here that in those rare moments when Victor Stott
+looked me in the face, I seemed to see a rare and wonderful personality
+peering out through his eyes,--the personality which had, no doubt,
+spoken to Challis and Lewes through that long afternoon in the library
+of Challis Court. Normally one saw a curious, unattractive, rather
+repulsive figure of a child; when he looked at one with that rare look
+of intention, the man that lived within that unattractive body was
+revealed, his insight, his profundity, his unexampled wisdom. If we mark
+the difference between man and animals by a measure of intelligence,
+then surely this child was a very god among men.
+
+
+II
+
+Victor Stott did not look at me when I entered his mother's cottage; I
+saw only the unattractive exterior of him, and I blundered into an air
+of patronage.
+
+"Is this your boy?" I said, when I had greeted her. "I hear he is a
+great scholar."
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Ellen Mary quietly. She never boasted to strangers.
+
+"You don't remember me, I suppose?" I went on, foolishly; trying,
+however, to speak as to an equal. "You were in petticoats the last time
+I saw you."
+
+The Wonder was standing by the window, his arms hanging loosely at his
+sides; he looked out aslant up the lane; his profile was turned towards
+me. He made no answer to my question.
+
+"Oh yes, sir, he remembers," replied Ellen Mary. "He never forgets
+anything."
+
+I paused, uncomfortably. I was slightly huffed by the boy's silence.
+
+"I have come to spend the summer here," I said at last. "I hope he will
+come to see me. I have brought a good many books with me; perhaps he
+might care to read some of them."
+
+I had to talk _at_ the boy; there was no alternative. Inwardly I was
+thinking that I had Kant's Critique and Hegel's Phenomenology among my
+books. "He may put on airs of scholarship," I thought; "but I fancy that
+he will find those two works rather above the level of his comprehension
+as yet." I did not recognise the fact that it was I who was putting on
+airs, not Victor Stott.
+
+"'E's given up reading the past six weeks, sir," said Ellen Mary, "but I
+daresay he will come and see your books."
+
+She spoke demurely, and she did not look at her son; I received the
+impression that her statements were laid before him to take up, reject,
+or pass unnoticed as he pleased.
+
+I was slightly exasperated. I turned to the Wonder. "Would you care to
+come?" I asked.
+
+He nodded without looking at me, and walked out of the cottage.
+
+I hesitated.
+
+"'E'll go with you now, sir," prompted Ellen Mary. "That's what 'e
+means."
+
+I followed the Wonder in a condition of suppressed irritation. "His
+mother might be able to interpret his rudeness," I thought, "but I would
+teach him to convey his intentions more clearly. The child had been
+spoilt."
+
+
+III
+
+The Wonder chose the road over the Common. I should have gone by the
+wood, but when we came to the entrance of the wood, he turned up on to
+the Common. He did not ask me which way I preferred. Indeed, we neither
+of us spoke during the half-mile walk that separated the Wood Farm from
+the last cottage in Pym.
+
+I was fuming inwardly. I had it in my mind at that time to put the
+Wonder through some sort of an examination. I was making plans to
+contribute towards his education, to send him to Oxford, later. I had
+adumbrated a scheme to arouse interest in his case among certain
+scholars and men of influence with whom I was slightly acquainted. I had
+been very much engrossed with these plans as I had made my way to the
+Stotts' cottage. I was still somewhat exalted in mind with my dreams of
+a vicarious brilliance. I had pictured the Wonder's magnificent passage
+through the University; I had acted, in thought, as the generous and
+kindly benefactor.... It had been a grandiose dream, and the reality was
+so humiliating. Could I make this mannerless child understand his
+possibilities? Had he any ambition?
+
+Thinking of these things, I had lagged behind as we crossed the Common,
+and when I came to the gate of the farmyard, the Wonder was at the door
+of the house. He did not wait for me, but walked straight into my
+sitting-room. When I entered, I found him seated on the low window-sill,
+turning over the top layer of books in the large case which had been
+opened, but not unpacked. There was no place to put the books; in fact,
+I was proposing to have some shelves put up, if Mrs. Berridge had no
+objection.
+
+I entered the room in a condition of warm indignation. "Cheek" was the
+word that was in my mind. "Confounded cheek," I muttered. Nevertheless I
+did not interrupt the boy; instead, I lit a cigarette, sat down and
+watched him.
+
+I was sceptical at first. I noted at once the sure touch with which the
+boy handled my books, the practised hand that turned the pages, the
+quick examination of title-page and the list of contents, the occasional
+swift reference to the index, but I did not believe it possible that any
+one could read so fast as he read when he did condescend for a few
+moments to give his attention to a few consecutive pages. "Was it a
+pose?" I thought, yet he was certainly an adept in handling the books. I
+was puzzled, yet I was still sceptical--the habit of experience was
+towards disbelief--a boy of seven and a half could not possibly have the
+mental equipment to skim all that philosophy....
+
+My books were being unpacked very quickly. Kant, Hegel, Schelling,
+Fichte, Leibnitz, Nietzsche, Hume, Bradley, William James had all been
+rejected and were piled on the floor, but he had hesitated longer over
+Bergson's _Creative Evolution_. He really seemed to be giving that some
+attention, though he read it--if he were reading it--so fast that the
+hand which turned the pages hardly rested between each movement.
+
+When Bergson was sent to join his predecessors, I determined that I
+would get some word out of this strange child--I had never yet heard him
+speak, not a single syllable. I determined to brave all rebuffs. I was
+prepared for that.
+
+"Well?" I said, when Bergson was laid down. "Well! What do you make of
+that?"
+
+He turned and looked out of the window.
+
+I came and sat on the end of the table within a few feet of him. From
+that position I, too, could see out of the window, and I saw the figure
+of the Harrison idiot slouching over the farmyard gate.
+
+A gust of impatience whirled over me. I caught up my stick and went out
+quickly.
+
+"Now then," I said, as I came within speaking distance of the idiot,
+"get away from here. Out with you!"
+
+The idiot probably understood no word of what I said, but like a dog he
+was quick to interpret my tone and gesture. He made a revoltingly
+inhuman sound as he shambled away, a kind of throaty yelp. I walked back
+to the house. I could not avoid the feeling that I had been
+unnecessarily brutal.
+
+When I returned the Wonder was still staring out of the window; but
+though I did not guess it then, the idiot had served my purpose better
+than my determination. It was to the idiot that I owed my subsequent
+knowledge of Victor Stott. The Wonder had found a use for me. He was
+resigned to bear with my feeble mental development, because I was strong
+enough to keep at bay that half-animal creature who appeared to believe
+that Victor Stott was one of his own kind--the only one he had ever met.
+The idiot in some unimaginable way had inferred a likeness between
+himself and the Wonder--they both had enormous heads--and the idiot was
+the only human being over whom the Wonder was never able to exercise the
+least authority.
+
+
+IV
+
+I went in and sat down again on the end of the table. I was rather
+heated. I lit another cigarette and stared at the Wonder, who was still
+looking out of the window.
+
+There was silence for a few seconds, and then he spoke of his own
+initiative.
+
+"Illustrates the weakness of argument from history and analogy," he said
+in a clear, small voice, addressing no one in particular. "Hegel's
+limitations are qualitatively those of Harrison, who argues that I and
+he are similar in kind."
+
+The proposition was so astounding that I could find no answer
+immediately. If the statement had been made in boyish language I should
+have laughed at it, but the phraseology impressed me.
+
+"You've read Hegel, then?" I asked evasively.
+
+"Subtract the endeavour to demonstrate a preconceived hypothesis from
+any known philosophy," continued the Wonder, without heeding my
+question, "and the remainder, the only valuable material, is found to be
+distorted." He paused as if waiting for my reply.
+
+How could one answer such propositions as these offhand? I tried,
+however, to get at the gist of the sentence, and, as the silence
+continued, I said with some hesitation: "But it is impossible, surely,
+to approach the work of writing, say a philosophy, without some
+apprehension of the end in view?"
+
+"Illogical," replied the Wonder, "not philosophy; a system of trial and
+error--to evaluate a complex variable function." He paused a moment, and
+then glanced down at the pile of books on the floor. "More millions," he
+said.
+
+I think he meant that more millions of books might be written on this
+system without arriving at an answer to the problem, but I admit that I
+am at a loss, that I cannot interpret his remarks. I wrote them down an
+hour or two after they were uttered, but I may have made mistakes. The
+mathematical metaphor is beyond me. I have no acquaintance with the
+higher mathematics.
+
+The Wonder had a very expressionless face, but I thought at this moment
+that he wore a look of sadness; and that look was one of the factors
+which helped me to understand the unbridgeable gulf that lay between his
+intellect and mine. I think it was at this moment that I first began to
+change my opinion. I had been regarding him as an unbearable little
+prig, but it flashed across me as I watched him now, that his mind and
+my own might be so far differentiated that he was unable to convey his
+thoughts to me. "Was it possible," I wondered, "that he had been trying
+to talk down to my level?"
+
+"I am afraid I don't quite follow you," I said. I had intended to
+question him further, to urge him to explain, but it came to me that it
+would be quite hopeless to go on. How can one answer the unreasoning
+questions of a child? Here I was the child, though a child of slightly
+advanced development. I could appreciate that it was useless to persist
+in a futile "Why, why?" when the answer could only be given in terms
+that I could not comprehend. Therefore I hesitated, sighed, and then
+with that obstinacy of vanity which creates an image of self-protection
+and refuses to relinquish it, I said:
+
+"I wish you could explain yourself; not on this particular point of
+philosophy, but your life----" I stopped, because I did not know how to
+phrase my demand. What was it, after all, that I wanted to learn?
+
+"That I can't explain," said the Wonder. "There are no data."
+
+I saw that he had accepted my request for explanation in a much wider
+sense than I had intended, and I took him up on this.
+
+"But haven't you any hypothesis?"
+
+"I cannot work on the system of trial and error," replied the Wonder.
+
+Our conversation went no further this afternoon, for Mrs. Berridge came
+in to lay the cloth. She looked askance, I thought, at the figure on the
+window-sill, but she ventured no remark save to ask if I was ready for
+my supper.
+
+"Yes, oh! yes!" I said.
+
+"Shall I lay for two, sir?" asked Mrs. Berridge.
+
+"Will you stay and have supper?" I said to the Wonder, but he shook his
+head, got up and walked out of the room. I watched him cross the
+farmyard and make his way over the Common.
+
+"Well!" I said to Mrs. Berridge, when the boy was out of sight, "that
+child is what in America they call 'the limit,' Mrs. Berridge."
+
+My landlady put her lips together, shook her head, and shivered
+slightly. "He gives me the shudders," she said.
+
+
+V
+
+I neither read nor wrote that evening. I forgot to go out for a walk at
+sunset. I sat and pondered until it was time for bed, and then I
+pondered myself to sleep. No vision came to me, and I had no relevant
+dreams.
+
+The next morning at seven o'clock I saw Mrs. Stott come over the Common
+to fetch her milk from the farm. I waited until her business was done,
+and then I went out and walked back with her.
+
+"I want to understand about your son," I said by way of making an
+opening.
+
+She looked at me quickly. "You know, 'e 'ardly ever speaks to me, sir,"
+she said.
+
+I was staggered for a moment. "But you understand him?" I said.
+
+"In some ways, sir," was her answer.
+
+I recognised the direction of the limitation. "Ah! we none of us
+understand him in all ways," I said, with a touch of patronage.
+
+"No, sir," replied Ellen Mary. She evidently agreed to that statement
+without qualification.
+
+"But what is he going to do?" I asked. "When he grows up, I mean?"
+
+"I can't say, sir. We must leave that to 'im."
+
+I accepted the rebuke more mildly than I should have done on the
+previous day. "He never speaks of his future?" I said feebly.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+There seemed to be nothing more to say. We had only gone a couple of
+hundred yards, but I paused in my walk. I thought I might as well go
+back and get my breakfast. But Mrs. Stott looked at me as though she had
+something more to say. We stood facing each other on the cart track.
+
+"I suppose I can't be of any use?" I asked vaguely.
+
+Ellen Mary became suddenly voluble.
+
+"I 'ope I'm not askin' too much, sir," she said, "but there is a way you
+could 'elp if you would. 'E 'ardly ever speaks to me, as I've said, but
+I've been opset about that 'Arrison boy. 'E's a brute beast, sir, if you
+know what I mean, and _'e_" (she differentiated her pronouns only by
+accent, and where there is any doubt I have used italics to indicate
+that her son is referred to) "doesn't seem to 'ave the same 'old on 'im
+as _'e_ does over others. It's truth, I am not easy in my mind about it,
+sir, although _'e_ 'as never said a word to me, not being afraid of
+anything like other children, but 'e seems to have took a sort of a
+fancy to you, sir" (I think this was intended as the subtlest flattery),
+"and if you was to go with 'im when 'e takes 'is walks--'e's much in the
+air, sir, and a great one for walkin'--I think 'e'd be glad of your
+cump'ny, though maybe 'e won't never say it in so many words. You
+mustn't mind 'im being silent, sir; there's some things we can't
+understand, and though, as I say, 'e 'asn't said anything to me, it's
+not that I'm scheming be'ind 'is back, for I know 'is meaning without
+words being necessary."
+
+She might have said more, but I interrupted her at this point.
+"Certainly, I will come and fetch him,"--I lapsed unconsciously into her
+system of denomination--"this morning, if you are sure he would like to
+come out with me."
+
+"I'm quite sure, sir," she said.
+
+"About nine o'clock?" I asked.
+
+"That would do nicely, sir," she answered.
+
+As I walked back to the farm I was thinking of the life of those two
+occupants of the Stotts' cottage. The mother who watched her son in
+silence, studying his every look and action in order to gather his
+meaning; who never asked her son a question nor expected from him any
+statement of opinion; and the son wrapped always in that profound
+speculation which seemed to be his only mood. What a household!
+
+It struck me while I was having breakfast that I seemed to have let
+myself in for a duty that might prove anything but pleasant.
+
+
+VI
+
+There is nothing to say of that first walk of mine with the Wonder. I
+spoke to him once or twice and he answered by nodding his head; even
+this notice I now know to have been a special mark of favour, a
+condescension to acknowledge his use for me as a guardian. He did not
+speak at all on this occasion.
+
+I did not call for him in the afternoon; I had made other plans. I
+wanted to see the man Challis, whose library had been at the disposal of
+this astonishing child. Challis might be able to give me further
+information. The truth of the matter is that I was in two minds as to
+whether I would stay at Pym through the summer, as I had originally
+intended. I was not in love with the prospect which the sojourn now held
+out for me. If I were to be constituted head nursemaid to Master Victor
+Stott, there would remain insufficient time for the progress of my own
+book on certain aspects of the growth of the philosophic method.
+
+I see now, when I look back, that I was not convinced at that time, that
+I still doubted the Wonder's learning. I may have classed it as a
+freakish pedantry, the result of an unprecedented memory.
+
+Mrs. Berridge had much information to impart on the subject of Henry
+Challis. He was her husband's landlord, of course, and his was a
+hallowed name, to be spoken with decency and respect. I am afraid I
+shocked Mrs. Berridge at the outset by my casual "Who's this man
+Challis?" She certainly atoned by her own manner for my irreverence; she
+very obviously tried to impress me. I professed submission, but was not
+intimidated, rather my curiosity was aroused.
+
+Mrs. Berridge was not able to tell me the one thing I most desired to
+know, whether the lord of Challis Court was in residence; but it was not
+far to walk, and I set out about two o'clock.
+
+
+VII
+
+Challis was getting into his motor as I walked up the drive. I hurried
+forward to catch him before the machine was started. He saw me coming
+and paused on the doorstep.
+
+"Did you want to see me?" he asked, as I came up.
+
+"Mr. Challis?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"I won't keep you now," I said, "but perhaps you could let me know some
+time when I could see you."
+
+"Oh, yes," he said, with the air of a man who is constantly subjected to
+annoyance by strangers. "But perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me what
+it is you wish to see me about? I might be able to settle it now, at
+once."
+
+"I am staying at the Wood Farm," I began. "I am interested in a very
+remarkable child----"
+
+"Ah! take my advice, leave him alone," interrupted Challis quickly.
+
+I suppose I looked my amazement, for Challis laughed. "Oh, well," he
+said, "of course you won't take such spontaneous advice as that. I'm in
+no hurry. Come in." He took off his heavy overcoat and threw it into the
+tonneau. "Come round again in an hour," he said to the chauffeur.
+
+"It's very good of you," I protested, "I could come quite well at any
+other time."
+
+"I'm in no hurry," he repeated. "You had better come to the scene of
+Victor Stott's operations. He hasn't been here for six weeks, by the
+way. Can you throw any light on his absence?"
+
+I made a friend that afternoon. When the car came back at four o'clock,
+Challis sent it away again. "I shall probably stay down here to-night,"
+he said to the butler, and to me: "Can you stay to dinner? I must
+convince you about this child."
+
+"I have dined once to-day," I said. "At half-past twelve. I have no
+other excuse."
+
+"Oh! well," said Challis, "you needn't eat, but I must. Get us
+something, Heathcote," he said to the butler, "and bring tea here."
+
+Much of our conversation after dinner was not relevant to the subject of
+the Wonder; we drifted into a long argument upon human origins which has
+no place here. But by that time I had been very well informed as to all
+the essential facts of the Wonder's childhood, of his entry into the
+world of books, of his earlier methods, and of the significance of that
+long speech in the library. But at that point Challis became reserved.
+He would give me no details.
+
+"You must forgive me; I can't go into that," he said.
+
+"But it is so incomparably important," I protested.
+
+"That may be, but you must not question me. The truth of the matter is
+that I have a very confused memory of what the boy said, and the little
+I might remember, I prefer to leave undisturbed."
+
+He piqued my curiosity, but I did not press him. It was so evident that
+he did not wish to speak on that head.
+
+He walked up with me to the farm at ten o'clock and came into my room.
+
+"We need not keep you out of bed, Mrs. Berridge," he said to my
+flustered landlady. "I daresay we shall be up till all hours. We promise
+to see that the house is locked up." Mr. Berridge stood a figure of
+subservience in the background.
+
+My books were still heaped on the floor. Challis sat down on the
+window-sill and looked over some of them. "Many of these Master Stott
+probably read in my library," he remarked, "in German. Language is no
+bar to him. He learns a language as you or I would learn a page of
+history."
+
+Later on, I remember that we came down to essentials. "I must try and
+understand something of this child's capacities," I said in answer to a
+hint of Challis's that I should leave the Wonder alone. "It seems to me
+that here we have something which is of the first importance, of greater
+importance, indeed, than anything else in the history of the world."
+
+"But you can't make him speak," said Challis.
+
+"I shall try," I said. "I recognise that we cannot compel him, but I
+have a certain hold over him. I see from what you have told me that he
+has treated me with most unusual courtesy. I assure you that several
+times when I spoke to him this morning he nodded his head."
+
+"A good beginning," laughed Challis.
+
+"I can't understand," I went on, "how it is that you are not more
+interested. It seems to me that this child knows many things which we
+have been patiently attempting to discover since the dawn of
+civilisation."
+
+"Quite," said Challis. "I admit that, but ... well, I don't think I want
+to know."
+
+"Surely," I said, "this key to all knowledge----"
+
+"We are not ready for it," replied Challis. "You can't teach metaphysics
+to children."
+
+Nevertheless my ardour was increased, not abated, by my long talk with
+Challis.
+
+"I shall go on," I said, as I went out to the farm gate with him at
+half-past two in the morning.
+
+"Ah! well," he answered, "I shall come over and see you when I get
+back." He had told me earlier that he was going abroad for some months.
+
+We hesitated a moment by the gate, and instinctively we both looked up
+at the vault of the sky and the glimmering dust of stars.
+
+The same thought was probably in both our minds, the thought of the
+insignificance of this little system that revolves round one of the
+lesser lights of the Milky Way, but that thought was not to be expressed
+save by some banality, and we did not speak.
+
+"I shall certainly look you up when I come back," said Challis.
+
+"Yes; I hope you will," I said lamely.
+
+I watched the loom of his figure against the vague background till I
+could distinguish it no longer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PROGRESS AND RELAXATION OF MY SUBJECTION
+
+
+I
+
+The memory of last summer is presented to me now as a series of
+pictures, some brilliant, others vague, others again so uncertain that I
+cannot be sure how far they are true memories of actual occurrences, and
+how far they are interwoven with my thoughts and dreams. I have, for
+instance, a recollection of standing on Deane Hill and looking down over
+the wide panorama of rural England, through a driving mist of fine rain.
+This might well be counted among true memories, were it not for the fact
+that clearly associated with the picture is an image of myself grown to
+enormous dimensions, a Brocken spectre that threatened the world with
+titanic gestures of denouncement, and I seem to remember that this
+figure was saying: "All life runs through my fingers like a handful of
+dry sand." And yet the remembrance has not the quality of a dream.
+
+I was, undoubtedly, overwrought at times. There were days when the
+sight of a book filled me with physical nausea, with contempt for the
+littleness, the narrow outlook, that seemed to me to characterise every
+written work. I was fiercely, but quite impotently, eager at such times
+to demonstrate the futility of all the philosophy ranged on the rough
+wooden shelves in my gloomy sitting-room. I would walk up and down and
+gesticulate, struggling, fighting to make clear to myself what a true
+philosophy should set forth. I felt at such times that all the knowledge
+I needed for so stupendous a task was present with me in some
+inexplicable way, was even pressing upon me, but that my brain was so
+clogged and heavy that not one idea of all that priceless wisdom could
+be expressed in clear thought. "I have never been taught to think," I
+would complain, "I have never perfected the machinery of thought," and
+then some dictum thrown out haphazard by the Wonder--his conception of
+light conversation--would recur to me, and I would realise that however
+well I had been trained, my limitations would remain, that I was an
+undeveloped animal, only one stage higher than a totem-fearing savage, a
+creature of small possibilities, incapable of dealing with great
+problems.
+
+Once the Wonder said to me, in a rare moment of lucid condescension to
+my feeble intellect, "You figure space as a void in three dimensions,
+and time as a line that runs across it, and all other conceptions you
+relegate to that measure." He implied that this was a cumbrous machinery
+which had no relation to reality, and could define nothing. He told me
+that his idea of force, for example, was a pure abstraction, for which
+there was no figure in my mental outfit.
+
+Such pronouncements as these left me struggling like a drowning man in
+deep water. I felt that it _must_ be possible for me to come to the
+surface, but I could do nothing but flounder; beating fiercely with
+limbs that were so powerful and yet so utterly useless. I saw that my
+very metaphors symbolised my feebleness; I had no terms for my own
+mental condition; I was forced to resort to some inapplicable physical
+analogy.
+
+These fits of revolt against the limitations of human thought grew more
+frequent as the summer progressed. Day after day my self-sufficiency and
+conceit were being crushed out of me. I was always in the society of a
+boy of seven whom I was forced to regard as immeasurably my intellectual
+superior. There was no department of useful knowledge in which I could
+compete with him. Compete indeed! I might as well speak of a
+third-standard child competing with Macaulay in a general knowledge
+paper.
+
+"_Useful_ knowledge," I have written, but the phrase needs definition. I
+might have taught the Wonder many things, no doubt; the habits of men
+in great cities, the aspects of foreign countries, or the subtleties of
+cricket; but when I was with him I felt--and my feelings must have been
+typical--that such things as these were of no account.
+
+Towards the end of the summer, the occasions upon which I was able to
+stimulate myself into a condition of bearable complacency were very
+rare. I often thought of Challis's advice to leave the Wonder alone. I
+should have gone away if I had been free, but Victor Stott had a use for
+me, and I was powerless to disobey him. I feared him, but he controlled
+me at his will. I feared him as I had once feared an imaginary God, but
+I did not hate him.
+
+One curious little fragment of wisdom came to me as the result of my
+experience--a useless fragment perhaps, but something that has in one
+way altered my opinion of my fellow-men. I have learnt that a measure of
+self-pride, of complacency, is essential to every human being. I judge
+no man any more for displaying an overweening vanity, rather do I envy
+him this representative mark of his humanity. The Wonder was completely
+and quite inimitably devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had no
+meaning for him. It was inconceivable that he should compare himself
+with any of his fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that any
+honour they might have lavished upon him would have given him one
+moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among aliens who were unable to
+comprehend him, aliens who could not flatter him, whose opinions were
+valueless to him. He had no more common ground on which to air his
+knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve
+self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep.
+From what I have heard him say on the subject of our slavery to
+preconceptions, I think the metaphor of sheep is one which he might have
+approved.
+
+But the result of all this, so far as I am concerned, is a feeling of
+admiration for those men who are capable of such magnificent approval
+for themselves, the causes they espouse, their family, their country,
+and their species; it is an approval which I fear I can never again
+attain in full measure.
+
+I have seen possibilities which have enforced a humbleness that is not
+good for my happiness nor conducive to my development. Henceforward I
+will espouse the cause of vanity. It is only the vain who deprecate
+vanity in others.
+
+But there were times in the early period of my association with Victor
+Stott when I rebelled vigorously against his complacent assumption of my
+ignorance.
+
+
+II
+
+May was a gloriously fine month, and we were much out of doors.
+Unfortunately, except for one fortnight in August, that was all the
+settled weather we had that summer.
+
+I remember sitting one afternoon staring at the same pond that Ginger
+Stott had stared at when he told me that the boy now beside me was a
+"blarsted freak."
+
+The Wonder had said nothing that day, but now he began to enunciate some
+of his incomprehensible commonplaces in that thin, clear voice of his. I
+wrote down what I could remember of his utterances when I went home, but
+now I read them over again I am exceedingly doubtful whether I reported
+him correctly. There is, however, one dictum which seems clearly
+phrased, and when I recall the scene, I remember trying to push the
+induction he had started. The pronouncement, as I have it written, is as
+follows:
+
+"Pure deduction from a single premiss, unaided by previous knowledge of
+the functions of the terms used in the expansion of the argument, is an
+act of creation, incontrovertible, and outside the scope of human
+reasoning."
+
+I believe he meant to say--but my notes are horribly confused--that
+logic and philosophy were only relative, being dependent always in a
+greater or less degree upon the test of a material experiment for
+verification.
+
+Here, as always, I find the Wonder's pronouncements very elusive. In one
+sense I see that what I have quoted here is a self-evident proposition,
+but I have the feeling that behind it there lies some gleam of wisdom
+which throws a faint light on the profound problem of existence.
+
+I remember that in my own feeble way I tried to analyse this statement,
+and for a time I thought I had grasped one significant aspect of it. It
+seemed to me that the possibility of conceiving a philosophy that was
+not dependent for verification upon material experiment--that is to say,
+upon evidence afforded by the five senses--indicates that there is
+something which is not matter; but that since the development of such a
+philosophy is not possible to our minds, we must argue that our
+dependence upon matter is so intimate that it is almost impossible to
+conceive that we are actuated by any impulse which does not arise out of
+a material complex.
+
+At the back of my mind there seemed to be a thought that I could not
+focus, I trembled on the verge of some great revelation that never came.
+
+Through my thoughts there ran a thread of reverence for the intelligence
+that had started my speculations. If only he could speak in terms that
+I could understand.
+
+I looked round at the Wonder. He was, as usual, apparently lost in
+abstraction, and quite unconscious of my regard.
+
+The wind was strong on the Common, and he sniffed once or twice and then
+wiped his nose. He did not use a handkerchief.
+
+It came to me at the moment that he was no more than a vulgar little
+village boy.
+
+
+III
+
+There were few incidents to mark the progress of that summer. I marked
+the course of time by my own thoughts and feelings, especially by my
+growing submission to the control of the Wonder.
+
+It was curious to recall that I had once thought of correcting the
+Wonder's manners, of administering, perhaps, a smacking. That was a
+fault of ignorance. I had often erred in the same way in other
+experiences of life, but I had not taken the lesson to heart. I remember
+at school our "head" taking us--I was in the lower fifth then--in Latin
+verse. He rebuked me for a false quantity, and I, very cocksure,
+disputed the point and read my line. The head pointed out very gravely
+that I had been misled by an English analogy in my pronunciation of the
+word "maritus," and I grew very hot and ashamed and apologetic. I feel
+much the same now when I think of my early attitude towards the Wonder.
+But this time, I think, I have profited by my experience.
+
+There is, however, one incident which in the light of subsequent events
+it seems worth while to record.
+
+One afternoon in early July, when the sky had lifted sufficiently for us
+to attempt some sort of a walk, we made our way down through the sodden
+woods in the direction of Deane Hill.
+
+As we were emerging into the lane at the foot of the slope, I saw the
+Harrison idiot lurking behind the trunk of a big beech. This was only
+the third time I had seen him since I drove him away from the farm, and
+on the two previous occasions he had not come close to us.
+
+This time he had screwed up his courage to follow us. As we climbed the
+lane I saw him slouching up the hedge-side behind us.
+
+The Wonder took no notice, and we continued our way in silence.
+
+When we reached the prospect at the end of the hill, where the ground
+falls away like a cliff and you have a bird's-eye view of two counties,
+we sat down on the steps of the monument erected in honour of those
+Hampdenshire men whose lives were thrown away in the South-African war.
+
+That view always has a soothing effect upon me, and I gave myself up to
+an ecstasy of contemplation and forgot, for a few moments, the presence
+of the Wonder, and the fact that the idiot had followed us.
+
+I was recalled to existence by the sound of a foolish, conciliatory
+mumbling, and looked round to see the leering face of the Harrison idiot
+ogling the Wonder from the corner of the plinth. The Wonder was between
+me and the idiot, but he was apparently oblivious of either of us.
+
+I was about to rise and drive the idiot away, but the Wonder, still
+staring out at some distant horizon, said quietly, "Let him be."
+
+I was astonished, but I sat still and awaited events.
+
+The idiot behaved much as I have seen a very young and nervous puppy
+behave.
+
+He came within a few feet of us, gurgling and crooning, flapping his
+hands and waggling his great head; his uneasy eyes wandered from the
+Wonder to me and back again, but it was plainly the Wonder whom he
+wished to propitiate. Then he suddenly backed as if he had dared too
+much, flopped on to the wet grass and regarded us both with foolish,
+goggling eyes. For a few seconds he lay still, and then he began to
+squirm along the ground towards us, a few inches at a time, stopping
+every now and again to bleat and gurgle with that curious, crooning
+note which he appeared to think would pacificate the object of his
+overtures.
+
+I stood by, as it were; ready to obey the first hint that the presence
+of this horrible creature was distasteful to the Wonder, but he gave no
+sign.
+
+The idiot had come within five or six feet of us, wriggling himself
+along the wet grass, before the Wonder looked at him. The look when it
+came was one of those deliberate, intentional stares which made one feel
+so contemptible and insignificant.
+
+The idiot evidently regarded this look as a sign of encouragement. He
+knelt up, began to flap his hands and changed his crooning note to a
+pleased, emphatic bleat.
+
+"A-ba-ba," he blattered, and made uncouth gestures, by which I think he
+meant to signify that he wanted the Wonder to come and play with him.
+
+Still the Wonder gave no sign, but his gaze never wavered, and though
+the idiot was plainly not intimidated, he never met that gaze for more
+than a second or two. Nevertheless he came on, walking now on his knees,
+and at last stretched out a hand to touch the boy he so curiously
+desired for a playmate.
+
+That broke the spell. The Wonder drew back quickly--he never allowed one
+to touch him--got up and climbed two or three steps higher up the base
+of the monument. "Send him away," he said to me.
+
+"That'll do," I said threateningly to the idiot, and at the sound of my
+voice and the gesture of my hand, he blenched, yelped, rolled over away
+from me, and then got to his feet and shambled off for several yards
+before stopping to regard us once more with his pacificatory, disgusting
+ogle.
+
+"Send him away," repeated the Wonder, as I hesitated, and I rose to my
+feet and pretended to pick up a stone.
+
+That was enough. The idiot yelped again and made off. This time he did
+not stop, though he looked over his shoulder several times as he
+lolloped away among the low gorse, to which look I replied always with
+the threat of an imaginary stone.
+
+The Wonder made no comment on the incident as we walked home. He had
+shown no sign of fear. It occurred to me that my guardianship of him was
+merely a convenience, not a protection from any danger.
+
+
+IV
+
+As time went on it became increasingly clear to me that my chance of
+obtaining the Wonder's confidence was becoming more and more remote.
+
+At first he had replied to my questions; usually, it is true, by no more
+than an inclination of his head, but he soon ceased to make even this
+acknowledgment of my presence.
+
+So I fell by degrees into a persistent habit of silence, admitted my
+submission by obtruding neither remark nor question upon my constant
+companion, and gave up my intention of using the Wonder as a means to
+gratify my curiosity concerning the problem of existence.
+
+Once or twice I saw Crashaw at a distance. He undoubtedly recognised the
+Wonder, and I think he would have liked to come up and rebuke
+him--perhaps me, also; but probably he lacked the courage. He would
+hover within sight of us for a few minutes, scowling, and then stalk
+away. He gave me the impression of being a dangerous man, a thwarted
+fanatic, brooding over his defeat. If I had been Mrs. Stott, I should
+have feared the intrusion of Crashaw more than the foolish overtures of
+the Harrison idiot. But there was, of course, the Wonder's compelling
+power to be reckoned with, in the case of Crashaw.
+
+
+V
+
+Challis came back in early September, and it was he who first coaxed,
+and then goaded me into rebellion.
+
+Challis did not come too soon.
+
+At the end of August I was seeing visions, not pleasant, inspiriting
+visions, but the indefinite, perplexing shapes of delirium.
+
+I think it must have been in August that I stood on Deane Hill, through
+an afternoon of fine, driving rain, and had a vision of myself playing
+tricks with the sands of life.
+
+I had begun to lose my hold on reality. Silence, contemplation, a
+long-continued wrestle with the profound problems of life, were
+combining to break up the intimacy of life and matter, and my brain was
+not of the calibre to endure the strain.
+
+Challis saw at once what ailed me.
+
+He came up to the farm one morning at twelve o'clock. The date was, I
+believe, the twelfth of September. It was a brooding, heavy morning,
+with half a gale of wind blowing from the south-west, but it had not
+rained, and I was out with the Wonder when Challis arrived.
+
+He waited for me and talked to the flattered Mrs. Berridge, remonstrated
+kindly with her husband for his neglect of the farm, and incidentally
+gave him a rebate on the rent.
+
+When I came in, he insisted that I should come to lunch with him at
+Challis Court.
+
+I consented, but stipulated that I must be back at Pym by three o'clock
+to accompany the Wonder for his afternoon walk.
+
+Challis looked at me curiously, but allowed the stipulation.
+
+We hardly spoke as we walked down the hill--the habit of silence had
+grown upon me, but after lunch Challis spoke out his mind.
+
+On that occasion I hardly listened to him, but he came up to the farm
+again after tea and marched me off to dinner at the Court. I was
+strangely plastic when commanded, but when he suggested that I should
+give up my walks with the Wonder, go away ... I smiled and said
+"Impossible," as though that ended the matter.
+
+Challis, however, persisted, and I suppose I was not too far gone to
+listen to him. I remember his saying: "That problem is not for you or me
+or any man living to solve by introspection. Our work is to add
+knowledge little by little, data here and there, for future evidence."
+
+The phrase struck me, because the Wonder had once said "There are no
+data," when in the early days I had asked him whether he could say
+definitely if there was any future existence possible for us?
+
+Now Challis put it to me that our work was to find data, that every
+little item of real knowledge added to the feeble store man has
+accumulated in his few thousand years of life, was a step, the greatest
+step any man could possibly make.
+
+"But could we not get, not a small but a very important item, from
+Victor Stott?"
+
+Challis shook his head. "He is too many thousands of years ahead of us,"
+he said. "We can only bridge the gap by many centuries of patient toil.
+If a revelation were made to us, we should not understand it."
+
+So, by degrees, Challis's influence took possession of me and roused me
+to self-assertion.
+
+One morning, half in dread, I stayed at home and read a novel--no other
+reading could hold my attention--philosophy had become nauseating.
+
+I expected to see the strange little figure of the Wonder come across
+the Common, but he never came, nor did I receive any reproach from Ellen
+Mary. I think she had forgotten her fear of the Harrison idiot.
+
+Nevertheless, I did not give up my guardianship all at once. Three times
+after that morning I took the Wonder for a walk. He made no allusion to
+my defalcations. Indeed he never spoke. He relinquished me as he had
+taken me up, without comment or any expression of feeling.
+
+
+VI
+
+On the twenty-ninth of September I went down to Challis Court and stayed
+there for a week. Then I returned for a few days to Wood Farm in order
+to put my things together and pack my books. I had decided to go to
+Cairo for the winter with Challis.
+
+At half-past one o'clock on Thursday, the eighth of October, I was in
+the sitting-room, when I saw the figure of Mrs. Stott coming across the
+Common. She came with a little stumbling run. I could see that she was
+agitated even before she reached the farmyard gate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+RELEASE
+
+
+I
+
+She opened the front door without knocking, and came straight into my
+sitting-room.
+
+"'E's not 'ere," she said in a manner that left it doubtful whether she
+made an assertion or asked a question.
+
+"Your son?" I said. I had risen when she came into the room, "No; I
+haven't seen him to-day."
+
+Ellen Mary was staring at me, but it was clear that she neither saw nor
+heard me. She had a look of intense concentration. One could see that
+she was calculating, thinking, thinking....
+
+I went over to her and took her by the arm. I gently shook her. "Now,
+tell me what's the matter? What has happened?" I asked.
+
+She made an effort to collect herself, loosened her arm from my hold and
+with an instinctive movement pushed forward the old bonnet, which had
+slipped to the back of her head.
+
+"'E 'asn't been in to 'is dinner," she said hurriedly. "I've been on
+the Common looking for 'im."
+
+"He may have made a mistake in the time," I suggested.
+
+She made a movement as though to push me on one side, and turned towards
+the door. She was calculating again. Her expression said quite plainly,
+"Could he be there, could he be _there_?"
+
+"Come, come," I said, "there is surely no need to be anxious yet."
+
+She turned on me. "'E never makes a mistake in the time," she said
+fiercely, "'e always knows the time to the minute without clock or
+watch. Why did you leave 'im alone?"
+
+She broke off in her attack upon me and continued: "'E's never been late
+before, not a minute, and now it's a hour after 'is time."
+
+"He may be at home by now," I said. She took the hint instantly and
+started back again with the same stumbling little run.
+
+I picked up my hat and followed her.
+
+
+II
+
+The Wonder was not at the cottage.
+
+"Now, my dear woman, you must keep calm," I said. "There is absolutely
+no reason to be disturbed. You had better go to Challis Court and see if
+he is in the library, I----"
+
+"I'm a fool," broke in Ellen Mary with sudden decision, and she set off
+again without another word. I followed her back to the Common and
+watched her out of sight. I was more disturbed about her than about the
+non-appearance of the Wonder. He was well able to take care of himself,
+but she.... How strange that with all her calculations she had not
+thought of going to Challis Court, to the place where her son had spent
+so many days. I began to question whether the whole affair was not, in
+some way, a mysterious creation of her own disordered brain.
+
+Nevertheless, I took upon myself to carry out that part of the programme
+which I had not been allowed to state in words to Mrs. Stott, and set
+out for Deane Hill. It was just possible that the Wonder might have
+slipped down that steep incline and injured himself. Possible, but very
+unlikely; the Wonder did not take the risks common to boys of his age,
+he did not disport himself on dangerous slopes.
+
+As I walked I felt a sense of lightness, of relief from depression. I
+had not been this way by myself since the end of August. It was good to
+be alone and free.
+
+The day was fine and not cold, though the sun was hidden. I noticed that
+the woods showed scarcely a mark of autumn decline.
+
+There was not a soul to be seen by the monument. I scrambled down the
+slope and investigated the base of the hill and came back another way
+through the woods. I saw no one. I stopped continually and whistled
+loudly. If he is anywhere near at hand, I thought, and in trouble, he
+will hear that and answer me. I did not call him by name. I did not know
+what name to call. It would have seemed absurd to have called "Victor."
+No one ever addressed him by name.
+
+My return route brought me back to the south edge of the Common, the
+point most remote from the farm. There I met a labourer whom I knew by
+sight, a man named Hawke. He was carrying a stick, and prodding with it
+foolishly among the furze and gorse bushes. The bracken was already
+dying down.
+
+"What are you looking for?" I asked.
+
+"It's this 'ere Master Stott, sir," he said, looking up. "'E's got
+loarst seemingly."
+
+I felt a sudden stab of self-reproach. I had been taking things too
+easily. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to four.
+
+"Mr. Challis 'ave told me to look for 'un," added the man, and continued
+his aimless prodding of the gorse.
+
+"Where is Mr. Challis?" I asked.
+
+"'E's yonder, soomewheres." He made a vague gesture in the direction of
+Pym.
+
+The sun had come out, and the Common was all aglow. I hastened towards
+the village.
+
+On the way I met Farmer Bates and two or three labourers. They, too,
+were beating among the gorse and brown bracken. They told me that Mr.
+Challis was at the cottage and I hurried on. All the neighbourhood, it
+seems, was searching for the Wonder. In the village I saw three or four
+women standing with aprons over their heads, talking together.
+
+I had never seen Pym so animated.
+
+
+III
+
+I met Challis in the lane. He was coming away from Mrs. Stott's cottage.
+
+"Have you found him?" I asked stupidly. I knew quite well that the
+Wonder was not found, and yet I had a fond hope that I might,
+nevertheless, be mistaken.
+
+Challis shook his head. "There will be a mad woman in that cottage if he
+doesn't come back by nightfall," he remarked with a jerk of his head.
+"I've done what I can for her."
+
+I explained that I had been over to Deane Hill, searching and calling.
+
+"You didn't see anything?" asked Challis, echoing my foolish query of a
+moment before. I shook my head.
+
+We were both agitated without doubt.
+
+We soon came up with Farmer Bates and his men. They stopped and touched
+their hats when they saw us, and we put the same silly question to them.
+
+"You haven't found him?" We knew perfectly well that they would have
+announced the fact at once if they had found him.
+
+"One of you go over to the Court and get any man you can find to come
+and help," said Challis. "Tell Heathcote to send every one."
+
+One of the labourers touched his cap again, and started off at once with
+a lumbering trot.
+
+Challis and I walked on in silence, looking keenly about us and stopping
+every now and then and calling. We called "Hallo! Hallo-o!" It was an
+improvement upon my whistle.
+
+"He's such a little chap," muttered Challis once; "it would be so easy
+to miss him if he were unconscious."
+
+It struck me that the reference to the Wonder was hardly sufficiently
+respectful. I had never thought of him as "a little chap." But Challis
+had not known him so intimately as I had.
+
+The shadows were fast creeping over the Common. At the woodside it was
+already twilight. The whole of the western sky right up to the zenith
+was a finely shaded study in brilliant orange and yellow. "More rain," I
+thought instinctively, and paused for a moment to watch the sunset. The
+black distance stood clearly silhouetted against the sky. One could
+discern the sharp outline of tiny trees on the distant horizon.
+
+We met Heathcote and several other men in the lane.
+
+"Shan't be able to do much to-night, sir," said Heathcote. "It'll be
+dark in 'alf an hour, sir."
+
+"Well, do what you can in half an hour," replied Challis, and to me he
+said, "You'd better come back with me. We've done what we can."
+
+I had a picture of him then as the magnate; I had hardly thought of him
+in that light before. The arduous work of the search he could delegate
+to his inferiors. Still, he had come out himself, and I doubt not that
+he had been altogether charming to the bewildered, distraught mother.
+
+I acquiesced in his suggestion. I was beginning to feel very tired.
+
+Mrs. Heathcote was at the gate when we arrived at the Court. "'Ave they
+found 'im, sir?" she asked.
+
+"Not yet," replied Challis.
+
+I followed him into the house.
+
+
+IV
+
+As I walked back at ten o'clock it was raining steadily. I had refused
+the offer of a trap. I went through the dark and sodden wood, and
+lingered and listened. The persistent tap, tap, tap of the rain on the
+leaves irritated me. How could one hear while that noise was going on?
+There was no other sound. There was not a breath of wind. Only that
+perpetual tap, tap, tap, patter, patter, drip, tap, tap. It seemed as if
+it might go on through eternity....
+
+I went to the Stotts' cottage, though I knew there could be no news.
+Challis had given strict instructions that any news should be brought to
+him immediately. If it was bad news it was to be brought to him before
+the mother was told.
+
+There was a light burning in the cottage, and the door was set wide
+open.
+
+I went up to the door but I did not go in.
+
+Ellen Mary was sitting in a high chair, her hands clasped together, and
+she rocked continually to and fro. She made no sound; she merely rocked
+herself with a steady, regular persistence.
+
+She did not see me standing at the open door, and I moved quietly away.
+
+As I walked over the Common--I avoided the wood deliberately--I wondered
+what was the human limit of endurance. I wondered whether Ellen Mary
+had not reached that limit.
+
+Mrs. Berridge had not gone to bed, and there were some visitors in the
+kitchen. I heard them talking. Mrs. Berridge came out when I opened the
+front door.
+
+"Any news, sir?" she asked.
+
+"No; no news," I said. I had been about to ask her the same question.
+
+
+V
+
+I did not go to sleep for some time. I had a picture of Ellen Mary
+before my eyes, and I could still hear that steady pat, patter, drip, of
+the rain on the beech leaves.
+
+In the night I awoke suddenly, and thought I heard a long, wailing cry
+out on the Common. I got up and looked out of the window, but I could
+see nothing. The rain was still falling, but there was a blur of light
+that showed where the moon was shining behind the clouds. The cry, if
+there had been a cry, was not repeated.
+
+I went back to bed and soon fell asleep again.
+
+I do not know whether I had been dreaming, but I woke suddenly with a
+presentation of the little pond on the Common very clear before me.
+
+"We never looked in the pond," I thought, and then--"but he could not
+have fallen into the pond; besides, it's not two feet deep."
+
+It was full daylight, and I got up and found that it was nearly seven
+o'clock.
+
+The rain had stopped, but there was a scurry of low, threatening cloud
+that blew up from the south.
+
+I dressed at once and went out. I made my way directly to the Stotts'
+cottage.
+
+The lamp was still burning and the door open, but Ellen Mary had fallen
+forward on to the table; her head was pillowed on her arms.
+
+"There _is_ a limit to our endurance," I reflected, "and she has reached
+it."
+
+I left her undisturbed.
+
+Outside I met two of Farmer Bates's labourers going back to work.
+
+"I want you to come up with me to the pond," I said.
+
+
+VI
+
+The pond was very full.
+
+On the side from which we approached, the ground sloped gradually, and
+the water was stretching out far beyond its accustomed limits.
+
+On the farther side the gorse among the trunks of the three ash-trees
+came right to the edge of the bank. On that side the bank was three or
+four feet high.
+
+We came to the edge of the pond, and one of the labourers waded in a
+little way--the water was very shallow on that side--but we could see
+nothing for the scum of weed, little spangles of dirty green, and a mass
+of some other plant that had borne a little white flower in the earlier
+part of the year--stuff like dwarf hemlock.
+
+Under the farther bank, however, I saw one comparatively clear space of
+black water.
+
+"Let's go round," I said, and led the way.
+
+There was a tiny path which twisted between the gorse roots and came out
+at the edge of the farther bank by the stem of the tallest ash. I had
+seen tiny village boys pretending to fish from this point with a stick
+and a piece of string. There was a dead branch of ash some five or six
+feet long, with the twigs partly twisted off; it was lying among the
+bushes. I remembered that I had seen small boys using this branch to
+clear away the surface weed. I picked it up and took it with me.
+
+I wound one arm round the trunk of the ash, and peered over into the
+water under the bank.
+
+I caught sight of something white under the water. I could not see
+distinctly. I thought it was a piece of broken ware--the bottom of a
+basin. I had picked up the ash stick and was going to probe the deeper
+water with it. Then I saw that the dim white object was globular.
+
+The end of my stick was actually in the water. I withdrew it quickly,
+and threw it behind me.
+
+My heart began to throb painfully.
+
+I turned my face away and leaned against the ash-tree.
+
+"Can you see anythin'?" asked one of the labourers who had come up
+behind me.
+
+"Oh! Christ!" I said. I turned quickly from the pond and pressed a way
+through the gorse.
+
+I was overwhelmingly and disgustingly sick.
+
+
+VII
+
+By degrees the solid earth ceased to wave and sway before me like a
+rolling heave of water, and I looked up, pressing my hands to my
+head--my hands were as cold as death.
+
+My clothes were wet and muddy where I had lain on the sodden ground. I
+got to my feet and instinctively began to brush at the mud.
+
+I was still a little giddy, and I swayed and sought for support.
+
+I could see the back of one labourer. He was kneeling by the ash-tree
+bending right down over the water. The other man was standing in the
+pond, up to his waist in water and mud. I could just see his head and
+shoulders....
+
+I staggered away in the direction of the village.
+
+
+VIII
+
+I found Ellen Mary still sitting in the same chair. The lamp was
+fluttering to extinction, the flame leaping spasmodically, dying down
+till it seemed that it had gone out, and then again suddenly flickering
+up with little clicking bursts of flame. The air reeked intolerably of
+paraffin.
+
+I blew the lamp out and pushed it on one side.
+
+There was no need to break the news to Ellen Mary. She had known last
+night, and now she was beyond the reach of information.
+
+She sat upright in her chair and stared out into the immensity. Her
+hands alone moved, and they were not still for an instant. They lay in
+her lap, and her fingers writhed and picked at her dress.
+
+I spoke to her once, but I knew that her mind was beyond the reach of my
+words.
+
+"It is just as well," I thought; "but we must get her away."
+
+I went out and called to the woman next door.
+
+She was in her kitchen, but the door was open. She came out when I
+knocked.
+
+"Poor thing," she said, when I told her. "It _'as_ been a shock, no
+doubt. She was so wrapped hup in the boy."
+
+She could hardly have said less if her neighbour had lost half-a-crown.
+
+"Get her into your cottage before they come," I said harshly, and left
+her.
+
+I wanted to get out of the lane before the men came back, but I had
+hardly started before I saw them coming.
+
+They had made a chair of their arms, and were carrying him between them.
+They had not the least fear of him, now.
+
+
+IX
+
+The Harrison idiot suddenly jumped out of the hedge.
+
+I put my hand to my throat. I wanted to cry out, to stop him, but I
+could not move. I felt sick again, and utterly weak and powerless, and I
+could not take my gaze from that little doll with the great drooping
+head that rolled as the men walked.
+
+I was reminded, disgustingly, of children with a guy.
+
+The idiot ran shambling down the lane. He knew the two men, who
+tolerated him and laughed at him. He was not afraid of them nor their
+burden.
+
+He came right up to them. I heard one of the men say gruffly, "Now then,
+you cut along off!"
+
+I believe the idiot must have touched the dead body.
+
+I was gripping my throat in my hand; I was trying desperately to cry
+out.
+
+Whether the idiot actually touched the body or not I cannot say, but he
+must have realised in his poor, bemused brain that the thing was dead.
+
+He cried out with his horrible, inhuman cry, turned, and ran up the lane
+towards me. He fell on his face a few yards from me, scrambled wildly to
+his feet again and came on yelping and shrieking. He was wildly,
+horribly afraid. I caught sight of his face as he passed me, and his
+mouth was distorted into a square, his upper lip horribly drawn up over
+his ragged, yellow teeth. Suddenly he dashed at the hedge and clawed his
+way through. I heard him still yelping appallingly as he rushed away
+across the field....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+IMPLICATIONS
+
+
+I
+
+The jury returned a verdict of "Accidental death."
+
+If there had been any traces of a struggle, I had not noticed them when
+I came to the edge of the pond. There may have been marks as if a foot
+had slipped. I was not thinking of evidence when I looked into the
+water.
+
+There were marks enough when the police came to investigate, but they
+were the marks made by a twelve-stone man in hobnail boots, who had
+scrambled into, and out of, the pond. As the inspector said, it was not
+worth while wasting any time in looking for earlier traces of footsteps
+below those marks.
+
+Nor were there any signs of violence on the body. It was in no way
+disfigured, save by the action of the water, in which it had lain for
+perhaps eighteen hours.
+
+There was, indeed, only one point of any significance from the jury's
+point of view, and that they put on one side, if they considered it at
+all; the body was pressed into the mud.
+
+The Coroner asked a few questions about this fact.
+
+Was the mud very soft? Yes, very soft, liquid on top.
+
+How was the body lying? Face downwards.
+
+What part of the body was deepest in the mud? The chest. The witness
+said he had hard work to get the upper part of the body released; the
+head was free, but the mud held the rest. "The mooad soocked like," was
+the expressive phrase of the witness.
+
+The Coroner passed on to other things. Had any one a spite against the
+child? and such futilities. Only once more did he revert to that
+solitary significant fact. "Would it be possible," he asked of the
+abashed and self-conscious labourer, "would it be possible for the body
+to have worked its way down into the soft mud as you have described it
+to have been found?"
+
+"We-el," said the witness, "'twas in the stacky mooad, 'twas through the
+sarft stoof."
+
+"But this soft mud would suck any solid body down, would it not?"
+persisted the Coroner.
+
+And the witness recalled the case of a duck that had been sucked into
+the same soft pond mud the summer before, and cited the instance. He
+forgot to add that on that occasion the mud had not been under water.
+
+The Coroner accepted the instance. There can be no question that both he
+and the jury were anxious to accept the easier explanation.
+
+
+II
+
+But I know perfectly well that the Wonder did not fall into the pond by
+accident.
+
+I should have known, even if that conclusive evidence with regard to his
+being pushed into the mud had never come to light.
+
+He may have stood by the ash-tree and looked into the water, but he
+would never have fallen. He was too perfectly controlled; and, with all
+his apparent abstraction, no one was ever more alive to the detail of
+his surroundings. He and I have walked together perforce in many
+slippery places, but I have never known him to fall or even begin to
+lose his balance, whereas I have gone down many times.
+
+Yes; I know that he was pushed into the pond, and I know that he was
+held down in the mud, most probably by the aid of that ash stick I had
+held. But it was not for me to throw suspicion on any one at that
+inquest, and I preferred to keep my thoughts and my inferences to
+myself. I should have done so, even if I had been in possession of
+stronger evidence.
+
+I hope that it was the Harrison idiot who was to blame. He was not
+dangerous in the ordinary sense, but he might quite well have done the
+thing in play--as he understood it. Only I cannot quite understand his
+pushing the body down after it fell. That seems to argue
+vindictiveness--and a logic which I can hardly attribute to the idiot.
+Still, who can tell what went on in the distorted mind of that poor
+creature? He is reported to have rescued the dead body of a rabbit from
+the undergrowth on one occasion, and to have blubbered when he could not
+bring it back to life.
+
+There is but one other person who could have been implicated, and I
+hesitate to name him in this place. Yet one remembers what terrific acts
+of misapplied courage and ferocious brutality the fanatics of history
+have been capable of performing when their creed and their authority
+have been set at naught.
+
+
+III
+
+Ellen Mary never recovered her sanity. She died a few weeks ago in the
+County Asylum. I hear that her husband attended the funeral. When she
+lost her belief in the supernal wisdom and power of her god, her world
+must have fallen about her. The thing she had imagined to be solid,
+real, everlasting, had proved to be friable and destructible like all
+other human building.
+
+
+IV
+
+The Wonder is buried in Chilborough churchyard.
+
+You may find the place by its proximity to the great marble mausoleum
+erected over the remains of Sir Edward Bigg, the well-known brewer and
+philanthropist.
+
+The grave of Victor Stott is marked by a small stone, some six inches
+high, which is designed to catch the foot rather than the eye of the
+seeker.
+
+The stone bears the initials "V. S.," and a date--no more.
+
+
+V
+
+I saw the Wonder before he was buried.
+
+I went up into the little bedroom and looked at him in his tiny coffin.
+
+I was no longer afraid of him. His power over me was dissipated. He was
+no greater and no less than any other dead thing.
+
+It was the same with every one. He had become that "poor little boy of
+Mrs. Stott's." No one spoke of him with respect now. No one seemed to
+remember that he had been in any way different from other "poor little
+fellows" who had died an untimely death.
+
+One thing did strike me as curious. The idiot, the one person who had
+never feared him living, had feared him horribly when he was dead....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+THE USES OF MYSTERY
+
+Something Challis has told me; something I have learned for myself; and
+there is something which has come to me from an unknown source.
+
+But here again we are confronted with the original difficulty--the
+difficulty that for some conceptions there is no verbal figure.
+
+It is comprehensible, it is, indeed, obvious that the deeper abstract
+speculation of the Wonder's thought cannot be set out by any metaphor
+that would be understood by a lesser intelligence.
+
+We see that many philosophers, whose utterances have been recorded in
+human history--that record which floats like a drop of oil on the
+limitless ocean of eternity--have been confronted with this same
+difficulty, and have woven an intricate and tedious design of words in
+their attempt to convey some single conception--some conception which
+themselves could see but dimly when disguised in the masquerade of
+language; some figure that as it was limned grew ever more confused
+beneath the wrappings of metaphor, so that we who read can glimpse
+scarce a hint of its original shape and likeness. We see, also, that the
+very philosophers who caricatured their own eidolon, became intrigued
+with the logical abstraction of words and were led away into a
+wilderness of barren deduction--their one inspired vision of a stable
+premiss distorted and at last forgotten.
+
+How then shall we hope to find words to adumbrate a philosophy which
+starts by the assumption that we can have no impression of reality until
+we have rid ourselves of the interposing and utterly false concepts of
+space and time, which delimit the whole world of human thought.
+
+I admit that one cannot even begin to do this thing; within our present
+limitations our whole machinery of thought is built of these two
+original concepts. They are the only gauges wherewith we may measure
+every reality, every abstraction; wherewith we may give outline to any
+image or process of the mind. Only when we endeavour to grapple with
+that indeterminable mystery of consciousness can we conceive, however
+dimly, some idea of a pure abstraction uninfluenced by and independent
+of, those twin bases of our means of thought.
+
+Here it is that Challis has paused. Here he says that we must wait, that
+no revelation can reveal what we are incapable of understanding, that
+only by the slow process of evolution can we attain to any understanding
+of the mystery we have sought to solve by our futile and primitive
+hypotheses.
+
+"But then," I have pressed him, "why do you hesitate to speak of what
+you heard on that afternoon?"
+
+And once he answered me:
+
+"I glimpsed a finality," he said, "and that appalled me. Don't you see
+that ignorance is the means of our intellectual pleasure? It is the
+solving of the problem that brings enjoyment--the solved problem has no
+further interest. So when all is known, the stimulus for action ceases;
+when all is known there is quiescence, nothingness. Perfect knowledge
+implies the peace of death, implies the state of being one--our
+pleasures are derived from action, from differences, from heterogeneity.
+
+"Oh! pity the child," said Challis, "for whom there could be no mystery.
+Is not mystery the first and greatest joy of life? Beyond the gate there
+is unexplored mystery for us in our childhood. When that is explored,
+there are new and wonderful possibilities beyond the hills, then beyond
+the seas, beyond the known world, in the everyday chances and movements
+of the unknown life in which we are circumstanced.
+
+"Surely we should all perish through sheer inanity, or die desperately
+by suicide if no mystery remained in the world. Mystery takes a thousand
+beautiful shapes; it lurks even in the handiwork of man, in a stone god,
+or in some mighty, intricate machine, incomprehensibly deliberate and
+determined. The imagination endows the man-made thing with consciousness
+and powers, whether of reservation or aloofness; the similitude of
+meditation and profundity is wrought into stone. Is there not source for
+mystery to the uninstructed in the great machine registering the
+progress of its own achievement with each solemn, recurrent beat of its
+metal pulse?
+
+"Behind all these things is the wonder of the imagination that never
+approaches more nearly to the creation of a hitherto unknown image than
+when it thus hesitates on the verge of mystery.
+
+"There is yet so much, so very much cause for wondering speculation.
+Science gains ground so slowly. Slowly it has outlined, however vaguely,
+the uncertainties of our origin so far as this world is concerned, while
+the mystic has fought for his entrancing fairy tales one by one.
+
+"The mystic still holds his enthralling belief in the succession of
+peoples who have risen and died--the succeeding world-races, red, black,
+yellow, and white, which have in turn dominated this planet. Science
+with its hammer and chisel may lay bare evidence, may collate material,
+date man's appearance, call him the most recent of placental mammals,
+trace his superstitions and his first conceptions of a god from the
+elemental fears of the savage. But the mystic turns aside with an
+assumption of superior knowledge; he waves away objective evidence; he
+has a certainty impressed upon his mind.
+
+"And the mystic is a power. He compels a multitude of followers, because
+he offers an attraction greater than the facts of science. He tells of a
+mystery profounder than any problem solved by patient investigation,
+because his mystery is incomprehensible even by himself; and in fear
+lest any should comprehend it, he disguises the approach with an array
+of lesser mysteries, man-made; with terminologies, symbologies and high
+talk of esotericism too fearful for any save the initiate.
+
+"But we must preserve our mystic in some form against the awful time
+when science shall have determined a limit; when the long history of
+evolution shall be written in full, and every stage of world-building
+shall be made plain. When the cycle of atomic dust to atomic dust is
+demonstrated, and the detail of the life-process is taught and
+understood, we shall have a fierce need for the mystic to save us from
+the futility of a world we understand, to lie to us if need be, to
+inspirit our material and regular minds with some breath of delicious
+madness. We shall need the mystic then, or the completeness of our
+knowledge will drive us at last to complete the dusty circle in our
+eagerness to escape from a world we understand....
+
+"See how man clings to his old and useless traditions; see how he
+opposes at every step the awful force of progress. At each stage he
+protests that the thing that is, is good, or that the thing that was and
+has gone, was better. He despises new knowledge and fondly clings to the
+belief that once men were greater than they now are. He looks back to
+the more primitive, and endows it with that mystery he cannot find in
+his own times. So have men ever looked lingeringly behind them. It is an
+instinct, a great and wonderful inheritance that postpones the moment of
+disillusionment.
+
+"We are still mercifully surrounded with the countless mysteries of
+everyday experience, all the evidences of the unimaginable stimulus we
+call life. Would you take them away? Would you resolve life into a
+disease of the ether--a disease of which you and I, all life and all
+matter, are symptoms? Would you teach that to the child, and explain to
+him that the wonder of life and growth is no wonder, but a demonstrable
+result of impeded force, to be evaluated by the application of an
+adequate formula?
+
+"You and I," said Challis, "are children in the infancy of the world.
+Let us to our play in the nursery of our own times. The day will come,
+perhaps, when humanity shall have grown and will have to take upon
+itself the heavy burden of knowledge. But you need not fear that that
+will be in our day, nor in a thousand years.
+
+"Meanwhile leave us our childish fancies, our little imaginings, our
+hope--children that we are--of those impossible mysteries beyond the
+hills...."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wonder, by J. D. Beresford
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wonder, by J. D. Beresford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wonder
+
+Author: J. D. Beresford
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2008 [EBook #27188]
+
+Language: English
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WONDER ***
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+
+
+<h1>THE WONDER</h1>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="bk1"><big><span class="smcap">By</span> J. D. <span class="sp1">BERESFORD</span></big></div>
+
+<div class="bk2"><p>These Lynnekers</p>
+<p>The Early History of Jacob Stahl</p>
+<p>A Candidate for Truth</p>
+<p>The Invisible Event</p>
+<p>The House in Demetrius Road</p></div>
+
+<div class="bk1"><big>GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br />
+NEW YORK</big></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1>THE<br />
+<big>WONDER</big></h1>
+
+<div class="bk3"><p class="center">BY</p>
+
+<h2>J. D. BERESFORD</h2>
+<div class="center"><small>AUTHOR OF "THESE LYNNEKERS," "THE STORY OF JACOB STAHL," ETC.</small></div></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/001.png" width="87" height="100" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="bk6">NEW YORK<br />
+<big>GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</big></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="bk4">COPYRIGHT, 1917,<br />
+BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</div>
+
+<div class="center"><small>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</small></div>
+
+<div class="trn"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b>
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+Dialect and variant spellings have been retained.
+Greek text appears as originally printed, but with a mouse-hover transliteration, <span title="Biblos">&#914;&#953;&#946;&#955;&#959;&#962;</span>.</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="bk5"><small>TO</small><br />
+<small>MY FRIEND AND CRITIC</small><br />
+HUGH WALPOLE</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr class="tr1"><td colspan="3"><big>PART ONE</big></td></tr>
+<tr class="tr2"><td colspan="3">MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1"><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td class="td1" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">I.</td><td class="td2">The Motive</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">II.</td><td class="td2">Notes for a Biography of Ginger Stott</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">III.</td><td class="td2">The Disillusionment of Ginger Stott</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr class="tr1"><td colspan="3"><big>PART TWO</big></td></tr>
+<tr class="tr2"><td colspan="3">THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">IV.</td><td class="td2">The Manner of His Birth</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">V.</td><td class="td2">His Departure from Stoke-Underhill</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">VI.</td><td class="td2">His Father's Desertion</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">VII.</td><td class="td2">His Debt to Henry Challis</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">VIII.</td><td class="td2">His First Visit to Challis Court</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">&nbsp;</td><td class="td2">Interlude</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td></tr>
+<tr class="tr1"><td colspan="3">THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">IX.</td><td class="td2">His Passage through the Prison of Knowledge</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">X.</td><td class="td2">His Pastors and Masters</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">XI.</td><td class="td2">His Examination</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_193">193</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">XII.</td><td class="td2">His Interview with Herr Grossmann</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">XIII.</td><td class="td2">Fugitive</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+<tr class="tr1"><td colspan="3"><big>PART THREE</big></td></tr>
+<tr class="tr2"><td colspan="3">MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">XIV.</td><td class="td2">How I Went to Pym to Write a Book</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">XV.</td><td class="td2">The Incipience of My Subjection to the Wonder</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">XVI.</td><td class="td2">The Progress and Relaxation of My Subjection</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_267">267</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">XVII.</td><td class="td2">Release</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">XVIII.</td><td class="td2">Implications</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="td1">XIX.</td><td class="td2">Epilogue: The Uses of Mystery</td><td class="td1"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="bk5">PART ONE<br />
+<big>MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT</big></div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+<div class="bk5"><big>PART ONE</big><br />
+MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT</div>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I<br />
+<small>THE MOTIVE</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">I could</span> not say at which station the woman and
+her baby entered the train.</p>
+
+<p>Since we had left London, I had been struggling
+with Baillie's translation of Hegel's "Phenomenology."
+It was not a book to read among such
+distracting circumstances as those of a railway
+journey, but I was eagerly planning a little dissertation
+of my own at that time, and my work as
+a journalist gave me little leisure for quiet study.</p>
+
+<p>I looked up when the woman entered my compartment,
+though I did not notice the name of the
+station. I caught sight of the baby she was carrying,
+and turned back to my book. I thought the
+child was a freak, an abnormality; and such
+things disgust me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I returned to the study of my Hegel and read:
+"For knowledge is not the divergence of the ray,
+but the ray itself by which the truth comes to us;
+and if this ray be removed, the bare direction or
+the empty place would alone be indicated."</p>
+
+<p>I kept my eyes on the book&mdash;the train had started
+again&mdash;but the next passage conveyed no meaning
+to my mind, and as I attempted to re-read it an
+impression was interposed between me and the
+work I was studying.</p>
+
+<p>I saw projected on the page before me an image
+which I mistook at first for the likeness of Richard
+Owen. It was the conformation of the head that
+gave rise to the mistake, a head domed and massive,
+white and smooth&mdash;it was a head that had always
+interested me. But as I looked, my mind already
+searching for the reason of this hallucination, I
+saw that the lower part of the face was that of an
+infant. My eyes wandered from the book, and my
+gaze fluttered along the four persons seated opposite
+to me, till it rested on the reality of my vision.
+And even as my attention was thus irresistibly
+dragged from my book, my mind clung with a feeble
+desperation to its task, and I murmured under my
+breath like a child repeating a mechanically learned
+lesson: "Knowledge is not the divergence of the ray
+but the ray itself...."</p>
+
+<p>For several seconds the eyes of the infant held<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+mine. Its gaze was steady and clear as that of a
+normal child, but what differentiated it was the
+impression one received of calm intelligence. The
+head was completely bald, and there was no trace
+of eyebrows, but the eyes themselves were protected
+by thick, short lashes.</p>
+
+<p>The child turned its head, and I felt my muscles
+relax. Until then I had not been conscious that
+they had been stiffened. My gaze was released,
+pushed aside as it were, and I found myself watching
+the object of the child's next scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>This object was a man of forty or so, inclined
+to corpulence, and untidy. He bore the evidences
+of failure in the process of becoming. He wore
+a beard that was scanty and ragged, there were
+bald patches of skin on the jaw; one inferred
+that he wore that beard only to save the trouble
+of shaving. He was sitting next to me, the middle
+passenger of the three on my side of the carriage,
+and he was absorbed in the pages of a half-penny
+paper&mdash;I think he was reading the police reports&mdash;which
+was interposed between him and the child
+in the corner diagonally opposite to that which I
+occupied.</p>
+
+<p>The man was hunched up, slouching, his legs
+crossed, his elbows seeking support against his body;
+he held his clumsily folded paper close to his eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+He had the appearance of being very myopic, but
+he did not wear glasses.</p>
+
+<p>As I watched him, he began to fidget. He uncrossed
+his legs and hunched his body deeper
+into the back of his seat. Presently his eyes began
+to creep up the paper in front of him. When
+they reached the top, he hesitated a moment,
+making a survey under cover, then he dropped his
+hands and stared stupidly at the infant in the corner,
+his mouth slightly open, his feet pulled in under
+the seat of the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>As the child let him go, his head drooped, and
+then he turned and looked at me with a silly, vacuous
+smile. I looked away hurriedly; this was not
+a man with whom I cared to share experience.</p>
+
+<p>The process was repeated. The next victim was
+a big, rubicund, healthy-looking man, clean shaved,
+with light-blue eyes that were slightly magnified by
+the glasses of his gold-mounted spectacles. He, too,
+had been reading a newspaper&mdash;the <i>Evening Standard</i>&mdash;until
+the child's gaze claimed his attention, and
+he, too, was held motionless by that strange, appraising
+stare. But when he was released, his
+surprise found vent in words. "This," I thought,
+"is the man accustomed to act."</p>
+
+<p>"A very remarkable child, ma'am," he said, addressing
+the thin, ascetic-looking mother.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>The mother's appearance did not convey the impression
+of poverty. She was, indeed, warmly,
+decently, and becomingly clad. She wore a long
+black coat, braided and frogged; it had the air of
+belonging to an older fashion, but the material of
+it was new. And her bonnet, trimmed with jet
+ornaments growing on stalks that waved tremulously&mdash;that,
+also, was a modern replica of an older mode.
+On her hands were black thread gloves, somewhat
+ill-fitting.</p>
+
+<p>Her face was not that of a country woman. The
+thin, high-bridged nose, the fallen cheeks, the shadows
+under eyes gloomy and retrospective&mdash;these
+were marks of the town; above all, perhaps, that
+sallow greyness of the skin which speaks of confinement....</p>
+
+<p>The child looked healthy enough. Its great bald
+head shone resplendently like a globe of alabaster.</p>
+
+<p>"A very remarkable child, ma'am," said the rubicund
+man who sat facing the woman.</p>
+
+<p>The woman twitched her untidy-looking black eyebrows,
+her head trembled slightly and set the jet
+fruit of her bonnet dancing and nodding.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Very remarkable," said the man, adjusting his
+spectacles and leaning forward. His action had an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+air of deliberate courage; he was justifying his fortitude
+after that temporary aberration.</p>
+
+<p>I watched him a little nervously. I remembered
+my feelings when, as a child, I had seen some magnificent
+enter the lion's den in a travelling circus.
+The failure on my right was, also, absorbed in the
+spectacle; he stared, open-mouthed, his eyes blinking
+and shifting.</p>
+
+<p>The other three occupants of the compartment,
+sitting on the same side as the woman, back to the
+engine, dropped papers and magazines and turned
+their heads, all interest. None of these three had,
+so far as I had observed, fallen under the spell of
+inspection by the infant, but I noticed that the man&mdash;an
+artisan apparently&mdash;who sat next to the
+woman had edged away from her, and that the three
+passengers opposite to me were huddled towards
+my end of the compartment.</p>
+
+<p>The child had abstracted its gaze, which was now
+directed down the aisle of the carriage, indefinitely
+focussed on some point outside the window. It
+seemed remote, entirely unconcerned with any human
+being.</p>
+
+<p>I speak of it asexually. I was still uncertain as
+to its sex. It is true that all babies look alike to
+me; but I should have known that this child was
+male, the conformation of the skull alone should
+have told me that. It was its dress that gave me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+cause to hesitate. It was dressed absurdly, not in
+"long-clothes," but in a long frock that hid its feet
+and was bunched about its body.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;does it&mdash;er&mdash;can it&mdash;talk?" hesitated the
+rubicund man, and I grew hot at his boldness. There
+seemed to be something disrespectful in speaking
+before the child in this impersonal way.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, he's never made a sound," replied the
+woman, twitching and vibrating. Her heavy, dark
+eyebrows jerked spasmodically, nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Never cried?" persisted the interrogator.</p>
+
+<p>"Never once, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Dumb, eh?" He said it as an aside, half under
+his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"'E's never spoke, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm!" The man cleared his throat and braced
+himself with a deliberate and obvious effort. "Is it&mdash;he&mdash;not
+water on the brain&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>I felt that a rigour of breathless suspense held
+every occupant of the compartment. I wanted, and
+I know that every other person there wanted, to
+say, "Look out! Don't go too far." The child,
+however, seemed unconscious of the insult: he still
+stared out through the window, lost in profound
+contemplation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, oh no!" replied the woman. "'E's got
+more sense than a ordinary child." She held the
+infant as if it were some priceless piece of earthenware,
+not nursing it as a woman nurses a baby, but
+balancing it with supreme attention in her lap.</p>
+
+<p>"How old is he?"</p>
+
+<p>We had been awaiting this question.</p>
+
+<p>"A year and nine munse, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Ought to have spoken before that, oughtn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never even cried, sir," said the woman. She
+regarded the child with a look into which I read
+something of apprehension. If it were apprehension
+it was a feeling that we all shared. But the rubicund
+man was magnificent, though, like the lion tamer of
+my youthful experience, he was doubtless conscious
+of the aspect his temerity wore in the eyes of beholders.
+He must have been showing off.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you taken opinion?" he asked; and then,
+seeing the woman's lack of comprehension, he translated
+the question&mdash;badly, for he conveyed a different
+meaning&mdash;thus,</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, have you had a doctor for him?"</p>
+
+<p>The train was slackening speed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And what do <i>they</i> say?"</p>
+
+<p>The child turned its head and looked the rubicund
+man full in the eyes. Never in the face of any man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+or woman have I seen such an expression of sublime
+pity and contempt....</p>
+
+<p>I remembered a small urchin I had once seen at
+the Zoological Gardens. Urged on by a band of
+other urchins, he was throwing pebbles at a great
+lion that lolled, finely indifferent, on the floor of its
+playground. Closer crept the urchin; he grew splendidly
+bold; he threw larger and larger pebbles, until
+the lion rose suddenly with a roar, and dashed
+fiercely down to the bars of its cage.</p>
+
+<p>I thought of that urchin's scared, shrieking face
+now, as the rubicund man leant quickly back into
+his corner.</p>
+
+<p>Yet that was not all, for the infant, satisfied,
+perhaps, with its victim's ignominy, turned and
+looked at me with a cynical smile. I was, as it
+were, taken into its confidence. I felt flattered, undeservedly
+yet enormously flattered. I blushed, I
+may have simpered.</p>
+
+<p>The train drew up in Great Hittenden station.</p>
+
+<p>The woman gathered her priceless possession carefully
+into her arms, and the rubicund man adroitly
+opened the door for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Good day, sir," she said, as she got out.</p>
+
+<p>"Good day," echoed the rubicund man with relief,
+and we all drew a deep breath of relief with
+him in concert, as though we had just witnessed the
+safe descent of some over-daring aviator.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>As the train moved on, we six, who had been fellow-passengers
+for some thirty or forty minutes before
+the woman had entered our compartment, we
+who had not till then exchanged a word, broke suddenly
+into general conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Water on the brain; I don't care what any one
+says," asserted the rubicund man.</p>
+
+<p>"My sister had one very similar," put in the failure,
+who was sitting next to me. "It died," he
+added, by way of giving point to his instance.</p>
+
+<p>"Ought not to exhibit freaks like that in public,"
+said an old man opposite to me.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, sir," was the verdict of the artisan,
+and he spat carefully and scraped his boot on
+the floor; "them things ought to be kep' private."</p>
+
+<p>"Mad, of course, that's to say imbecile," repeated
+the rubicund man.</p>
+
+<p>"Horrid head he'd got," said the failure, and
+shivered histrionically.</p>
+
+<p>They continued to demonstrate their contempt
+for the infant by many asseverations. The reaction
+grew. They were all bold now, and all wanted to
+speak. They spoke as the survivors from some
+common peril; they were increasingly anxious to
+demonstrate that they had never suffered intimidation,
+and in their relief they were anxious to laugh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+at the thing which had for a time subdued them.
+But they never named it as a cause for fear. Their
+speech was merely innuendo.</p>
+
+<p>At the last, however, I caught an echo of the true
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p>It was the rubicund man who, most daring during
+the crisis, was now bold enough to admit curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"What's your opinion, sir?" he said to me. The
+train was running into Wenderby; he was preparing
+to get out; he leaned forward, his fingers on the
+handle of the door.</p>
+
+<p>I was embarrassed. Why had I been singled out
+by the child? I had taken no part in the recent
+interjectory conversation. Was this a consequence
+of the notice that had been paid to me?</p>
+
+<p>"I?" I stammered, and then reverted to the rubicund
+man's original phrase, "It&mdash;it was certainly a
+very remarkable child," I said.</p>
+
+<p>The rubicund man nodded and pursed his lips.
+"Very," he muttered as he alighted, "Very remarkable.
+Well, good day to you."</p>
+
+<p>I returned to my book, and was surprised to find
+that my index finger was still marking the place at
+which I had been interrupted some fifteen minutes
+before. My arm felt stiff and cramped.</p>
+
+<p>I read: "... and if this ray be removed, the
+bare direction or the empty place would alone be
+indicated."</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II<br />
+<small>NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF GINGER STOTT</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Ginger Stott</span> is a name that was once as well known
+as any in England. Stott has been the subject of
+leading articles in every daily paper; his life has
+been written by an able journalist who interviewed
+Stott himself, during ten crowded minutes, and filled
+three hundred pages with details, seventy per cent.
+of which were taken from the journals, and the remainder
+supplied by a brilliant imagination. Ten
+years ago Ginger Stott was on a pinnacle, there was
+a Stott vogue. You found his name at the bottom
+of signed articles written by members of the editorial
+staff; you bought Stott collars, although
+Stott himself did not wear collars; there was a Stott
+waltz, which is occasionally hummed by clerks, and
+whistled by errand-boys to this day; there was a
+periodical which lived for ten months, entitled <i>Ginger
+Stott's Weekly</i>; in brief, during one summer
+there was a Stott apotheosis.</p>
+
+<p>But that was ten years ago, and the rising generation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+has almost forgotten the once well-known name.
+One rarely sees him mentioned in the morning paper
+now, and then it is but the briefest reference;
+some such note as this "Pickering was at the top
+of his form, recalling the finest achievements of Ginger
+Stott at his best," or "Flack is a magnificent
+find for Kent: he promises to completely surpass the
+historic feats of Ginger Stott." These journalistic
+superlatives only irritate those who remember the
+performances referred to. We who watched the
+man's career know that Pickering and Flack are but
+tyros compared to Stott; we know that none of his
+successors has challenged comparison with him. He
+was a meteor that blazed across the sky, and if he
+ever has a true successor, such stars as Pickering
+and Flack will shine pale and dim in comparison.</p>
+
+<p>It makes one feel suddenly old to recall that great
+matin&eacute;e at the Lyceum, given for Ginger Stott's
+benefit after he met with his accident. In ten years
+so many great figures in that world have died or
+fallen into obscurity. I can count on my fingers
+the number of those who were then, and are still, in
+the forefront of popularity. Of the others poor
+Captain Wallis, for instance, is dead&mdash;and no modern
+writer, in my opinion, can equal the brilliant descriptiveness
+of Wallis's articles in the <i>Daily Post</i>.
+Bobby Maisefield, again, Stott's colleague, is a martyr
+to rheumatism, and keeps a shop in Ailesworth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+the scene of so many of his triumphs. What a
+list one might make, but how uselessly. It is enough
+to note how many names have dropped out, how
+many others are the names of those we now speak
+of as veterans. In ten years! It certainly makes
+one feel old.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>No apology is needed for telling again the story
+of Stott's career. Certain details will still be familiar,
+it is true, the historic details that can never
+be forgotten while cricket holds place as our national
+game. But there are many facts of Stott's
+life familiar to me, which have never been made
+public property. If I must repeat that which is
+known, I can give the known a new setting; perhaps
+a new value.</p>
+
+<p>He came of mixed races. His mother was pure
+Welsh, his father a Yorkshire collier; but when Ginger
+was nine years old his father died, and Mrs.
+Stott came to live in Ailesworth where she had immigrant
+relations, and it was there that she set
+up the little paper-shop, the business by which she
+maintained herself and her boy. That shop is still
+in existence, and the name has not been altered.
+You may find it in the little street that runs off the
+market place, going down towards the Borstal Institution.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are many people alive in Ailesworth to-day
+who can remember the sturdy, freckled, sandy-haired
+boy who used to go round with the morning
+and evening papers; the boy who was to change the
+fortunes of a county.</p>
+
+<p>Ginger was phenomenally thorough in all he undertook.
+It was one of the secrets of his success.
+It was this thoroughness that kept him engaged in
+his mother's little business until he was seventeen.
+Up to that age he never found time for cricket&mdash;sufficient
+evidence of his remarkable and most unusual
+qualities.</p>
+
+<p>It was sheer chance, apparently, that determined
+his choice of a career.</p>
+
+<p>He had walked into Stoke-Underhill to deliver a
+parcel, and on his way back his attention was arrested
+by the sight of a line of vehicles drawn up
+to the boarded fencing that encloses the Ailesworth
+County Ground. The occupants of these vehicles
+were standing up, struggling to catch a sight of the
+match that was being played behind the screen
+erected to shut out non-paying sightseers. Among
+the horses' feet, squirming between the spokes of
+wheels, utterly regardless of all injury, small boys
+glued their eyes to knot-holes in the fence, while
+others climbed surreptitiously, and for the most part
+unobserved, on to the backs of tradesmen's carts.
+All these individuals were in a state of tremendous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+excitement, and even the policeman whose duty it
+was to move them on, was so engrossed in watching
+the game that he had disappeared inside the turnstile,
+and had given the outside spectators full opportunity
+for eleemosynary enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>That tarred fence has since been raised some six
+feet, and now encloses a wider sweep of ground&mdash;alterations
+that may be classed among the minor
+revolutions effected by the genius of the thick-set,
+fair-haired youth of seventeen, who paused on that
+early September afternoon to wonder what all the
+fuss was about. The Ailesworth County Ground
+was not famous in those days; not then was accommodation
+needed for thirty thousand spectators,
+drawn from every county in England to witness the
+unparallelled.</p>
+
+<p>Ginger stopped. The interest of the spectacle
+pierced his absorption in the business he had in
+hand. Such a thing was almost unprecedented.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up?" he asked of Puggy Phillips.</p>
+
+<p>Puggy Phillips&mdash;hazarding his life by standing on
+the shiny, slightly curved top of his butcher's cart&mdash;made
+no appropriate answer. "Yah&mdash;<i>ah</i>&mdash;<span class="smcapl">AH</span>!"
+he screamed in ecstasy. "Oh! played! Pla-a-a-ayed!!"</p>
+
+<p>Ginger wasted no more breath, but laid hold of
+the little brass rail that encircled Puggy's platform,
+and with a sudden hoist that lifted the shafts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+and startled the pony, raised himself to the level
+of a spectator.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ere!" shouted the swaying, tottering Puggy.
+"What the ... are yer rup to?"</p>
+
+<p>The well-drilled pony, however, settled down again
+quietly to maintain his end of the see-saw, and, finding
+himself still able to preserve his equilibrium,
+Puggy instantly forgot the presence of the intruder.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up?" asked Ginger again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Well <i>'it</i>, <span class="smcapl">WELL 'IT</span>!" yelled Puggy. "Oh!
+Gow on, gow on agen! Run it <i>aht</i>. Run it <span class="smcapl">AH-T</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Ginger gave it up, and turned his attention to
+the match.</p>
+
+<p>It was not any famous struggle that was being
+fought out on the old Ailesworth Ground; it was
+only second-class cricket, the deciding match of the
+Minor Counties championship. Hampdenshire and
+Oxfordshire, old rivals, had been neck-and-neck all
+through the season, and, as luck would have it, the
+engagement between them had been the last fixture
+on the card.</p>
+
+<p>When Ginger rose to the level of spectator, the
+match was anybody's game. Bobby Maisefield was
+batting. He was then a promising young colt who
+had not earned a fixed place in the Eleven. Ginger
+knew him socially, but they were not friends, they
+had no interests in common. Bobby had made
+twenty-seven. He was partnered by old Trigson,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+the bowler, (he has been dead these eight years,)
+whose characteristic score of "Not out ... 0,"
+is sufficiently representative of his methods.</p>
+
+<p>It was the fourth innings, and Hampdenshire
+with only one more wicket to fall, still required nineteen
+runs to win. Trigson could be relied upon to
+keep his wicket up, but not to score. The hopes of
+Ailesworth centred in the ability of that almost untried
+colt Bobby Maisefield&mdash;and he seemed likely to
+justify the trust reposed in him. A beautiful late
+cut that eluded third man and hit the fence with
+a resounding bang, nearly drove Puggy wild with
+delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Only fifteen more," he shouted. "Oh! Played;
+pla-a-a-yed!"</p>
+
+<p>But as the score crept up, the tensity grew. As
+each ball was delivered, a chill, rigid silence held
+the onlookers in its grip. When Trigson, with
+the field collected round him, almost to be covered
+with a sheet, stonewalled the most tempting lob, the
+click of the ball on his bat was an intrusion on the
+stillness. And always it was followed by a deep
+breath of relief that sighed round the ring like a
+faint wind through a plantation of larches. When
+Bobby scored, the tumult broke out like a crash
+of thunder; but it subsided again, echoless, to that
+intense silence so soon as the ball was "dead."</p>
+
+<p>Curiously, it was not Bobby who made the winning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+hit but Trigson. "One to tie, two to win,"
+breathed Puggy as the field changed over, and it was
+Trigson who had to face the bowling. The suspense
+was torture. Oxford had put on their fast
+bowler again, and Trigson, intimidated, perhaps, did
+not play him with quite so straight a bat as he had
+opposed to the lob-bowler. The ball hit Trigson's
+bat and glanced through the slips. The field was
+very close to the wicket, and the ball was travelling
+fast. No one seemed to make any attempt to stop
+it. For a moment the significance of the thing was
+not realised; for a moment only, then followed uproar,
+deafening, stupendous.</p>
+
+<p>Puggy was stamping fiercely on the top of his
+cart; the tears were streaming down his face; he
+was screaming and yelling incoherent words. And
+he was representative of the crowd. Thus men
+shouted and stamped and cried when news came of
+the relief of Kimberley, or when that false report
+of victory was brought to Paris in the August of
+1870....</p>
+
+<p>The effect upon Ginger was a thing apart. He
+did not join in the fierce acclamation; he did not
+wait to see the chairing of Bobby and Trigson. The
+greatness of Stott's character, the fineness of his
+genius is displayed in his attitude towards the dramatic
+spectacle he had just witnessed.</p>
+
+<p>As he trudged home into Ailesworth, his thoughts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+found vent in a muttered sentence which is peculiarly
+typical of the effect that had been made upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I could have bowled that chap," he
+said.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>In writing a history of this kind, a certain licence
+must be claimed. It will be understood that I am
+filling certain gaps in the narrative with imagined
+detail. But the facts are true. My added detail
+is only intended to give an appearance of life and
+reality to my history. Let me, therefore, insist upon
+one vital point. I have not been dependent on hearsay
+for one single fact in this story. Where my
+experience does not depend upon personal experience,
+it has been received from the principals themselves.
+Finally, it should be remembered that when
+I have, imaginatively, put words into the mouths
+of the persons of this story, they are never essential
+words which affect the issue. The essential
+speeches are reported from first-hand sources. For
+instance, Ginger Stott himself has told me on more
+than one occasion that the words with which I closed
+the last section, were the actual words spoken by
+him on the occasion in question. It was not until
+six years after the great Oxfordshire match that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+I myself first met the man, but what follows is
+literally true in all essentials.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long, narrow strip of yard, or alley,
+at the back of Mrs. Stott's paper-shop, a yard
+that, unfortunately, no longer exists. It has been
+partly built over, and another of England's memorials
+has thus been destroyed by the vandals of
+modern commerce....</p>
+
+<p>This yard was fifty-three feet long, measuring
+from Mrs. Stott's back door to the door of the coal-shed,
+which marked the alley's extreme limit. This
+measurement, an apparently negligible trifle, had an
+important effect upon Stott's career. For it was in
+this yard that he taught himself to bowl, and the
+shortness of the pitch precluded his taking any run.
+From those long studious hours of practice he
+emerged with a characteristic that was&mdash;and still
+remains&mdash;unique. Stott never took more than two
+steps before delivering the ball; frequently he
+bowled from a standing position, and batsmen have
+confessed that of all Stott's puzzling mannerisms,
+this was the one to which they never became accustomed.
+S. R. L. Maturin, the finest bat Australia
+ever sent to this country, has told me that to this
+peculiarity of delivery he attributed his failure ever
+to score freely against Stott. It completely upset
+one's habit of play, he said: one had no time to
+prepare for the flight of the ball; it came at one so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+suddenly. Other bowlers have since attempted some
+imitation of this method without success. They
+had not Stott's physical advantages.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the shortness of that alley threw
+Stott back for two years. When he first emerged
+to try conclusions on the field, he found his length
+on the longer pitch utterly unreliable, and the effort
+necessary to throw the ball another six yards, at
+first upset his slowly acquired methods.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until he was twenty years old that
+Ginger Stott played in his first Colts' match.</p>
+
+<p>The three years that had intervened had not been
+prosperous years for Hampdenshire. Their team
+was a one-man team. Bobby Maisefield was developing
+into a fine bat (and other counties were throwing
+out inducements to him, trying to persuade him
+to qualify for first-class cricket), but he found no
+support, and Hampdenshire was never looked upon
+as a coming county. The best of the minor counties
+in those years were Staffordshire and Norfolk.</p>
+
+<p>In the Colts' match Stott's analysis ran:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr class="tr4"><td>overs</td><td class="td3">maidens</td><td class="td3">runs</td><td class="td3">wickets</td></tr>
+<tr class="tr4"><td>11&middot;3</td><td class="td3">7</td><td class="td3">16</td><td class="td3">7</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="noin">and reference to the score-sheet, which is still preserved
+among the records of the County Club, shows
+that six of the seven wickets were clean bowled.
+The Eleven had no second innings; the match was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+drawn, owing to rain. Stott has told me that the
+Eleven had to bat on a dry wicket, but after
+making all allowances, the performance was certainly
+remarkable.</p>
+
+<p>After this match Stott was, of course, played
+regularly. That year Hampdenshire rose once more
+to their old position at the head of the minor counties,
+and Maisefield, who had been seriously considering
+Surrey's offer of a place in their Eleven
+after two years' qualification by residence, decided
+to remain with the county which had given him his
+first chance.</p>
+
+<p>During that season Stott did not record any performance
+so remarkable as his feat in the Colts'
+match, but his record for the year was eighty-seven
+wickets with an average of 9&middot;31; and it is worthy of
+notice that Yorkshire made overtures to him, as he
+was qualified by birth to play for the northern
+county.</p>
+
+<p>I think there must have been a wonderful <i>esprit
+de corps</i> among the members of that early Hampdenshire
+Eleven. There are other evidences beside
+this refusal of its two most prominent members to
+join the ranks of first-class cricket. Lord R&mdash;&mdash;,
+the president of the H.C.C.C., has told me that this
+spirit was quite as marked as in the earlier case of
+Kent. He himself certainly did much to promote
+it, and his generosity in making good the deficits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+of the balance sheet, had a great influence on the
+acceleration of Hampdenshire's triumph.</p>
+
+<p>In his second year, though Hampdenshire were
+again champions of the second-class counties, Stott
+had not such a fine average as in the preceding
+season. Sixty-one wickets for eight hundred and
+sixty-eight (average 14&middot;23) seems to show a decline
+in his powers, but that was a wonderful year for
+batsmen (Maisefield scored seven hundred and forty-two
+runs, with an average of forty-two) and, moreover,
+that was the year in which Stott was privately
+practising his new theory.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this year that three very promising recruits,
+all since become famous, joined the Eleven,
+viz.: P. H. Evans, St. John Townley, and Flower
+the fast bowler. With these five cricketers Hampdenshire
+fully deserved their elevation into the list
+of first-class counties. Curiously enough, they took
+the place of the old champions, Gloucestershire, who,
+with Somerset, fell back into the obscurity of the
+second-class that season.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>I must turn aside for a moment at this point in
+order to explain the "new theory" of Stott's, to
+which I have referred, a theory which became in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+practice one of the elements of his most astounding
+successes.</p>
+
+<p>Ginger Stott was not a tall man. He stood only
+5 ft. 5&frac14; in. in his socks, but he was tremendously
+solid; he had what is known as a "stocky" figure,
+broad and deep-chested. That was where his muscular
+power lay, for his abnormally long arms were
+rather thin, though his huge hands were powerful
+enough.</p>
+
+<p>Even without his "new theory," Stott would have
+been an exceptional bowler. His thoroughness would
+have assured his success. He studied his art diligently,
+and practised regularly in a barn through
+the winter. His physique, too, was a magnificent
+instrument. That long, muscular body was superbly
+steady on the short, thick legs. It gave him a
+fulcrum, firm, apparently immovable. And those
+weirdly long, thin arms could move with lightning
+rapidity. He always stood with his hands behind
+him, and then&mdash;as often as not without even one
+preliminary step&mdash;the long arm would flash round
+and the ball be delivered, without giving the batsman
+any opportunity of watching his hand; you could
+never tell which way he was going to break. It was
+astonishing, too, the pace he could get without any
+run. Poor Wallis used to call him the "human
+catapult"; Wallis was always trying to find new
+phrases.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The theory first came to Stott when he was practising
+at the nets. It was a windy morning, and he
+noticed that several times the balls he bowled
+swerved in the air. When those swerving balls came
+they were almost unplayable.</p>
+
+<p>Stott made no remark to any one&mdash;he was bowling
+to the groundsman&mdash;but the ambition to bowl
+"swerves,"<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> as they were afterwards called, took
+possession of him from that morning. It is true
+that he never mastered the theory completely; on a
+perfectly calm day he could never depend upon obtaining
+any swerve at all, but, within limits, he
+developed his theory until he had any batsman practically
+at his mercy.</p>
+
+<p>He might have mastered the theory completely,
+had it not been for his accident&mdash;we must remember
+that he had only three seasons of first-class cricket&mdash;and,
+personally, I believe he would have achieved
+that complete mastery. But I do not believe, as
+Stott did, that he could have taught his method to
+another man. That belief became an obsession with
+him, and will be dealt with later.</p>
+
+<p>My own reasons for doubting that Stott's
+"swerve" could have been taught, is that it would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+have been necessary for the pupil to have had Stott's
+peculiarities, not only of method, but of physique.
+He used to spin the ball with a twist of his middle
+finger and thumb, just as you may see a billiard
+professional spin a billiard ball. To do this in his
+manner, it is absolutely necessary not only to have
+a very large and muscular hand, but to have very
+lithe and flexible arm muscles, for the arm is moving
+rapidly while the twist is given, and there must be
+no antagonistic muscular action. Further, I believe
+that part of the secret was due to the fact that Stott
+bowled from a standing position. Given these
+things, the rest is merely a question of long and
+assiduous practice. The human mechanism is marvellously
+adaptable. I have seen Stott throw a
+cricket ball half across the room with sufficient spin
+on the ball to make it shoot back to him along the
+carpet.</p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned the wind as a factor in obtaining
+the swerve. It was a head-wind that Stott required.
+I have seen him, for sport, toss a cricket ball into
+the teeth of a gale, and make it describe the trajectory
+of a badly sliced golf-ball. This is why the
+big pavilion at Ailesworth is set at such a curious
+angle to the ground. It was built in the winter following
+Hampdenshire's second season of first-class
+cricket, and it was so placed that when the wickets
+were pitched in a line with it, they might lie south-west<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+and north-east, or in the direction of the prevailing
+winds.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>The first time I ever saw Ginger Stott, was on the
+occasion of the historic encounter with Surrey;
+Hampdenshire's second engagement in first-class
+cricket. The match with Notts, played at Trent
+Bridge a few days earlier, had not foreshadowed any
+startling results. The truth of the matter is that
+Stott had been kept, deliberately, in the background;
+and as matters turned out his services were only
+required to finish off Notts' second innings. Stott
+was even then a marked man, and the Hampdenshire
+captain did not wish to advertise his methods
+too freely before the Surrey match. Neither
+Archie Findlater, who was captaining the team that
+year, nor any other person, had the least conception
+of how unnecessary such a reservation was to
+prove. In his third year, when Stott had been studied
+by every English, Australian, and South African
+batsman of any note, he was still as unplayable as
+when he made his d&eacute;but in first-class cricket.</p>
+
+<p>I was reporting the Surrey match for two papers,
+and in company with poor Wallis interviewed Stott
+before the first innings.</p>
+
+<p>His appearance made a great impression on me.
+I have, of course, met him, and talked with him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+many times since then, but my most vivid memory
+of him is the picture recorded in the inadequate
+professional dressing-room of the old Ailesworth
+pavilion.</p>
+
+<p>I have turned up the account of my interview in
+an old press-cutting book, and I do not know that
+I can do better than quote that part of it which
+describes Stott's personal appearance. I wrote the
+account on the off chance of being able to get it
+taken. It was one of my lucky hits. After that
+match, finished in a single day, my interview afforded
+copy that any paper would have paid heavily for,
+and gladly.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the description:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Stott&mdash;he is known to every one in Ailesworth
+as 'Ginger' Stott&mdash;is a short, thick-set young man,
+with abnormally long arms that are tanned a rich
+red up to the elbow. The tan does not, however,
+obliterate the golden freckles with which arm and
+face are richly speckled. There is no need to speculate
+as to the <i>raison d'&ecirc;tre</i> of his nickname. The
+hair of his head, a close, short crop, is a pale russet,
+and the hair on his hands and arms is a yellower
+shade of the same colour. 'Ginger' is, indeed,
+a perfectly apt description. He has a square chin
+and a thin-lipped, determined mouth. His eyes are
+a clear, but rather light blue, his forehead is good,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+broad, and high, and he has a well-proportioned
+head. One might have put him down as an engineer,
+essentially intelligent, purposeful, and reserved."</p></div>
+
+<p>The description is journalistic, but I do not know
+that I could improve upon the detail of it. I can
+see those queer, freckled, hairy arms of his as I
+write&mdash;the combination of colours in them produced
+an effect that was almost orange. It struck one as
+unusual....</p>
+
+<p>Surrey had the choice of innings, and decided to
+bat, despite the fact that the wicket was drying
+after rain, under the influence of a steady south-west
+wind and occasional bursts of sunshine. Would
+any captain in Stott's second year have dared to
+take first innings under such conditions? The question
+is farcical now, but not a single member of
+the Hampdenshire Eleven had the least conception
+that the Surrey captain was deliberately throwing
+away his chances on that eventful day.</p>
+
+<p>Wallis and I were sitting together in the reporters'
+box. There were only four of us; two specials,&mdash;Wallis
+and myself,&mdash;a news-agency reporter, and
+a local man.</p>
+
+<p>"Stott takes first over," remarked Wallis, sharpening
+his pencil and arranging his watch and score-sheet&mdash;he
+was very meticulous in his methods.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+"They've put him to bowl against the wind. He's
+medium right, isn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't the least idea," I said. "He volunteered
+no information; Hampdenshire have been
+keeping him dark."</p>
+
+<p>Wallis sneered. "Think they've got a find, eh?"
+he said. "We'll wait and see what he can do against
+first-class batting."</p>
+
+<p>We did not have to wait long.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, Thorpe and Harrison were first wicket
+for Surrey, and Thorpe took the first ball.</p>
+
+<p>It bowled him. It made his wicket look as untidy
+as any wicket I have ever seen. The off stump was
+out of the ground, and the other two were markedly
+divergent.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn it, I wasn't ready for him," we heard
+Thorpe say in the professionals' room. Thorpe always
+had some excuse, but on this occasion it was
+justified.</p>
+
+<p>C. V. Punshon was the next comer, and he got
+his first ball through the slips for four, but Wallis
+looked at me with a raised eyebrow.</p>
+
+<p>"Punshon didn't know a lot about that," he said,
+and then he added, "I say, what a queer delivery
+the chap has. He stands and shoots 'em out. It's
+uncanny. He's a kind of human catapult." He
+made a note of the phrase on his pad.</p>
+
+<p>Punshon succeeded in hitting the next ball, also,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+but it simply ran up his bat into the hands of short
+slip.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's a sitter, if you like," said Wallis.
+"What's the matter with 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>I was beginning to grow enthusiastic.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Wallis," I said, "this chap's going to
+break records."</p>
+
+<p>Wallis was still doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>He was convinced before the innings was over.</p>
+
+<p>There must be many who remember the startling
+poster that heralded the early editions of the evening
+papers:</p>
+
+<div class="bk6">SURREY<br />
+<small>ALL OUT</small><br />
+<small>FOR 13 RUNS.</small></div>
+
+<p>For once sub-editors did not hesitate to give the
+score on the contents bill. That was a proclamation
+which would sell. Inside, the headlines were
+rich and varied. I have an old paper by me, yellow
+now, and brittle, that may serve as a type for
+the rest. The headlines are as follows:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="bk6">SURREY AND HAMPDENSHIRE.<br />
+EXTRAORDINARY BOWLING PERFORMANCE.<br />
+DOUBLE HAT-TRICK.<br />
+SURREY ALL OUT IN 35 MINUTES FOR 13 RUNS.<br />
+STOTT TAKES 10 WICKETS FOR 5.</div>
+
+<p>The "double hat-trick" was six consecutive wickets,
+the last six, all clean bowled.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" Wallis said, when the last wicket
+fell, and he looked at me with something like fear in
+his eyes. "This man will have to be barred; it
+means the end of cricket."</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>Stott's accident came during the high flood of
+Hampdenshire success. For two years they held
+undisputed place as champion county, a place which
+could not be upset by the most ingenious methods of
+calculating points. They three times defeated Australia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+and played four men in the test matches.
+As a team they were capable of beating any Eleven
+opposed to them. Not even the newspaper critics
+denied that.</p>
+
+<p>The accident appeared insignificant at the time.
+The match was against Notts on the Trent Bridge
+ground. I was reporting for three papers; Wallis
+was not there.</p>
+
+<p>Stott had been taken off. Notts were a poor lot
+that year and I think Findlater did not wish to
+make their defeat appear too ignominious. Flower
+was bowling; it was a fast, true wicket, and Stott,
+who was a safe field, was at cover-point.</p>
+
+<p>G. L. Mallinson was batting and making good
+use of his opportunity; he was, it will be remembered,
+a magnificent though erratic hitter. Flower
+bowled him a short-pitched, fast ball, rather wide
+of the off-stump. Many men might have left it alone,
+for the ball was rising, and the slips were crowded,
+but Mallinson timed the ball splendidly, and drove
+it with all his force. He could not keep it on the
+ground, however, and Stott had a possible chance.
+He leaped for it and just touched the ball with his
+right hand. The ball jumped the ring at its first
+bound, and Mallinson never even attempted to run.
+There was a big round of applause from the Trent
+Bridge crowd.</p>
+
+<p>I noticed that Stott had tied a handkerchief round<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+his finger, but I forgot the incident until I saw
+Findlater beckon to his best bowler, a few overs
+later. Notts had made enough runs for decency; it
+was time to get them out.</p>
+
+<p>I saw Stott walk up to Findlater and shake his
+head, and through my glasses I saw him whip the
+handkerchief from his finger and display his hand.
+Findlater frowned, said something and looked
+towards the pavilion, but Stott shook his head. He
+evidently disagreed with Findlater's proposal. Then
+Mallinson came up, and the great bulk of his back
+hid the faces of the other two. The crowd was
+beginning to grow excited at the interruption.
+Every one had guessed that something was wrong.
+All round the ring men were standing up, trying to
+make out what was going on.</p>
+
+<p>I drew my inferences from Mallinson's face, for
+when he turned round and strolled back to his
+wicket, he was wearing a broad smile. Through
+my field glasses I could see that he was licking his
+lower lip with his tongue. His shoulders were
+humped and his whole expression one of barely controlled
+glee. (I always see that picture framed in
+a circle; a bioscopic presentation.) He could
+hardly refrain from dancing. Then little Beale, who
+was Mallinson's partner, came up and spoke to him,
+and I saw Mallinson hug himself with delight as he
+explained the situation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Stott unwillingly came back to the pavilion,
+a low murmur ran round the ring, like the buzz of
+a great crowd of disturbed blue flies. In that murmur
+I could distinctly trace the signs of mixed
+feelings. No doubt the crowd had come there to
+witness the performances of the new phenomenon&mdash;the
+abnormal of every kind has a wonderful attraction
+for us&mdash;but, on the other hand, the majority
+wanted to see their own county win. Moreover,
+Mallinson was giving them a taste of his abnormal
+powers of hitting, and the batsman appeals to the
+spectacular, more than the bowler.</p>
+
+<p>I ran down hurriedly to meet Stott.</p>
+
+<p>"Only a split finger, sir," he said carelessly, in
+answer to my question; "but Mr. Findlater says I
+must see to it."</p>
+
+<p>I examined the finger, and it certainly did not
+seem to call for surgical aid. Evidently it had been
+caught by the seam of the new ball; there was a
+fairly clean cut about half an inch long on the fleshy
+underside of the second joint of the middle finger.</p>
+
+<p>"Better have it seen to," I said. "We can't afford
+to lose you, you know, Stott."</p>
+
+<p>Stott gave a laugh that was more nearly a snarl.
+"Ain't the first time I've 'ad a cut finger," he said
+scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>He had the finger bound up when I saw him again,
+but it had been done by an amateur. I learnt afterwards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+that no antiseptic had been used. That was
+at lunch time, and Notts had made a hundred and
+sixty-eight for one wicket; Mallinson was not out,
+a hundred and three. I saw that the Notts Eleven
+were in magnificent spirits.</p>
+
+<p>But after lunch Stott came out and took the first
+over. I don't know what had passed between him
+and Findlater, but the captain had evidently been
+over-persuaded.</p>
+
+<p>We must not blame Findlater. The cut certainly
+appeared trifling, it was not bad enough to prevent
+Stott from bowling, and Hampdenshire seemed powerless
+on that wicket without him. It is very easy
+to distribute blame after the event, but most people
+would have done what Findlater did in those circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>The cut did not appear to inconvenience Stott in
+the least degree. He bowled Mallinson with his
+second ball, and the innings was finished up in another
+fifty-seven minutes for the addition of thirty-eight
+runs.</p>
+
+<p>Hampdenshire made two hundred and thirty-seven
+for three wickets before the drawing of stumps, and
+that was the end of the match, for the weather
+changed during the night and rain prevented any
+further play.</p>
+
+<p>I, of course, stayed on in Nottingham to await
+results. I saw Stott on the next day, Friday, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+asked him about his finger. He made light of it,
+but that evening Findlater told me over the bridge-table
+that he was not happy about it. He had seen
+the finger, and thought it showed a tendency to inflammation.
+"I shall take him to Gregory in the
+morning if it's not all right," he said. Gregory was
+a well-known surgeon in Nottingham.</p>
+
+<p>Again one sees, now, that the visit to Gregory
+should not have been postponed, but at the time
+one does not take extraordinary precautions in such
+a case as this. A split finger is such an everyday
+thing, and one is guided by the average of experience.
+After all, if one were constantly to make
+preparation for the abnormal; ordinary life could
+not go on....</p>
+
+<p>I heard that Gregory pursed his lips over that
+finger when he had learned the name of his famous
+patient. "You'll have to be very careful of this,
+young man," was Findlater's report of Gregory's advice.
+It was not sufficient. I often wonder now
+whether Gregory might not have saved the finger.
+If he had performed some small operation at once,
+cut away the poison, it seems to me that the tragedy
+might have been averted. I am, I admit, a mere
+layman in these matters, but it seems to me that
+something might have been done.</p>
+
+<p>I left Nottingham on Saturday after lunch&mdash;the
+weather was hopeless&mdash;and I did not make use of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+the information I had for the purposes of my paper.
+I was never a good journalist. But I went down
+to Ailesworth on Monday morning, and found that
+Findlater and Stott had already gone to Harley
+Street to see Graves, the King's surgeon.</p>
+
+<p>I followed them, and arrived at Graves's house
+while Stott was in the consulting-room. I hocussed
+the butler and waited with the patients. Among
+the papers, I came upon the famous caricature of
+Stott in the current number of <i>Punch</i>&mdash;the "Stand-and-Deliver"
+caricature, in which Stott is represented
+with an arm about ten feet long, and the
+batsman is looking wildly over his shoulder to square
+leg, bewildered, with no conception from what direction
+the ball is coming. Underneath is written
+"Stott's New Theory&mdash;the Ricochet. Real Ginger."
+While I was laughing over the cartoon, the butler
+came in and nodded to me. I followed him out of
+the room and met Findlater and Stott in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Findlater was in a state of profanity. I could not
+get a sensible word out of him. He was in a white
+heat of pure rage. The butler, who seemed as anxious
+as I to learn the verdict, was positively frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, for God's sake tell me what Graves said,"
+I protested.</p>
+
+<p>Findlater's answer is unprintable, and told me
+nothing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stott, however, quite calm and self-possessed, volunteered
+the information. "Finger's got to come
+off, sir," he said quietly. "Doctor says if it ain't
+off to-day or to-morrer, he won't answer for my
+'and."</p>
+
+<p>This was the news I had to give to England. It
+was a great coup from the journalistic point of
+view, but I made up my three columns with a heavy
+heart, and the congratulations of my editor only
+sickened me. I had some luck, but I should never
+have become a good journalist.</p>
+
+<p>The operation was performed successfully that
+evening, and Stott's career was closed.</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>I did not see Stott again till August, and then I
+had a long talk with him on the Ailesworth County
+Ground, as together we watched the progress of
+Hampdenshire's defeat by Lancashire.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I can't learn him <i>nothing</i>," he broke out,
+as Flower was hit to the four corners of the ground,
+"'alf vollies and long 'ops and then a full pitch&mdash;'e's
+a disgrace."</p>
+
+<p>"They've knocked him off his length," I protested.
+"On a wicket like this ..."</p>
+
+<p>Stott shook his head. "I've been trying to learn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+'im," he said, "but he can't never learn. 'E's got
+'abits what you can't break 'im of."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it <i>is</i> difficult," I said vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>"Same with me," went on Stott, "I've been trying
+to learn myself to bowl without my finger"&mdash;he held
+up his mutilated hand&mdash;"or left-'anded; but I can't.
+If I'd started that way ... No! I'm always feeling
+for that finger as is gone. A second-class bowler
+I might be in time, not better nor that."</p>
+
+<p>"It's early days yet," I ventured, intending encouragement,
+but Stott frowned and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to kid myself," he said, "I know.
+But I'm going to find a youngster and learn 'im.
+On'y he must be young.</p>
+
+<p>"No 'abits, you know," he explained.</p>
+
+<p>The next time I met Stott was in November. I
+ran up against him, literally, one Friday afternoon
+in Ailesworth.</p>
+
+<p>When he recognised me he asked me if I would
+care to walk out to Stoke-Underhill with him. "I've
+took a cottage there," he explained, "I'm to be married
+in a fortnight's time."</p>
+
+<p>His circumstances certainly warranted such a venture.
+The proceeds of matin&eacute;e and benefit, invested
+for him by the Committee of the County Club, produced
+an income of nearly two pounds a week, and
+in addition to this he had his salary as groundsman.
+I tendered my congratulations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh! well, as to that, better wait a bit," said
+Stott.</p>
+
+<p>He walked with his hands in his pockets and his
+eyes on the ground. He had the air of a man
+brooding over some project.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> a lottery, of course ..." I began, but he
+interrupted me.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh that!" he said, and kicked a stone into the
+ditch; "take my chances of that. It's the kid I'm
+thinking on."</p>
+
+<p>"The kid?" I repeated, doubtful whether he
+spoke of his fianc&eacute;e, or whether his nuptials pointed
+an act of reparation.</p>
+
+<p>"What, else 'ud I tie myself up for?" asked Stott.
+"I must 'ave a kid of my own and learn 'im from his
+cradle. It's come to that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I understand," I said; "teach him to bowl."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" replied Stott as an affirmative. "Learn
+'im from his cradle; before 'e's got 'abits. When I
+started I'd never bowled a ball in my life, and by
+good luck I started right. But I can't find another
+kid over seven years old in England as ain't never
+bowled a ball o' some sort and started 'abits. I've
+tried ..."</p>
+
+<p>"And you hope with your own boys...?" I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Not 'ope, it's a cert," said Stott. "I'll see no
+boy of mine touches a ball afore he's fourteen, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+then 'e'll learn from me; and learn right. From the
+first go off." He was silent for a few seconds, and
+then he broke out in a kind of ecstasy. "My Gawd,
+'e'll be a bowler such as 'as never been, never in this
+world. He'll start where I left orf. He'll ..."
+Words failed him, he fell back on the expletive he
+had used, repeating it with an awed fervour. "My
+Gawd!"</p>
+
+<p>I had never seen Stott in this mood before. It
+was a revelation to me of the latent potentialities of
+the man, the remarkable depth and quality of his
+ambitions....</p>
+
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>I intended to be present at Stott's wedding, but
+I was not in England when it took place; indeed,
+for the next two years and a half I was never in
+England for more than a few days at a time. I sent
+him a wedding-present, an inkstand in the guise of
+a cricket ball, with a pen-rack that was built of little
+silver wickets. They were still advertised that
+Christmas as "Stott inkstands."</p>
+
+<p>Two years and a half of American life broke up
+many of my old habits of thought. When I first
+returned to London I found that the cricket news
+no longer held the same interest for me, and this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+may account for the fact that I did not trouble for
+some time to look up my old friend Stott.</p>
+
+<p>In July, however, affairs took me to Ailesworth,
+and the associations of the place naturally led me to
+wonder how Stott's marriage had turned out, and
+whether the much-desired son had been born to him.
+When my business in Ailesworth was done, I decided
+to walk out to Stoke-Underhill.</p>
+
+<p>The road passes the County Ground, and a match
+was in progress, but I walked by without stopping.
+I was wool-gathering. I was not thinking of the
+man I was going to see, or I should have turned in
+at the County Ground, where he would inevitably
+have been found. Instead, I was thinking of the
+abnormal child I had seen in the train that day;
+uselessly speculating and wondering.</p>
+
+<p>When I reached Stoke-Underhill I found the cottage
+which Stott had shown me. I had by then so
+far recovered my wits as to know that I should not
+find Stott himself there, but from the look of the
+cottage I judged that it was untenanted, so I made
+inquiries at the post-office.</p>
+
+<p>"No; he don't live here, now, sir," said the postmistress;
+"he lives at Pym, now, sir, and rides into
+Ailesworth on his bike." She was evidently about
+to furnish me with other particulars, but I did not
+care to hear them. I was moody and distrait. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+was wondering why I should bother my head about
+so insignificant a person as this Stott.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be sure to find Mr. Stott at the cricket
+ground," the postmistress called after me.</p>
+
+<p>Another two months of English life induced a
+return to my old habits of thought. I found myself
+reverting to old tastes and interests. The reversion
+was a pleasant one. In the States I had been forced
+out of my groove, compelled to work, to strive, to
+think desperately if I would maintain any standing
+among my contemporaries. But when the perpetual
+stimulus was removed, I soon fell back to the less
+strenuous methods of my own country. I had time,
+once more, for the calm reflection that is so unlike
+the urgent, forced, inventive thought of the American
+journalist. I was braced by that thirty months'
+experience, perhaps hardened a little, but by September
+my American life was fading into the background;
+I had begun to take an interest in cricket
+again.</p>
+
+<p>With the revival of my old interests, revived also
+my curiosity as to Ginger Stott, and one Sunday in
+late September I decided to go down to Pym.</p>
+
+<p>It was a perfect day, and I thoroughly enjoyed
+my four-mile walk from Great Hittenden Station.</p>
+
+<p>Pym is a tiny hamlet made up of three farms and
+a dozen scattered cottages. Perched on one of the
+highest summits of the Hampden Hills and lost in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+the thick cover of beech woods, without a post-office
+or a shop, Pym is the most perfectly isolated village
+within a reasonable distance of London. As I
+sauntered up the mile-long lane that climbs the
+steep hill, and is the only connection between Pym
+and anything approaching a decent road, I thought
+that this was the place to which I should like to
+retire for a year, in order to write the book I had so
+often contemplated, and never found time to begin.
+This, I reflected, was a place of peace, of freedom
+from all distraction, the place for calm, contemplative
+meditation.</p>
+
+<p>I met no one in the lane, and there was no sign of
+life when I reached what I must call the village,
+though the word conveys a wrong idea, for there is
+no street, merely a cottage here and there, dropped
+haphazard, and situated without regard to its
+aspect. These cottages lie all on one's left hand;
+to the right a stretch of grass soon merges into
+bracken and bush, and then the beech woods enclose
+both, and surge down into the valley and rise up
+again beyond, a great wave of green; as I saw it
+then, not yet touched with the first flame of autumn.</p>
+
+<p>I inquired at the first cottage and received my
+direction to Stott's dwelling. It lay up a little lane,
+the further of two cottages joined together.</p>
+
+<p>The door stood open, and after a moment's hesitation
+and a light knock, I peered in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sitting in a rocking-chair was a woman with black,
+untidy eyebrows, and on her knee, held with rigid
+attention, was the remarkable baby I had seen in
+the train two months before. As I stood, doubtful
+and, I will confess it, intimidated, suddenly cold and
+nervous, the child opened his eyes and honoured
+me with a cold stare. Then he nodded, a reflective,
+recognisable nod.</p>
+
+<p>"'E remembers seein' you in the train, sir," said
+the woman, "'e never forgets any one. Did you
+want to see my 'usband? 'E's upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>So <i>this</i> was the boy who was designed by Stott to
+become the greatest bowler the world had ever
+seen....</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> A relatively easy task for the baseball thrower, but one
+very difficult of accomplishment for the English bowler, who is
+not permitted by the laws of cricket to bend his elbow in delivering
+the ball.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III<br />
+<small>THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF GINGER STOTT</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Stott</span> maintained an obstinate silence as we walked
+together up to the Common, a stretch of comparatively
+open ground on the plateau of the hill. He
+walked with his hands in his pockets and his head
+down, as he had walked out from Ailesworth with
+me nearly three years before, but his mood was
+changed. I was conscious that he was gloomy, depressed,
+perhaps a little unstrung. I was burning
+with curiosity. Now that I was released from the
+thrall of the child's presence, I was eager to hear all
+there was to tell of its history.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we sat down under an ash-tree, one of
+three that guarded a shallow, muddy pond skimmed
+with weed. Stott accepted my offer of a cigarette,
+but seemed disinclined to break the silence.</p>
+
+<p>I found nothing better to say than a repetition of
+the old phrase. "That's a very remarkable baby of
+yours, Stott," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he replied, his usual substitute for "yes,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+and he picked up a piece of dead wood and threw it
+into the little pond.</p>
+
+<p>"How old is he?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nearly two year."</p>
+
+<p>"Can he ..." I paused; my imagination was
+reconstructing the scene of the railway carriage,
+and I felt a reflex of the hesitation shown by the
+rubicund man when he had asked the same question.
+"Can he ... can he talk?" It seemed so absurd
+a question to ask, yet it was essentially a natural
+question in the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>"He can, but he won't."</p>
+
+<p>This was startling enough, and I pressed my enquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know? Are you sure he can?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" Only that irritating, monosyllabic assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Stott," I said, "don't you want to
+talk about the child?"</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders and threw more wood
+into the pond with a strained attentiveness as though
+he were peculiarly anxious to hit some particular
+wafer of the vivid, floating weed. For a full five
+minutes we maintained silence. I was trying to
+subdue my impatience and my temper. I knew Stott
+well enough to know that if I displayed signs of
+either, I should get no information from him. My
+self-control was rewarded at last.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I've 'eard 'im speak," he said, "speak proper,
+too, not like a baby."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and I grunted to show that I was
+listening, but as he volunteered no further remark,
+I said: "What did you hear him say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno," replied Stott, "somethin' about
+learnin' and talkin'. I didn't get the rights of it,
+but the missus near fainted&mdash;<i>she</i> thinks 'e's Gawd
+A'mighty or suthing."</p>
+
+<p>"But why don't you make him speak?" I asked
+deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>"Make 'im!" said Stott, with a curl of his lip,
+"<i>make</i> 'im! You try it on!"</p>
+
+<p>I knew I was acting a part, but I wanted to provoke
+more information. "Well! Why not?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Cos 'e'd look at you&mdash;that's why not," replied
+Stott, "and you can't no more face 'im than a dog
+can face a man. I shan't stand it much longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Curious," I said, "very curious."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! he's a blarsted freak, that's what 'e is," said
+Stott, getting to his feet and beginning to pace
+moodily up and down.</p>
+
+<p>I did not interrupt him. I was thinking of this
+man who had drawn huge crowds from every part
+of England, who had been a national hero, and who,
+now, was unable to face his own child. Presently
+Stott broke out again.</p>
+
+<p>"To think of all the trouble I took when 'e was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+comin'," he said, stopping in front of me. "There
+was nothin' the missus fancied as I wouldn't get.
+We was livin' in Stoke then." He made a movement
+of his head in the direction of Ailesworth.
+"Not as she was difficult," he went on thoughtfully.
+"She used to say 'I mussent get 'abits, George.'
+Caught that from me; I was always on about that&mdash;then.
+You know, thinkin' of learnin' 'im bowlin'.
+Things was different then; afore <i>'e</i> came." He
+paused again, evidently thinking of his troubles.</p>
+
+<p>Sympathetically, I was wondering how far the
+child had separated husband and wife. There was
+the making of a tragedy here, I thought; but when
+Stott, after another period of pacing up and down,
+began to speak again I found that his tragedy was
+of another kind.</p>
+
+<p>"Learn <i>'im</i> bowling!" he said, and laughed a
+mirthless laugh. "My Gawd! it 'ud take something.
+No fear; that little game's off. And I could
+a' done it if he'd been a decent or'nery child, 'stead
+of a blarsted freak. There won't never be another,
+neither. This one pretty near killed the missus.
+Doctor said it'd be 'er last.... With an 'ead like
+that, whacher expect?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can he walk?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Gets about easy enough for all 'is body
+and legs is so small. When the missus tries to stop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+'im&mdash;she's afraid 'e'll go over&mdash;'e just looks at 'er
+and she 'as to let 'im 'ave 'is own way."</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Later, I reverted to that speech of the child's, that
+intelligent, illuminating speech that seemed to prove
+that there was indeed a powerful, thoughtful mind
+behind those profoundly speculative eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"That time he spoke, Stott," I said, "was he
+alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" assented Stott. "In the garden, practisin'
+walkin' all by 'imself."</p>
+
+<p>"Was that the only time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only time <i>I've</i> 'eard 'im."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it lately?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Bout six weeks ago."</p>
+
+<p>"And he has never made a sound otherwise, cried,
+laughed?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Ardly. 'E gives a sort o' grunt sometimes,
+when 'e wants anything&mdash;and points."</p>
+
+<p>"He's very intelligent."</p>
+
+<p>"Worse than that, 'e's a freak, I tell you."</p>
+
+<p>With the repetition of this damning description,
+Stott fell back into his moody pacing, and this time
+I failed to rouse him from his gloom. "Oh! forget
+it," he broke out once, when I asked him another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+question, and I saw that he was not likely to give
+me any more information that day.</p>
+
+<p>We walked back together, and I said good-bye to
+him at the end of the lane which led up to his
+cottage.</p>
+
+<p>"Not comin' up?" he asked, with a nod of his
+head towards his home.</p>
+
+<p>"Well! I have to catch that train ..." I prevaricated,
+looking at my watch. I did not wish to
+see that child again; my distaste was even stronger
+than my curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Stott grinned. "We don't 'ave many visitors,"
+he said. "Well, I'll come a bit farther with you."</p>
+
+<p>He came to the bottom of the hill, and after he
+left me he took the road that goes over the hill to
+Wenderby. It would be about seven miles back to
+Pym by that road....</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>I spent the next afternoon in the Reading Room
+of the British Museum. I was searching for a precedent,
+and at last I found one in the story of
+Christian Heinrich Heinecken,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> who was born at
+Lubeck on February 6, 1721. There were marked
+points of difference between the development of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+Heinecken and that of Stott's child. Heinecken
+was physically feeble; at the age of three he was
+still being fed at the breast. The Stott precocity
+appeared to be physically strong; his body looked
+small and undeveloped, it is true, but this was partly
+an illusion produced by the abnormal size of the
+head. Again Heinecken learned to speak very early;
+at ten months old he was asking intelligent questions,
+at eighteen months he was studying history, geography,
+Latin and anatomy; whereas the Stott child
+had only once been heard to speak at the age of two
+years, and had not, apparently, begun any study
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>From this comparison it might seem at first that
+the balance of precocity lay in the Heinecken scale.
+I drew another inference. I argued that the genius
+of the Stott child far outweighed the genius of Christian
+Heinecken.</p>
+
+<p>Little Heinecken in his four years of life suffered
+the mental experience&mdash;with certain necessary limitations&mdash;of
+a developed brain. He gathered knowledge
+as an ordinary child gathers knowledge, the
+only difference being that his rate of assimilation
+was as ten to one.</p>
+
+<p>But little Stott had gathered no knowledge from
+books. He had been born of ignorant parents, he
+was being brought up among uneducated people.
+Yet he had wonderful intellectual gifts; surely he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+must have one above all others&mdash;the gift of reason.
+His brain must be constructive, logical; he must
+have the power of deduction. He must even at an
+extraordinarily early age, say six months, have developed
+some theory of life. He must be withholding
+his energy, deliberately; declining to exhibit his
+powers, holding his marvellous faculties in reserve.
+Here was surely a case of genius which, comparable
+in some respects to the genius of Heinecken, yet far
+exceeded it.</p>
+
+<p>As I developed my theory, my eagerness grew.
+And then suddenly an inspiration came to me. In
+my excitement I spoke aloud and smacked the desk
+in front of me with my open hand. "Why, of
+course!" I said. "That is the key."</p>
+
+<p>An old man in the next seat scowled fiercely.
+The attendants in the central circular desk all
+looked up. Other readers turned round and stared
+at me. I had violated the sacred laws of the Reading
+Room. I saw one of the librarians make a sign
+to an attendant and point to me.</p>
+
+<p>I gathered up my books quickly and returned
+them at the central desk. My self-consciousness had
+returned, and I was anxious to be away from the
+observation of the many dilettante readers who
+found my appearance more engrossing than the
+books with which they were dallying on some pretext
+or another.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yet, curiously, when I reached the street, the
+theory which had come to me in the Museum with
+the force and vividness of an illuminating dream
+had lost some of its glamour. Nevertheless, I set
+it out as it then shaped itself in my mind.</p>
+
+<p>The great restraining force in the evolution of
+man, so I thought, has been the restriction imposed
+by habit. What we call instinct is a hereditary
+habit. This is the first guiding principle in the life
+of the human infant. Upon this instinct we immediately
+superimpose the habits of reason, all the
+bodily and intellectual conventions that have been
+handed down from generation to generation. We
+learn everything we know as children by the hereditary,
+simian habit of imitation. The child of intellectual,
+cultured parents, born into savage surroundings,
+becomes the slave of this inherited habit&mdash;call
+it tendency, if you will, the intention is the same.
+I elaborated the theory by instance and introspection,
+and found no flaw in it....</p>
+
+<p>And here, by some freak of nature, was a child
+born without these habits. During the period of
+gestation, one thought had dominated the minds of
+both parents&mdash;the desire to have a son born without
+habits. It does not seriously affect the theory that
+the desire had a peculiar end in view; the wish, the
+urgent, controlling, omnipotent will had been there,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+and the result included far more than the specific
+intention.</p>
+
+<p>Already some of my distaste for the Stott child
+had vanished. It was accountable, and therefore
+no longer fearful. The child was supernormal, a
+cause of fear to the normal man, as all truly supernormal
+things are to our primitive, animal instincts.
+This is the fear of the wild thing; when we can
+explain and give reasons, the horror vanishes. We
+are men again.</p>
+
+<p>I did not quite recover the glow of my first inspiration,
+but the theory remained with me; I decided
+to make a study of the child, to submit
+knowledge to his reason. I would stand between
+him and the delimiting training of the pedagogue, I
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>Then I reached home, and my life was changed.</p>
+
+<p>This story is not of my own life, and I have no
+wish to enter into the curious and saddening experiences
+which stood between me and the child of
+Ginger Stott for nearly six years. In that time my
+thoughts strayed now and again to that cottage in
+the little hamlet on those wooded hills. Often I
+thought "When I have time I will go and see that
+child again if he is alive." But as the years passed,
+the memory of him grew dim, even the memory of
+his father was blurred over by a thousand new impressions.
+So it chanced that for nearly six years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+I heard no word of Stott and his supernormal infant,
+and then chance again intervened. My long period
+of sorrow came to an end almost as suddenly as
+it had begun, and by a coincidence I was once
+more entangled in the strange web of the abnormal.</p>
+
+<p>In this story of Victor Stott I have bridged these
+six years in the pages that follow. In doing this I
+have been compelled to draw to a certain extent on
+my imagination, but the main facts are true. They
+have been gathered from first-hand authority only,
+from Henry Challis, from Mrs. Stott, and from her
+husband; though none, I must confess, has been
+checked by that soundest of all authorities, Victor
+Stott himself, who might have given me every particular
+in accurate detail, had it not been for those
+peculiarities of his which will be explained fully in
+the proper place.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See the Teutsche Bibliothek and Schoneich's account of the
+child of Lubeck.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="bk5">PART TWO<br />
+<big>THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER</big></div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>
+<div class="bk5"><big>PART TWO</big><br />
+THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER</div>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV<br />
+<small>THE MANNER OF HIS BIRTH</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Stoke-Underhill</span> lies in the flat of the valley that
+separates the Hampden from the Quainton Hills.
+The main road from London to Ailesworth does not
+pass through Stoke, but from the highway you can
+see the ascent of the bridge over the railway, down
+the vista of a straight mile of side road; and,
+beyond, a glimpse of scattered cottages. That is all,
+and as a matter of fact, no one who is not keeping
+a sharp look-out would ever notice the village, for
+the eye is drawn to admire the bluff of Deane Hill,
+the highest point of the Hampdens, which lowers
+over the little hamlet of Stoke and gives it a second
+name; and to the church tower of Chilborough Beacon,
+away to the right, another landmark.</p>
+
+<p>The attraction which Stoke-Underhill held for
+Stott, lay not in its seclusion or its picturesqueness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+but in its nearness to the County Ground. Stott
+could ride the two flat miles which separated him
+from the scene of his work in ten minutes, and Ailesworth
+station is only a mile beyond. So when he
+found that there was a suitable cottage to let in
+Stoke, he looked no farther for a home; he was completely
+satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>Stott's absorption in any matter that was occupying
+his mind made him exceedingly careless about
+the detail of his affairs. He took the first cottage
+that offered when he looked for a home, he took
+the first woman who offered when he looked for a
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>Stott was not an attractive man to women. He
+was short and plain, and he had an appearance of
+being slightly deformed, a "monkeyish" look, due
+to his build and his long arms. Still, he was famous,
+and might, doubtless, have been accepted by a
+dozen comely young women for that reason, even
+after his accident. But if Stott was unattractive to
+women, women were even more unattractive to Stott.
+"No opinion of women?" he used to say. "Ever seen
+a gel try to throw a cricket ball? You 'ave? Well,
+ain't that enough to put you off women?" That
+was Stott's intellectual standard; physically, he had
+never felt drawn to women.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary Jakes exhibited no superiority over
+her sisters in the matter of throwing a cricket ball.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+She was a friend of Ginger's mother, and she was
+a woman of forty-two, who had long since been
+relegated to some remote shelf of the matrimonial
+exchange. But her physical disadvantages were outbalanced
+by her mental qualities. Ellen Mary was
+not a book-worm, she read nothing but the evening
+and Sunday papers, but she had a reasoning and
+intelligent mind.</p>
+
+<p>She had often contemplated the state of matrimony,
+and had made more than one tentative essay
+in that direction. She had walked out with three
+or four sprigs of the Ailesworth bourgeoisie in her
+time, and the shadow of middle-age had crept upon
+her before she realised that however pliant her
+disposition, her lack of physical charm put her at
+the mercy of the first bright-eyed rival. At thirty-five
+Ellen had decided, with admirable philosophy,
+that marriage was not for her, and had assumed,
+with apparent complacency, the outward evidences
+of a dignified spinsterhood. She had discarded gay
+hats and ribbons, imitation jewellery, unreliable
+cheap shoes, and chill diaphanous stockings, and had
+found some solace for her singleness in more comfortable
+and suitable apparel.</p>
+
+<p>When Ellen, a declared spinster of seven years'
+standing, was first taken into the confidence of
+Ginger Stott's mother, the scheme which she afterwards
+elaborated immediately presented itself to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+her mind. This fact is a curious instance of Ellen
+Mary's mobility of intellect, and the student of heredity
+may here find matter for careful thought.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>The confidence in question was Ginger's declared
+intention of becoming the father of the world's
+greatest bowler. Mrs. Stott was a dark, garrulous,
+rather deaf little woman, with a keen eye for the
+main chance; she might have become a successful
+woman of business if she had not been by nature
+both stingy and a cheat. When her son presented
+his determination, her first thought was to find some
+woman who would not dissipate her son's substance,
+and in her opinion&mdash;not expressed to Ginger&mdash;the
+advertised purpose of the contemplated marriage
+evidenced a wasteful disposition.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stott did not think of Ellen Mary as a possible
+daughter-in-law, but she did hold forth for an
+hour and three-quarters on the contemptible qualities
+of the young maidens, first of Ailesworth, and
+then with a wider swoop that was not justified by her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+limited experience, of the girls of England, Scotland,
+and Ireland at large.</p>
+
+<p>It required the flexible reasoning powers of Ellen
+Mary to find a solution of the problem. Any ordinary,
+average woman of forty-two, a declared spinster
+of seven years' standing, who had lived all her
+life in a provincial town, would have been mentally
+unable to realise the possibilities of the situation.
+Such a representative of the decaying sexual instinct
+would have needed the stimulus of courtship, at the
+least of some hint of preference displayed by the
+suitor. Ruled by the conventions which hold her
+sex in bondage, she would have deemed it unwomanly
+to make advances by any means other than innuendo,
+the subtle suggestions which are the instruments
+of her sex, but which are often too delicate
+to pierce the understanding of the obtuse and slow-witted
+male.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary stood outside the ruck that determines
+the destinies of all such typical representatives.
+She considered the idea presented to her by
+Mrs. Stott with an open and mobile intelligence.
+She weighed the character of Ginger, the possibilities
+of rejection, and the influence of Mrs. Stott; and
+she gave no thought to the conventions, nor to the
+criticisms of Ailesworth society. When she had decided
+that such chances as she could calculate were
+in her favour, Ellen made up her mind, walked out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+to the County Ground one windy October forenoon,
+and discovered Ginger experimenting with grass
+seed in a shed off the pavilion.</p>
+
+<p>In this shed she offered herself, while Ginger
+worked on, attentive but unresponsive. Perhaps
+she did not make an offer so much as state a case.
+A masterly case, without question; for who can
+doubt that Stott, however procrastinating and unwilling
+to make a definite overture, must already
+have had some type of womanhood in his mind;
+some conception, the seed of an ideal.</p>
+
+<p>I find a quality of romance in this courageous and
+unusual wooing of Ellen Mary's; but more, I find
+evidences of the remarkable quality of her intelligence.
+In other circumstances the name of Ellen
+Mary Jakes might have stood for individual achievement;
+instead of that, she is remembered as a common
+woman who <i>happened</i> to be the mother of Victor
+Stott. But when the facts are examined, can we
+say that chance entered? If ever the birth of a
+child was deliberately designed by both parents, it
+was in the case under consideration. And in what
+a strange setting was the inception first displayed.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary, a gaunt, tall, somewhat untidy
+woman, stood at the narrow door of the little shed
+off the Ailesworth pavilion; with one hand, shoulder-high,
+she steadied herself against the door
+frame, with the other she continually pushed forward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+the rusty bonnet which had been loosened during
+her walk by the equinoctial gale that now tore at
+the door of the shed, and necessitated the employment
+of a wary foot to keep the door from slamming.
+With all these distractions she still made good her
+case, though she had to raise her voice above the
+multitudinous sounds of the wind, and though she
+had to address the unresponsive shoulders of a man
+who bent over shallow trays of earth set on a trestle
+table under the small and dirty window. It is heroic,
+but she had her reward in full measure. Presently
+her voice ceased, and she waited in silence for
+the answer that should decide her destiny. There
+was an interval broken only by the tireless passion
+of the wind, and then Ginger Stott, the best-known
+man in England, looked up and stared through the
+incrusted pane of glass before him at the dim vision
+of stooping grass and swaying hedge. Unconsciously
+his hand strayed to his pockets, and then
+he said in a low, thoughtful voice: "Well! I dunno
+why not."</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Dr. O'Connell's face was white and drawn, and
+the redness of his eyelids more pronounced than
+ever as he faced Stott in the pale October dawn.
+He clutched at his beard with a nervous, combing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+movement, as he shook his head decidedly in answer
+to the question put to him.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's not dead, now, 'twill be in very few hours,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>Stott was shaken by the feeble passion of a man
+who has spent many weary hours of suspense. His
+anger thrilled out in a feeble stream of hackneyed
+profanities.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell looked down on him with contempt.
+At sunrise, after a sleepless night, a man is a creature
+of unrealised emotions.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn it, control yourself, man!" growled
+O'Connell, himself uncontrolled, "your wife'll pull
+through with care, though she'll never have another
+child." O'Connell did not understand; he was an
+Irishman, and no cricketer; he had been called in
+because he had a reputation for his skill in obstetrics.</p>
+
+<p>Stott stared at him fiercely. The two men
+seemed as if about to grapple desperately for life
+in the windy, grey twilight.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell recovered his self-control first, and began
+again to claw nervously at his beard. "Don't
+be a fool," he said, "it's only what you could expect.
+Her first child, and her a woman of near fifty." He
+returned to the upstairs room; Stott seized his cap
+and went out into the chill world of sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll do, if there are no complications," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+O'Connell to the nurse, as he bent over the still,
+exhausted figure of Mrs. Stott. "She's a wonderful
+woman to have delivered such a child alive."</p>
+
+<p>The nurse shivered, and avoiding any glance at
+the huddle that lay on an improvised sofa-bed, she
+said: "It can't live, can it?"</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell, still intent on his first patient, shook
+his head. "Never cried after delivery," he muttered&mdash;"the
+worst sign." He was silent for a moment
+and then he added: "But, to be sure, it's a
+freak of some kind." His scientific curiosity led
+him to make a further investigation. He left the
+bed and began to examine the huddle on the sofa-couch.
+Victor Stott owed his life, in the first instance,
+to this scientific curiosity of O'Connell's.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse, a capable, but sentimental woman,
+turned to the window and looked out at the watery
+trickle of feeble sunlight that now illumined the
+wilderness of Stott's garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Nurse!" The imperative call startled her; she
+turned nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, doctor?" she said, making no movement
+towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here!" O'Connell was kneeling by the
+sofa. "There seems to be complete paralysis of all
+the motor centres," he went on; "but the child's not
+dead. We'll try artificial respiration."</p>
+
+<p>The nurse overcame her repugnance by a visible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+effort. "Is it ... is it worth while?" she asked,
+regarding the flaccid, tumbled, wax-like thing, with
+its bloated, white globe of a skull. Every muscle
+of it was relaxed and limp, its eyes shut, its tiny
+jaw hanging. "Wouldn't it be better to let it
+die...?"</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell did not seem to hear her. He waved
+an impatient hand for her assistance. "Outside
+my experience," he muttered, "no heart-beat discernible,
+no breath ... yet it is indubitably alive."
+He depressed the soft, plastic ribs and gave the
+feeble heart a gentle squeeze.</p>
+
+<p>"It's beating," he ejaculated, after a pause, with
+an ear close to the little chest, "but still no breath!
+Come!"</p>
+
+<p>The diminutive lungs were as readily open to suggestion
+as the wee heart: a few movements of the
+twigs they called arms, and the breath came.
+O'Connell closed the mouth and it remained closed,
+adjusted the limbs, and they stayed in the positions
+in which they were placed. At last he gently lifted
+the lids of the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse shivered and drew back. Even O'Connell
+was startled, for the eyes that stared into his
+own seemed to be heavy with a brooding intelligence....</p>
+
+<p>Stott came back at ten o'clock, after a morose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+trudge through the misty rain. He found the nurse
+in the sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor gone?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Dead, I suppose?" Stott gave an upward twist
+of his head towards the room above.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't live though?" There was a note of faint
+hope in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse drew herself together and sighed
+deeply. "Yes! we believe it'll live, Mr. Stott," she
+said. "But ... it's a very remarkable baby."</p>
+
+<p>How that phrase always recurred!</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>There were no complications, but Mrs. Stott's recovery
+was not rapid. It was considered advisable
+that she should not see the child. She thought that
+they were lying to her, that the child was dead and,
+so, resigned herself. But her husband saw it.</p>
+
+<p>He had never seen so young an infant before, and,
+just for one moment, he believed that it was a normal
+child.</p>
+
+<p>"What an 'ead!" was his first ejaculation, and
+then he realised the significance of that sign. Fear
+came into his eyes, and his mouth fell open. "'Ere,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+I say, nurse, it's ... it's a wrong 'un, ain't it?"
+he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm <i>sure</i> I can't tell you, Mr. Stott," broke out
+the nurse hysterically. She had been tending that
+curious baby for three hours, and she was on the
+verge of a break-down. There was no wet-nurse to
+be had, but a woman from the village had been sent
+for. She was expected every moment.</p>
+
+<p>"More like a tadpole than anything," mused the
+unhappy father.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Mr. Stott, for goodness' sake, <i>don't</i>," cried
+the nurse. "If you only knew...."</p>
+
+<p>"Knew what?" questioned Stott, still staring at
+the motionless figure of his son, who lay with closed
+eyes, apparently unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>"There's something&mdash;I don't know," began the
+nurse, and then after a pause, during which she
+seemed to struggle for some means of expression,
+she continued with a sigh of utter weariness, "You'll
+know when it opens its eyes. Oh! Why doesn't
+that woman come, the woman you sent for?"</p>
+
+<p>"She'll be 'ere directly," replied Stott. "What
+d'you mean about there bein' something ... something
+what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Uncanny," said the nurse without conviction.
+"I do wish that woman would come. I've been up
+the best part of the night, and now ..."</p>
+
+<p>"Uncanny? As how?" persisted Stott.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not normal," explained the nurse. "I can't tell
+you more than that."</p>
+
+<p>"But 'ow? What way?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not receive an answer then, for the long
+expected relief came at last, a great hulk of a woman,
+who became voluble when she saw the child she had
+come to nurse.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! dear, oh! dear," the stream began.
+"How unforchnit, and 'er first, too. It'll be a idjit,
+I'm afraid. Mrs. 'Arrison's third was the very spit
+of it...."</p>
+
+<p>The stream ran on, but Stott heard no more. An
+idiot! He had fathered an idiot! That was the
+end of his dreams and ambitions! He had had an
+hour's sleep on the sitting-room sofa. He went out
+to his work at the County Ground with a heart full
+of blasphemy.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned at four o'clock he met the stout
+woman on the doorstep. She put up a hand to her
+rolling breast, closed her eyes tightly, and gasped
+as though completely overcome by this trifling rencounter.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ow is it?" questioned the obsessed Stott.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear! Oh dear!" panted the stout woman,
+"the leas' thing upsets me this afternoon...."
+She wandered away into irrelevant fluency, but Stott
+was autocratic; his insistent questions overcame the
+inertia of even Mrs. Reade at last. The substance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+of her information, freed from extraneous matter,
+was as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! 'ealthy? It'll live, I've no doubt, if that's
+what you mean; but 'elpless...! There, 'elpless
+is no word.... Learn 'im to open his mouth, learn
+'im to close 'is 'ands, learn 'im to go to sleep, learn
+'im everythink. I've never seen nothink like it,
+never in all my days, and I've 'elped to bring a few
+into the world.... I can't begin to tell you about
+it, Mr. Stott, and that's the solemn truth. When
+'e first looked at me, I near 'ad a faint. A old-fashioned,
+wise sort of look as 'e might 'a been a
+'undred. 'Lord 'elp us, nurse,' I says, 'Lord 'elp us.'
+I was that opset, I didn't rightly know what I was
+a-saying...."</p>
+
+<p>Stott pushed past the agitated Mrs. Reade, and
+went into the sitting-room. He had had neither
+breakfast nor lunch; there was no sign of any
+preparation for his tea, and the fireplace was grey
+with the cinders of last night's fire. For some
+minutes he sat in deep despondency, a hero faced
+with the uncompromising detail of domestic neglect.
+Then he rose and called to the nurse.</p>
+
+<p>She appeared at the head of the steep, narrow
+staircase. "Sh!" she warned, with a finger to her
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm goin' out again," said Stott in a slightly
+modulated voice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Reade's coming back presently," replied
+the nurse, and looked over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Want me to wait?" asked Stott.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse came down a few steps. "It's only in
+case any one was wanted," she began, "I've got
+two of 'em on my hands, you see. They're both
+doing well as far as that goes. Only ..." She
+broke off and drifted into small talk. Ever and
+again she stopped and listened intently, and looked
+back towards the half-open door of the upstairs
+room.</p>
+
+<p>Stott fidgeted, and then, as the flow of conversation
+gave no sign of running dry, he dammed it
+abruptly. "Look 'ere, miss," he said, "I've 'ad
+nothing to eat since last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! dear!" ejaculated the nurse. "If&mdash;perhaps,
+if you'd just stay here and listen, I could get you
+something." She seemed relieved to have some excuse
+for coming down.</p>
+
+<p>While she bustled about the kitchen, Stott, half-way
+upstairs, stayed and listened. The house was
+very silent, the only sound was the hushed clatter
+made by the nurse in the kitchen. There was an
+atmosphere of wariness about the place that affected
+even so callous a person as Stott. He listened with
+strained attention, his eyes fixed on the half-open
+door. He was not an imaginative man, but he was
+beset with apprehension as to what lay behind that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+door. He looked for something inhuman that might
+come crawling through the aperture, something grotesque,
+preternaturally wise and threatening&mdash;something
+horribly unnatural.</p>
+
+<p>The window of the upstairs room was evidently
+open, and now and again the door creaked faintly.
+When that happened Stott gripped the handrail,
+and grew damp and hot. He looked always at the
+shadows under the door. If it crawled ...</p>
+
+<p>The nurse stood at the door of the sitting-room
+while Stott ate, and presently Mrs. Reade came
+grunting and panting up the brick path.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going out, now," said Stott resolutely, and
+he rose to his feet, though his meal was barely finished.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be back before Mrs. Reade goes?" asked
+the nurse, and passed a hand over her tired eyes.
+"She'll be here till ten o'clock. I'm going to lie
+down."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be back by ten," Stott assured her as he
+went out.</p>
+
+<p>He did come back at ten o'clock, but he was
+stupidly drunk.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>The Stotts' cottage was no place to live in during
+the next few days, but the nurse made one stipulation:
+Mr. Stott must come home to sleep. He slept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+on an improvised bed in the sitting-room, and during
+the night the nurse came down many times and
+listened to the sound of his snores. She would put
+her ear against the door, and rest her nerves with
+the thought of human companionship. Sometimes
+she opened the door quietly and watched him as he
+slept. Except at night, when he was rarely quite
+sober, Stott only visited his cottage once a day, at
+lunch time; from seven in the morning till ten at
+night he remained in Ailesworth save for this one
+call of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>It was such a still house. Ellen Mary only spoke
+when speech was absolutely required, and then her
+words were the fewest possible, and were spoken in
+a whisper. The child made no sound of any kind.
+Even Mrs. Reade tried to subdue her stertorous
+breathing, to move with less ponderous quakings.
+The neighbours told her she looked thinner.</p>
+
+<p>Little wonder that during the long night vigil
+the nurse, moving silently between the two upstairs
+rooms, should pause on the landing and lean over
+the handrail; little wonder that she should give a
+long sigh of relief when she heard the music of
+Stott's snore ascend from the sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell called twice every day during the first
+week, not because it was necessary for him to visit
+his two patients, but because the infant fascinated
+him. He would wait for it to open its eyes, and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+he would get up and leave the room hurriedly. Always
+he intended to return the infant's stare, but
+when the opportunity was given to him, he always
+rose and left the room&mdash;no matter how long and deliberately
+he had braced himself to another course of
+action.</p>
+
+<p>It was on a Thursday that the baby was born, and
+it was on the following Thursday that the circumstance
+of the household was reshaped.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell came in the morning, full of resolution.
+After he had pronounced Mrs. Stott well on the way
+to recovery, he paid the usual visit to his younger
+patient. The child lay, relaxed, at full length, in
+the little cot which had been provided for him. His
+eyes were, as usual, closed, and he had all the appearance
+of the ordinary hydrocephalic idiot.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell sat down by the cot, listened to the
+child's breathing and heart-beat, lifted and let fall
+again the lax wrist, turned back the eyelid, revealing
+only the white of the upturned eyeball, and then
+composed himself to await the natural waking of
+the child, if it were asleep&mdash;always a matter of uncertainty.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse stood near him, silent, but she looked
+away from the cot.</p>
+
+<p>"Hydrocephalus!" murmured O'Connell, staring
+at his tiny patient, "hydrocephalus, without a doubt.
+Eh? nurse!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, perhaps! I don't know, doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not a doubt of it, not a doubt," repeated
+O'Connell, and then came a flicker of the child's
+eyelids and a weak crumpling of the tiny hand.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell caught his breath and clawed at his
+beard. "Hydrocephalus," he muttered with set jaw
+and drawn eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>The tiny hand straightened with a movement that
+suggested the recovery of crushed grass, the mouth
+opened in a microscopic yawn, and then the eyelids
+were slowly raised and a steady unwavering stare of
+profoundest intelligence met O'Connell's gaze.</p>
+
+<p>He clenched his hands, shifted in his chair, and
+then rose abruptly and turned to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;it won't be necessary for me to come again,
+nurse," he said curtly; "they are both doing perfectly
+well."</p>
+
+<p>"Not come again?" There was dismay in the
+nurse's question.</p>
+
+<p>"No! No! It's unnecessary ..." He broke
+off, and made for the door without another glance
+in the direction of the cot.</p>
+
+<p>Nurse followed him downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'm wanted&mdash;you can easily send for me,"
+said O'Connell, as he went out. As he moved away
+he dragged at his beard and murmured: "Hydrocephalus,
+not a doubt of it."</p>
+
+<p>Following his departure, Mrs. Reade heard curious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+and most unwonted laughter, and cautiously
+blundered downstairs to investigate. She found the
+nurse in an advanced condition of hysteria, laughing,
+gurgling, weeping, and intermittently crying
+in a shrill voice: "Oh! Lord have mercy; Lord ha'
+mercy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, see you 'ere, my dear," said Mrs. Reade,
+when nurse had been recovered to a red-eyed sanity,
+"it's time she was told. I've never 'eld with keepin'
+it from 'er, myself, and I've 'ad more experience than
+many...." Mrs. Reade argued with abundant
+recourse to parenthesis.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she strog edough?" asked the nurse, still with
+tears in her voice; "cad she bear the sight of hib?"
+She blew her nose vigorously, and then continued
+with greater clearness: "I'm afraid it may turn her
+head."</p>
+
+<p>Out of her deep store of wisdom, Mrs. Reade produced
+a fact which she elaborated and confirmed by
+apt illustration, adducing more particularly the
+instance of Mrs. Harrison's third. "She's 'is
+mother," was the essence of her argument, a fact of
+deep and strange significance.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse yielded, and so the circumstance of
+Stott's household was changed, and Stott himself
+was once more able to come home to meals.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse, wisely, left all diplomacy to the capable
+Mrs. Reade, a woman specially fitted by nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+for the breaking of news. She delivered a long, a
+record-breaking circumlocution, and it seemed that
+Ellen Mary, who lay with closed eyes, gathered no
+hint of its import. But when the impressive harangue
+was slowly rustling to collapse like an exhausted
+balloon, she opened her eyes and said quite
+clearly,</p>
+
+<p>"What's wrong with 'im, then?"</p>
+
+<p>The question had the effect of reinflation, but at
+last the child itself was brought, and it was open-eyed.</p>
+
+<p>The supreme ambition of all great women&mdash;and
+have not all women the potentialities of greatness?&mdash;is
+to give birth to a god. That ambition it is
+which is marred by the disappointing birth of a
+female child&mdash;when the man-child is born, there is
+always hope, and slow is the realisation of failure.
+That realisation never came to Ellen Mary. She
+accepted her child with the fear that is adoration.
+When she dropped her eyes before her god's searching
+glance, she did it in reverence. She hid her
+faith from the world, but in her heart she believed
+that she was blessed above all women. In secret,
+she worshipped the inscrutable wonder that had
+used her as the instrument of his incarnation. Perhaps
+she was right....</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> A study of genius shows that in a percentage of cases so
+large as to exclude the possibility of coincidence, the exceptional
+man, whether in the world of action, of art, or of letters, seems
+to inherit his magnificent powers through the female line. Sir
+Francis Galton, it is true, did not make a great point of this
+curious observation, but the tendency of more recent analyses is
+all in the direction of confirming the hypothesis; and it would
+seem to hold good in the converse proposition, namely, that the
+exceptional woman inherits her qualities from her father.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V<br />
+<small>HIS DEPARTURE FROM STOKE-UNDERHILL</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">The</span> village of Stoke was no whit intimidated by the
+news that Mrs. Reade sowed abroad. The women
+exclaimed and chattered, the men gaped and shook
+their heads, the children hung about the ruinous
+gate that shut them out from the twenty-yard strip
+of garden which led up to Stott's cottage. Curiosity
+was the dominant emotion. Any excuse was
+good enough to make friendly overtures, but the
+baby remained invisible to all save Mrs. Reade; and
+the village community kept open ears while the lust
+of its eyes remained, perforce, unsatisfied. If Stott's
+gate slammed in the wind, every door that commanded
+a view of that gate was opened, and heads
+appeared, and bare arms&mdash;the indications of women
+who nodded to each other, shook their heads, pursed
+their lips and withdrew for the time to attend the
+pressure of household duty. Later, even that gate
+slamming would reinvigorate the gossip of backyards
+and front doorways.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The first stranger to force an entry was the rector.
+He was an Oxford man who, in his youth, had
+been an ardent disciple of the school that attempts
+the reconciliation of Religion and Science. He had
+been ambitious, but nature had predetermined his
+career by giving him a head of the wrong shape. At
+Oxford his limitations had not been clearly defined,
+and on the strength of a certain speech at the Union,
+he crept into a London west-end curacy. There he
+attempted to demonstrate the principle of reconciliation
+from the pulpit, but his vicar and his
+bishop soon recognised that excellent as were his
+intentions, he was doing better service to agnosticism
+than to his own religion. As a result of this
+clerical intrigue he was vilely marooned on the savage
+island of Stoke-Underhill, where he might preach
+as much science as he would to the natives, for there
+was no fear of their comprehending him. Fifteen
+years of Stoke had brought about a reaction. Nature
+had made him a feeble fanatic, and he was
+now as ardent an opponent of science as he had
+once been a defender. In his little mind he believed
+that his early reading had enabled him to understand
+all the weaknesses of the scientific position.
+His name was Percy Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stott could not deny her rector the right of
+entry, and he insisted on seeing the infant, who was
+not yet baptised&mdash;a shameful neglect, according to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+Crashaw, for the child was nearly six weeks old.
+Nor had Mrs. Stott been "churched." Crashaw had
+good excuse for pressing his call.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stott refused to face the village. She knew
+that the place was all agape, eager to stare at what
+they considered some "new kind of idiot." Let them
+wait, was Ellen Mary's attitude. Her pride was
+a later development. In those early weeks she feared
+criticism.</p>
+
+<p>But she granted Crashaw's request to see the
+child, and after the interview (the term is precise)
+the rector gave way on the question of a private
+ceremony, though he had indignantly opposed the
+scheme when it was first mooted. It may be that he
+conceived an image of himself with that child in his
+arms, the cynosure of a packed congregation....</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw was one of the influences that hastened
+the Stotts' departure from Stoke. He was so indiscreet.
+After the christening he would talk. His
+attitude is quite comprehensible. He, the lawgiver
+of Stoke, had been thwarted. He had to find apology
+for the private baptism he had denied to many
+a sickly infant. Moreover, the Stotts had broken
+another of his ordinances, for father and mother
+had stood as godparents to their own child, and
+Crashaw himself had been the second godfather ordained
+as necessary by the rubric. He had given
+way on these important points so weakly; he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+to find excuse, and he talked himself into a false
+belief with regard to the child he had baptised.</p>
+
+<p>He began with his wife. "I would allow more
+latitude to medical men," he said. "In such a case
+as this child of the Stotts, for instance; it becomes
+a burden on the community, I might say a danger,
+yes, a positive danger. I am not sure whether I
+was right in administering the holy sacrament of
+baptism...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Percy! Surely ..." began Mrs. Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment, my dear," protested the rector,
+"I have not fully explained the circumstances of
+the case." And as he warmed to his theme the
+image of Victor Stott grew to a fearful grotesqueness.
+It loomed as a threat over the community
+and the church. Crashaw quoted, inaccurately,
+statistics of the growth of lunacy, and then went off
+at a tangent into the theory of possession by evil
+spirits. Since his rejection of science, he had lapsed
+into certain forms of medi&aelig;valism, and he now began
+to dally with the theory of a malign incarnation
+which he elaborated until it became an article of his
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>To his poorer parishioners he spoke in vague
+terms, but he changed their attitude; he filled them
+with overawed terror. They were intensely curious
+still, but, now, when the gate was slammed, one saw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+a face pressed to the window, the door remained
+fast; and the children no longer clustered round
+that gate, but dared each other to run past it; which
+they did, the girls with a scream, the boys with a
+jeering "Yah&mdash;ah!" a boast of intrepidity.</p>
+
+<p>This change of temper was soon understood by
+the persons most concerned. Stott grumbled and
+grew more morose. He had never been intimate
+with the villagers, and now he avoided any intercourse
+with them. His wife kept herself aloof, and
+her child sheltered from profane observation. Naturally,
+this attitude of the Stotts fostered suspicion.
+Even the hardiest sceptic in the taproom of the
+Challis Arms began to shake his head, to concede
+that there "moight be soomething in it."</p>
+
+<p>Yet the departure from Stoke might have been
+postponed indefinitely, if it had not been for another
+intrusion. Both Stott and his wife were ready to
+take up a new idea, but they were slow to conceive
+it.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>The intruder was the local magnate, the landlord
+of Stoke, Wenderby, Chilborough, a greater part
+of Ailesworth, two or three minor parishes, and, incidentally,
+of Pym.</p>
+
+<p>This magnate, Henry Challis, was a man of some
+scholarship, whose ambition had been crushed by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+the weight of his possessions. He had a remarkably
+fine library at Challis Court, but he made little
+use of it, for he spent the greater part of his time
+in travel. In appearance he was rather an ungainly
+man; his great head and the bulk of his big
+shoulders were something too heavy for his legs.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw regarded his patron with mixed feelings.
+For Challis, the man of property, the man of high
+connections, of intimate associations with the world
+of science and letters, Crashaw had a feeling of awed
+respect; but in private he inveighed against the
+wickedness of Challis, the agnostic, the decadent.</p>
+
+<p>When Victor Stott was nearly three months old,
+the rector met his patron one day on the road between
+Chilborough and Stoke. It was three years
+since their last meeting, and Crashaw noticed that
+in the interval Challis's pointed beard had become
+streaked with grey.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo! How d'ye do, Crashaw?" was the
+squire's casual greeting. "How is the Stoke microcosm?"</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw smiled subserviently; he was never quite
+at his ease in Challis's presence. "Rari nantes in
+gurgite vasto," was the tag he found in answer to
+the question put. However great his contempt for
+Challis's way of life, in his presence Crashaw was
+often oppressed with a feeling of inferiority, a feeling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+which he fought against but could not subdue.
+The Latin tag was an attempt to win appreciation,
+it represented a boast of equality.</p>
+
+<p>Challis correctly evaluated the rector's attitude;
+it was with something of pity in his mind that he
+turned and walked beside him.</p>
+
+<p>There was but one item of news from Stoke, and
+it soon came to the surface. Crashaw phrased his
+description of Victor Stott in terms other than
+those he used in speaking to his wife or to his parishioners;
+but the undercurrent of his virulent superstition
+did not escape Challis, and the attitude of
+the villagers was made perfectly plain.</p>
+
+<p>"Hm!" was Challis's comment, when the flow of
+words ceased, "nigroque simillima cygno, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! of course, you sneer at our petty affairs,"
+said Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>"By no means. I should like to see this black
+swan of Stoke," replied Challis. "Anything so exceptional
+interests me."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt Mrs. Stott would be proud to exhibit
+the horror," said Crashaw. He had a gleam of
+satisfaction in the thought that even the great
+Henry Challis might be scared. That would, indeed,
+be a triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"If Mrs. Stott has no objection, of course," said
+Challis. "Shall we go there, now?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>The visit of Henry Challis marked the first advent
+of Ellen Mary's pride in the exhibition of her
+wonder. After the King and the Royal Family&mdash;superhuman
+beings, infinitely remote&mdash;the great
+landlord of the neighbourhood stood as a symbol of
+temporal power to the whole district. The budding
+socialist of the taproom might sneer, and make
+threat that the time was coming when he, the boaster,
+and Challis, the landlord, would have equal rights;
+but in public the socialist kow-towed to his master
+with a submission no less obsequious than that of
+the humblest conservative on the estate.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stott dropped a deep curtsy when, opening
+the door to the autocratic summons of Crashaw's
+rat-a-tat, she saw the great man of the district at
+her threshold. Challis raised his hat. Crashaw did
+not imitate his example; he was all officiousness,
+he had the air of a chief superintendent of police.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Mrs. Stott, we should like to come in for
+a few minutes. Mr. Challis would like to see your
+child."</p>
+
+<p>"Damn the fool!" was Challis's thought, but he
+gave it less abrupt expression. "That is, of course,
+if it is quite convenient to you, Mrs. Stott. I can
+come at some other time...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Please walk in, sir," replied Mrs. Stott, and curtsied
+again as she stood aside.</p>
+
+<p>Superintendent Crashaw led the way....</p>
+
+<p>Challis called again next day, by himself this time;
+and the day after he dropped in at six o'clock while
+Mr. and Mrs. Stott were at tea. He put them at
+their ease by some magic of his personality, and
+insisted that they should continue their meal while
+he sat among the collapsed springs of the horsehair
+armchair. He leaned forward, swinging his stick
+as a pendulum between his knees, and shot out questions
+as to the Stotts' relations with the neighbours.
+And always he had an attentive eye on the cradle
+that stood near the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"The neighbours are not highly intelligent, I suspect,"
+said Challis. "Even Mr. Crashaw, I fancy,
+does not appreciate the&mdash;peculiarities of the situation."</p>
+
+<p>"He's worse than any," interpolated Stott. Ellen
+Mary sat in the shadow; there was a new light in
+her eyes, a foretaste of glory.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! a little narrow, a little dogmatic, no doubt,"
+replied Challis. "I was going to propose that you
+might prefer to live at Pym."</p>
+
+<p>"Much farther for me," muttered Stott. He had
+mixed with nobility on the cricket field, and was not
+overawed.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt; but you have other interests to consider,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+interests of far greater importance." Challis
+shifted his gaze from the cradle, and looked Stott in
+the face. "I understand that Mrs. Stott does not
+care to take her child out in the village. Isn't
+that so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," replied Ellen, to whom this question
+was addressed. "I don't care to make an exhibition
+of 'im."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right, quite right," went on Challis, "but
+it is very necessary that the child should have air.
+I consider it very necessary, a matter of the first
+importance that the child should have air," he repeated.
+His gaze had shifted back to the cradle
+again. The child lay with open eyes, staring up at
+the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, there is an excellent cottage at Pym which
+I will have put in repair for you at once," continued
+Challis. "It is one of two together, but next door
+there are only old Metcalfe and his wife and daughter,
+who will give you no trouble. And really, Mrs.
+Stott," he tore his regard from the cradle for a
+moment, "there is no reason in the world why you
+should fear the attention of your neighbours. Here,
+in Stoke, I admit, they have been under a complete
+misapprehension, but I fancy that there were special
+reasons for that. In Pym you will have few neighbours,
+and you need not, I'm sure, fear their criticism."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They got one idiot there, already," Stott remarked
+somewhat sulkily.</p>
+
+<p>"You surely do not regard your own child as
+likely to develop into an idiot, Stott!" Challis's
+tone was one of rebuke.</p>
+
+<p>Stott shifted in his chair and his eyes flickered
+uncertainly in the direction of the cradle. "Dr.
+O'Connell says 'twill," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"When did he see the child last?" asked Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Not since 'twere a week old, sir," replied Ellen.</p>
+
+<p>"In that case his authority goes for nothing, and,
+then, by the way, I suppose the child has not been
+vaccinated?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Better have that done. Get Walters. I'll make
+myself responsible. I'll get him to come."</p>
+
+<p>Before Challis left, it was decided that the Stotts
+should move to Pym in February.</p>
+
+<p>When the great landowner had gone, Mrs. Stott
+looked wistfully at her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't fair to the child, George," she said.
+"There's more than you or any one sees, more than
+Mr. Challis, even."</p>
+
+<p>Stott stared moodily into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"And it won't be so out of the way far for you,
+at Pym, with your bike," she continued; "and we
+<i>can't</i> stop 'ere."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We might 'a took a place in Ailesworth," said
+Stott.</p>
+
+<p>"But it'll be so much 'ealthier for 'im up at Pym,"
+protested Ellen. "It'll be fine air up there for 'im."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! <i>'im</i>. Yes, all right for <i>'im</i>," said Stott, and
+spat into the fire. Then he took his cap and went
+out. He kept his eyes away from the cradle.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>Harvey Walters lived in Wenderby, but his consulting-rooms
+were in Harley Street, and he did not
+practise in his own neighbourhood; nevertheless he
+vaccinated Victor Stott to oblige Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" asked Challis a few days later, "what
+do you make of him, Walters? No clich&eacute;s, now,
+and no professional jargon."</p>
+
+<p>"Candidly, I don't know," replied Walters, after
+a thoughtful interval.</p>
+
+<p>"How many times have you seen him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Four, altogether."</p>
+
+<p>"Good patient? Healthy flesh and that sort of
+thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he look you in the eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once, only once, the first time I visited the
+house."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Challis nodded. "My own experience, exactly.
+And did you return that look of his?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not willingly. It was, I confess, not altogether
+a pleasant experience."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>Challis was silent for a few moments, and it was
+Walters who took up the interrogatory.</p>
+
+<p>"Challis!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you, now, some feeling of, shall I say,
+distaste for the child? Do you feel that you have
+no wish to see it again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it that exactly?" parried Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"If not, what is it?" asked Walters.</p>
+
+<p>"In my own case," said Challis, "I can find an
+analogy only in my attitude towards my 'head' at
+school. In his presence I was always intimidated
+by my consciousness of his superior learning. I
+felt unpleasantly ignorant, small, negligible. Curiously
+enough, I see something of the same expression
+of feeling in the attitude of that feeble Crashaw
+to myself. Well, one makes an attempt at self-assertion,
+a kind of futile bragging; and one knows
+the futility of it&mdash;at the time. But, afterwards,
+one finds excuse and seeks to belittle the personality
+and attainment of the person one feared. At school
+we did not love the 'head,' and, as schoolboys will,
+we were always trying to run him down. 'Next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+time he rags me, I'll cheek him,' was our usual boast&mdash;but
+we never did. Let's be honest, Walters, are
+not you and I exhibiting much the same attitude
+towards this extraordinary child? Didn't he produce
+the effect upon you that I've described?
+Didn't you have a little of the 'fifth form' feeling,&mdash;a
+boy under examination?"</p>
+
+<p>Walters smiled and screwed his mouth on one side.
+"The thing is so absurd," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what we used to say at school," replied
+Challis.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>The Stotts' move to Pym was not marked by any
+incident. Mrs. Stott and her boy were not unduly
+stared upon as they left Stoke&mdash;the children were
+in school&mdash;and their entry into the new cottage was
+uneventful.</p>
+
+<p>They moved on a Thursday. On Sunday morning
+they had their first visitor.</p>
+
+<p>He came mooning round the fence that guarded
+the Stotts' garden from the little lane&mdash;it was
+hardly more than a footpath. He had a great
+shapeless head that waggled heavily on his shoulders,
+his eyes were lustreless, and his mouth hung
+open, frequently his tongue lagged out. He made
+strange, inhuman noises. "A-ba-ba," was his nearest
+approach to speech.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, George," called Mrs. Stott, "look at that.
+It's Mrs. 'Arrison's boy what Mrs. Reade's spoke
+about. Now, is 'e anythink like ..." she paused,
+"anythink like 'im?" and she indicated the cradle in
+the sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>"What's 'e want, 'angin' round 'ere?" replied
+Stott, disregarding the comparison. "'Ere, get
+off," he called, and he went into the garden and
+picked up a stick.</p>
+
+<p>The idiot shambled away.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI<br />
+<small>HIS FATHER'S DESERTION</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">The</span> strongest of all habits is that of acquiescence.
+It is this habit of submission that explains the
+admired patience and long-suffering of the abjectly
+poor. The lower the individual falls, the more unconquerable
+becomes the inertia of mind which interferes
+between him and revolt against his condition.
+All the miseries of the flesh, even starvation,
+seem preferable to the making of an effort great
+enough to break this habit of submission.</p>
+
+<p>Ginger Stott was not poor. For a man in his
+station of life he was unusually well provided for,
+but in him the habit of acquiescence was strongly
+rooted. Before his son was a year old, Stott had
+grown to loathe his home, to dread his return to it,
+yet it did not occur to him until another year had
+passed that he could, if he would, set up another
+establishment on his own account; that he could,
+for instance, take a room in Ailesworth, and leave
+his wife and child in the cottage. For two years he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+did not begin to think of this idea, and then it
+was suddenly forced upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since they had overheard those strangely
+intelligent self-communings, the Stotts had been perfectly
+aware that their wonderful child could talk
+if he would. Ellen Mary, pondering that single expression,
+had read a world of meaning into her son's
+murmurs of "learning." In her simple mind she
+understood that his deliberate withholding of speech
+was a reserve against some strange manifestation.</p>
+
+<p>The manifestation, when it came, was as remarkable
+as it was unexpected.</p>
+
+<p>The armchair in which Henry Challis had once
+sat was a valued possession, dedicated by custom to
+the sole use of George Stott. Ever since he had been
+married, Stott had enjoyed the full and undisputed
+use of that chair. Except at his meals, he never sat
+in any other, and he had formed a fixed habit of
+throwing himself into that chair immediately on his
+return from his work at the County Ground.</p>
+
+<p>One evening in November, however, when his son
+was just over two years old, Stott found his sacred
+chair occupied. He hesitated a moment, and then
+went in to the kitchen to find his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"That child's in my chair," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen was setting the tray for her husband's tea.
+"Yes ... I know," she replied. "I&mdash;I did mention
+it, but 'e 'asn't moved."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, take 'im out," ordered Stott, but he
+dropped his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Does it matter?" asked his wife. "Tea's just
+ready. Time that's done 'e'll be ready for 'is bath."</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't you move 'im?" persisted Stott
+gloomily. "'E knows it's my chair."</p>
+
+<p>"There! kettle's boilin', come in and 'ave your
+tea," equivocated the diplomatic Ellen.</p>
+
+<p>During the progress of the meal, the child still sat
+quietly in his father's chair, his little hands resting
+on his knees, his eyes wide open, their gaze abstracted,
+as usual, from all earthly concerns.</p>
+
+<p>But after tea Stott was heroic. He had reached
+the limit of his endurance. One of his deep-seated
+habits was being broken, and with it snapped his
+habit of acquiescence. He rose to his feet and faced
+his son with determination, and Stott had a bull-dog
+quality about him that was not easily defeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Look 'ere! Get out!" he said. "That's <i>my</i>
+chair!"</p>
+
+<p>The child very deliberately withdrew his attention
+from infinity and regarded the dogged face and set
+jaw of his father. Stott returned the stare for the
+fraction of a second, and then his eyes wavered and
+dropped, but he maintained his resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"You got to get out," he said, "or I'll make
+you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary gripped the edge of the table, but she
+made no attempt to interfere.</p>
+
+<p>There was a tense, strained silence. Then Stott
+began to breathe heavily. He lifted his long arms
+for a moment and raised his eyes, he even made a
+tentative step towards the usurped throne.</p>
+
+<p>The child sat calm, motionless; his eyes were
+fixed upon his father's face with a sublime, undeviating
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>Stott's arms fell to his sides again, he shuffled his
+feet. One more effort he made, a sudden, vicious
+jerk, as though he would do the thing quickly and
+be finished with it; then he shivered, his resolution
+broke, and he shambled evasively to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"God damn," he muttered. At the door he turned
+for an instant, swore again in the same words, and
+went out into the night.</p>
+
+<p>To Stott, moodily pacing the Common, this thing
+was incomprehensible, some horrible infraction of
+the law of normal life, something to be condemned;
+altered, if possible. It was unprecedented, and it
+was, therefore, wrong, unnatural, diabolic, a violation
+of the sound principles which uphold human
+society.</p>
+
+<p>To Ellen Mary it was merely a miracle, the foreshadowing
+of greater miracles to come. And to her
+was manifested, also, a minor miracle, for when his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+father had gone, the child looked at his mother and
+gave out his first recorded utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oo <i>is</i> God?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary tried to explain, but before she had
+stammered out many words, her son abstracted his
+gaze, climbed down out of the chair, and intimated
+with his usual grunt that he desired his bath and
+his bed.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>The depths of Stott were stirred that night. He
+had often said that "he wouldn't stand it much
+longer," but the words were a mere formula: he had
+never even weighed their intention. As he paced
+the Common, he muttered them again to the night,
+with new meaning; he saw new possibilities, and
+saw that they were practicable. "I've 'ad enough,"
+was his new phrase, and he added another that
+gave evidence of a new attitude. "Why not?" he
+said again and again. "And why not?"</p>
+
+<p>Stott's mind was not analytical. He did not
+examine his problem, weigh this and that and draw
+a balanced deduction. He merely saw a picture of
+peace and quiet, in a room at Ailesworth, in convenient
+proximity to his work (he made an admirable
+groundsman and umpire, his work absorbed him)
+and, perhaps, he conceived some dim ideal of pleasant
+evenings spent in the companionship of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+who thought in the same terms as himself; who
+shared in his one interest; whose speech was of
+form, averages, the preparation of wickets, and all
+the detail of cricket.</p>
+
+<p>Stott's ambition to have a son and to teach him
+the mysteries of his father's success had been
+dwindling for some time past. On this night it was
+finally put aside. Stott's "I've 'ad enough" may be
+taken to include that frustrated ideal. No more
+experiments for him, was the pronouncement that
+summed up his decision.</p>
+
+<p>Still there were difficulties. Economically he was
+free, he could allow his wife thirty shillings a week,
+more than enough for her support and that of her
+child; but&mdash;what would she say, how would she
+take his determination? A determination it was,
+not a proposal. And the neighbours, what would
+they say? Stott anticipated a fuss. "She'll say
+I've married 'er, and it's my duty to stay by 'er,"
+was his anticipation of his wife's attitude. He did
+not profess to understand the ways of the sex, but
+some rumours of misunderstandings between husbands
+and wives of his own class had filtered through
+his absorption in cricket.</p>
+
+<p>He stumbled home with a mind prepared for dissension.</p>
+
+<p>He found his wife stitching by the fire. The door
+at the foot of the stairs was closed. The room<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+presented an aspect of cleanly, cheerful comfort;
+but Stott entered with dread, not because he feared
+to meet his wife, but because there was a terror
+sleeping in that house.</p>
+
+<p>His armchair was empty now, but he hesitated
+before he sat down in it. He took off his cap and
+rubbed the seat and back of the chair vigorously: a
+child of evil had polluted it, the chair might still
+hold enchantment....</p>
+
+<p>"I've 'ad enough," was his preface, and there
+was no need for any further explanation.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary let her hands fall into her lap, and
+stared dreamily at the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry it's come to this, George," she said,
+"but it 'asn't been my fault no more'n it's been
+your'n. Of course I've seen it a-comin', and I
+knowed it <i>'ad</i> to be, some time; but I don't think
+there need be any 'ard words over it. I don't expec'
+you to understand 'im, no more'n I do myself&mdash;it
+isn't in nature as you should, but all said and done,
+there's no bones broke, and if we 'ave to part, there's
+no reason as we shouldn't part peaceable."</p>
+
+<p>That speech said nearly everything. Afterwards
+it was only a question of making arrangements, and
+in that there was no difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Another man might have felt a little hurt, a little
+neglected by the absence of any show of feeling
+on his wife's part, but Stott passed it by. He was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+singularly free from all sentimentality; certain
+primitive, human emotions seem to have played no
+part in his character. At this moment he certainly
+had no thought that he was being carelessly treated;
+he wanted to be free from the oppression of that
+horror upstairs&mdash;so he figured it&mdash;and the way was
+made easy for him.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded approval, and made no sign of any
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go to-morrer," he said, and then, "I'll
+sleep down 'ere to-night." He indicated the sofa
+upon which he had slept for so many nights at
+Stoke, after his tragedy had been born to him.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary had said nearly everything, but when
+she had made up a bed for her husband in the sitting-room,
+she paused, candle in hand, before she
+bade him good-night.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't wish 'im 'arm, George," she said. "'E's
+different from us, and we don't understand 'im
+proper, but some day&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wish 'im no 'arm," replied Stott, and
+shuddered. "I don't wish 'im no 'arm," he repeated,
+as he kicked off the boot he had been unlacing.</p>
+
+<p>"You mayn't never see 'im again," added Ellen
+Mary.</p>
+
+<p>Stott stood upright. In his socks, he looked noticeably
+shorter than his wife. "I suppose not," he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+said, and gave a deep sigh of relief. "Well, thank
+Gawd for that, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary drew her lips together. For some
+dim, unrealised reason, she wished her husband to
+leave the cottage with a feeling of goodwill towards
+the child, but she saw that her wish was little likely
+to be fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good-night, George," she said, after a few
+seconds of silence, and she added pathetically, as
+she turned at the foot of the stairs: "Don't wish
+'im no harm."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't," was all the assurance she received.</p>
+
+<p>When she had gone, and the door was closed
+behind her, Stott padded silently to the window and
+looked out. A young moon was dipping into a bank
+of cloud, and against the feeble brightness he could
+see an uncertain outline of bare trees. He pulled
+the curtain across the window, and turned back to
+the warm cheerfulness of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Shan't never see 'im again," he murmured,
+"thank Gawd!" He undressed quietly, blew out the
+lamp and got between the sheets of his improvised
+bed. For some minutes he stared at the leaping
+shadows on the ceiling. He was wondering why he
+had ever been afraid of the child. "After all, 'e's
+only a blarsted freak," was the last thought in his
+mind before he fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>And with that pronouncement Stott passes out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+the history of the Hampdenshire Wonder. He was
+in many ways an exceptional man, and his name
+will always be associated with the splendid successes
+of Hampdenshire cricket, both before and after the
+accident that destroyed his career as a bowler. He
+was not spoiled by his triumphs: those two years of
+celebrity never made Stott conceited, and there are
+undoubtedly many traits in his character which call
+for our admiration. He is still in his prime, an active
+agent in finding talent for his county, and in
+developing that talent when found. Hampdenshire
+has never come into the field with weak bowling, and
+all the credit belongs to Ginger Stott.</p>
+
+<p>One sees that he was not able to appreciate the
+wonderful gifts of his own son, but Stott was an
+ignorant man, and men of intellectual attainment
+failed even as Stott failed in this respect. Ginger
+Stott was a success in his own walk of life, and that
+fact should command our admiration. It is not
+for us to judge whether his attainments were more
+or less noble than the attainments of his son.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>One morning, two days after Stott had left the
+cottage, Ellen Mary was startled by the sudden entrance
+of her child into the sitting-room. He toddled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+in hastily from the garden, and pointed with
+excitement through the window.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary was frightened; she had never seen
+her child other than deliberate, calm, judicial, in
+all his movements. In a sudden spasm of motherly
+love she bent to pick him up, to caress him.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the Wonder, with something that
+approached disgust in his tone and attitude. "No,"
+he repeated. "What's 'e want 'angin' round 'ere?
+Send 'im off." He pointed again to the window.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary looked out and saw a grinning, slobbering
+obscenity at the gate. Stott had scared the
+idiot away, but in some curious, inexplicable manner
+he had learned that his persecutor and enemy
+had gone, and he had returned, and had made overtures
+to the child that walked so sedately up and
+down the path of the little garden.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary went out. "You be off," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"A-ba, a-ba-ba," bleated the idiot, and pointed
+at the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Be off, I tell you!" said Ellen Mary fiercely.
+But still the idiot babbled and pointed.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary stooped to pick up a stick. The idiot
+blenched; he understood that movement well enough,
+though it was a stone he anticipated, not a stick;
+with a foolish cry he dropped his arms and slouched
+away down the lane.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII<br />
+<small>HIS DEBT TO HENRY CHALLIS</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Challis</span> was out of England for more than three
+years after that one brief intrusion of his into the
+affairs of Mr. and Mrs. Stott. During the interval
+he was engaged upon those investigations, the results
+of which are embodied in his monograph on
+the primitive peoples of the Melanesian Archipelago.
+It may be remembered that he followed Dr. W. H. R.
+Rivers' and Dr. C. G. Seligmann's inquiry into the
+practice and theory of native customs. Challis developed
+his study more particularly with reference
+to the earlier evolution of Totemism, and he was
+able by his patient work among the Polynesians of
+Tikopia and Ontong Java, and his comparisons of
+those sporadic tribes with the Papuasians of Eastern
+New Guinea, to correct some of the inferences
+with regard to the origins of exogamy made by
+Dr. J. G. Frazer in his great work on that subject,
+published some years before. A summary of Challis's
+argument may be found in vol. li. of the <i>Journal
+of the Royal Anthropological Institute</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When he returned to England, Challis shut himself
+up at Chilborough. He had engaged a young
+Cambridge man, Gregory Lewes, as his secretary
+and librarian, and the two devoted all their time
+to planning, writing, and preparing the monograph
+referred to.</p>
+
+<p>In such circumstances it is hardly remarkable
+that Challis should have completely forgotten the
+existence of the curious child which had intrigued
+his interest nearly four years earlier, and it was not
+until he had been back at Challis Court for more
+than eight months, that the incursion of Percy Crashaw
+revived his memory of the phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>The library at Challis Court occupies a suite of
+three rooms. The first and largest of the three is
+part of the original structure of the house. Its
+primitive use had been that of a chapel, a one-storey
+building jutting out from the west wing. This
+Challis had converted into a very practicable library
+with a continuous gallery running round at a height
+of seven feet from the floor, and in it he had succeeded
+in arranging some 20,000 volumes. But as
+his store of books grew&mdash;and at one period it had
+grown very rapidly&mdash;he had been forced to build,
+and so he had added first one and then the other of
+the two additional rooms which became necessary.
+Outside, the wing had the appearance of an unduly
+elongated chapel, as he had continued the original<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+roof over his addition, and copied the style of the
+old chapel architecture. The only external alteration
+he had made had been the lowering of the sills
+of the windows.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the furthest of these three rooms that
+Challis and his secretary worked, and it was from
+here that they saw the gloomy figure of the Rev.
+Percy Crashaw coming up the drive.</p>
+
+<p>This was the third time he had called. His two
+former visits had been unrewarded, but that morning
+a letter had come from him, couched in careful
+phrases, the purport of which had been a request
+for an interview on a "matter of some moment."</p>
+
+<p>Challis frowned, and rose from among an ordered
+litter of manuscripts.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to see this man," he said to Lewes,
+and strode hastily out of the library.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw was perfunctorily apologetic, and Challis,
+looking somewhat out of place, smoking a heavy
+wooden pipe in the disused, bleak drawing-room,
+waited, almost silent, until his visitor should come
+to the point.</p>
+
+<p>"... and the&mdash;er&mdash;matter of some moment, I
+mentioned," Crashaw mumbled on, "is, I should say,
+not altogether irrelevant to the work you are at
+present engaged upon."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" commented Challis, with a lift of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+thick eyebrows, "no Polynesians come to settle in
+Stoke, I trust?"</p>
+
+<p>"On broad lines, relevant on broad, anthropological
+lines, I mean," said Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>Challis grunted. "Go on!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You may remember that curious&mdash;er&mdash;abnormal
+child of the Stotts?" asked Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>"Stotts? Wait a minute. Yes! Curious infant
+with an abnormally intelligent expression and the
+head of a hydrocephalic?"</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw nodded. "Its development has upset
+me in a most unusual way," he continued. "I must
+confess that I am entirely at a loss, and I really
+believe that you are the only person who can give
+me any intelligent assistance in the matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Very good of you," murmured Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," said Crashaw, warming to his subject
+and interlacing his fingers, "I happen, by the merest
+accident, I may say, to be the child's godfather."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! you have responsibilities!" commented
+Challis, with the first glint of amusement in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I have," said Crashaw, "undoubtedly I have."
+He leaned forward with his hands still clasped together,
+and rested his forearms on his thighs. As
+he talked he worked his hands up and down from
+the wrists, by way of emphasis. "I am aware,"
+he went on, "that on one point I can expect little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+sympathy from you, but I make an appeal to you,
+nevertheless, as a man of science and&mdash;and a magistrate;
+for ... for assistance."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and looked up at Challis, received a
+nod of encouragement and developed his grievance.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to have the child certified as an idiot, and
+sent to an asylum."</p>
+
+<p>"On what grounds?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is undoubtedly lacking mentally," said Crashaw,
+"and his influence is, or may be, malignant."</p>
+
+<p>"Explain," suggested Challis.</p>
+
+<p>For a few seconds Crashaw paused, intent on the
+pattern of the carpet, and worked his hands slowly.
+Challis saw that the man's knuckles were white, that
+he was straining his hands together.</p>
+
+<p>"He has denied God," he said at last with great
+solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>Challis rose abruptly, and went over to the window;
+the next words were spoken to his back.</p>
+
+<p>"I have, myself, heard this infant of four years
+use the most abhorrent blasphemy."</p>
+
+<p>Challis had composed himself. "Oh! I say; that's
+bad," he said as he turned towards the room again.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw's head was still bowed. "And whatever
+may be your own philosophic doubts," he said, "I
+think you will agree with me that in such a case as
+this, something should be done. To me it is horrible,
+most horrible."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't you give me any details?" asked Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"They are most repugnant to me," answered Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite, quite! I understand. But if you want
+any assistance.... Or do you expect me to investigate?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it my duty, as his godfather, to see to
+the child's spiritual welfare," said Crashaw, ignoring
+the question put to him, "although he is not,
+now, one of my parishioners. I first went to Pym
+some few months ago, but the mother interposed
+between me and the child. I was not permitted to
+see him. It was not until a few weeks back that I
+met him&mdash;on the Common, alone. Of course, I recognised
+him at once. He is quite unmistakable."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?" prompted Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"I spoke to him, and he replied with, with&mdash;an
+abstracted air, without looking at me. He has not
+the appearance in any way of a normal child. I
+made a few ordinary remarks to him, and then I
+asked him if he knew his catechism. He replied
+that he did not know the word 'catechism.' I may
+mention that he speaks the dialect of the common
+people, but he has a much larger vocabulary. His
+mother has taught him to read, it appears."</p>
+
+<p>"He seems to have a curiously apt intelligence,"
+interpolated Challis.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw wrung his clasped hands and put the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+comment on one side. "I then spoke to him of some
+of the broad principles of the Church's teaching,"
+he continued. "He listened quietly, without interruption,
+and when I stopped, he prompted me
+with questions."</p>
+
+<p>"One minute!" said Challis. "Tell me; what sort
+of questions? That is most important."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not remember precisely," returned Crashaw,
+"but one, I think, was as to the sources of the
+Bible. I did not read anything beyond simple and
+somewhat unusual curiosity into those questions, I
+may say.... I talked to him for some considerable
+time&mdash;I dare say for more than an hour...."</p>
+
+<p>"No signs of idiocy, apparently, during all this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I consider it less a case of idiocy than one of
+possession, maleficent possession," replied Crashaw.
+He did not see his host's grim smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and the blasphemy?" prompted Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"At the end of my instruction, the child, still
+looking away from me, shook his head and said that
+what I had told him was not true. I confess that
+I was staggered. Possibly I lost my temper, somewhat.
+I may have grown rather warm in my speech.
+And at last ..." Crashaw clenched his hands and
+spoke in such a low voice that Challis could hardly
+hear him. "At last he turned to me and said things
+which I could not possibly repeat, which I pray that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+I may never hear again from the mouth of any living
+being."</p>
+
+<p>"Profanities, obscenities, er&mdash;swear-words," suggested
+Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Blasphemy, <i>blasphemy</i>," cried Crashaw. "Oh!
+I wonder that I did not injure the child."</p>
+
+<p>Challis moved over to the window again. For
+more than a minute there was silence in that big,
+neglected-looking room. Then Crashaw's feelings
+began to find vent in words, in a long stream of insistent
+asseverations, pitched on a rising note that
+swelled into a diapason of indignation. He spoke
+of the position and power of his Church, of its influence
+for good among the uneducated, agricultural
+population among which he worked. He enlarged
+on the profound necessity for a living religion among
+the poorer classes; and on the revolutionary tendency
+towards socialism, which would be encouraged
+if the great restraining power of a creed that enforced
+subservience to temporal power was once
+shaken. And, at last, he brought his arguments to
+a head by saying that the example of a child of four
+years old, openly defying a minister of the Church,
+and repudiating the very conception of the Deity,
+was an example which might produce a profound
+effect upon the minds of a slow-thinking people; that
+such an example might be the leaven which would
+leaven the whole lump; and that for the welfare of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+the whole neighbourhood it was an instant necessity
+that the child should be put under restraint,
+his tongue bridled, and any opportunity to proclaim
+his blasphemous doctrines forcibly denied to
+him. Long before he had concluded, Crashaw was
+on his feet, pacing the room, declaiming, waving his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>Challis stood, unanswering, by the window. He
+did not seem to hear; he did not even shrug his shoulders.
+Not till Crashaw had brought his argument
+to a culmination, and boomed into a dramatic
+silence, did Challis turn and look at him.</p>
+
+<p>"But you cannot confine a child in an asylum on
+those grounds," he said; "the law does not permit
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"The Church is above the law," replied Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in these days," said Challis; "it is by law
+established!"</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw began to speak again, but Challis waved
+him down. "Quite, quite. I see your point," he
+said, "but I must see this child myself. Believe
+me, I will see what can be done. I will, at least, try
+to prevent his spreading his opinions among the
+yokels." He smiled grimly. "I quite agree with
+you that that is a consummation which is not to be
+desired."</p>
+
+<p>"You will see him soon?" asked Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>"To-day," returned Challis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And you will let me see you again, afterwards?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw still hesitated for a moment. "I might,
+perhaps, come with you," he ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"On no account," said Challis.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Gregory Lewes was astonished at the long absence
+of his chief; he was more astonished when his chief
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to come up with me to Pym, Lewes,"
+said Challis; "one of my tenants has been confounding
+the rector of Stoke. It is a matter that must be
+attended to."</p>
+
+<p>Lewes was a fair-haired, hard-working young man,
+with a bent for science in general that had not yet
+crystallised into any special study. He had a curious
+sense of humour, that proved something of an
+obstacle in the way of specialisation. He did not
+take Challis's speech seriously.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going as a magistrate?" he asked; "or
+is it a matter for scientific investigation?"</p>
+
+<p>"Both," said Challis. "Come along!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you serious, sir?" Lewes still doubted.</p>
+
+<p>"Intensely. I'll explain as we go," said Challis.</p>
+
+<p>It is not more than a mile and a half from Challis
+Court to Pym. The nearest way is by a cart track<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+through the beech woods, that winds up the hill to
+the Common. In winter this track is almost impassable,
+over boot-top in heavy mud; but the early
+spring had been fairly dry, and Challis chose this
+route.</p>
+
+<p>As they walked, Challis went through the early
+history of Victor Stott, so far as it was known to
+him. "I had forgotten the child," he said; "I
+thought it would die. You see, it is by way of being
+an extraordinary freak of nature. It has, or had,
+a curious look of intelligence. You must remember
+that when I saw it, it was only a few months old.
+But even then it conveyed in some inexplicable way
+a sense of power. Every one felt it. There was
+Harvey Walters, for instance&mdash;he vaccinated it; I
+made him confess that the child made him feel like
+a school-boy. Only, you understand, it had not
+spoken then&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What conveyed that sense of power?" asked
+Lewes.</p>
+
+<p>"The way it had of looking at you, staring you
+out of countenance, sizing you up and rejecting you.
+It did that, I give you my word; it did all that at a
+few months old, and without the power of speech.
+Only, you see, I thought it was merely a freak of
+some kind, some abnormality that disgusted one in
+an unanalysed way. And I thought it would die.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+I certainly thought it would die. I am most eager
+to see this new development."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't heard. It confounded Crashaw, you
+say? And it cannot be more than four or five years
+old now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Four; four and a half," returned Challis, and
+then the conversation was interrupted by the necessity
+of skirting a tiny morass of wet leaf-mould that
+lay in a hollow.</p>
+
+<p>"Confounded Crashaw? I should think so," Challis
+went on, when they had found firm going again.
+"The good man would not soil his devoted tongue
+by any condescension to oratio recta, but I gathered
+that the child had made light of his divine authority."</p>
+
+<p>"Great C&aelig;sar!" ejaculated Lewes; "but that is
+immense. What did Crashaw do&mdash;shake him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; he certainly did not lay hands on him at
+all. His own expression was that he did not know
+how it was he did not do the child an injury. That
+is one of the things that interest me enormously.
+That power I spoke of must have been retained.
+Crashaw must have been blue with anger; he could
+hardly repeat the story to me, he was so agitated.
+It would have surprised me less if he had told me he
+had murdered the child. That I could have understood,
+perfectly."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is, of course, quite incomprehensible to me,
+as yet," commented Lewes.</p>
+
+<p>When they came out of the woods on to the
+stretch of common from which you can see the great
+swelling undulations of the Hampden Hills, Challis
+stopped. A spear of April sunshine had pierced the
+load of cloud towards the west, and the bank of wood
+behind them gave shelter from the cold wind that
+had blown fiercely all the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a fine prospect," said Challis, with a sweep
+of his hand. "I sometimes feel, Lewes, that we
+are over-intent on our own little narrow interests.
+Here are you and I, busying ourselves in an attempt
+to throw some little light&mdash;a very little it
+must be&mdash;on some petty problems of the origin of
+our race. We are looking downwards, downwards
+always; digging in old muck-heaps; raking up all
+kinds of unsavoury rubbish to prove that we are
+born out of the dirt. And we have never a thought
+for the future in all our work,&mdash;a future that may
+be glorious, who knows? Here, perhaps in this village,
+insignificant from most points of view, but
+set in a country that should teach us to raise our
+eyes from the ground; here, in this tiny hamlet, is
+living a child who may become a greater than Socrates
+or Shakespeare, a child who may revolutionise
+our conceptions of time and space. There have been
+great men in the past who have done that, Lewes;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+there is no reason for us to doubt that still greater
+men may succeed them."</p>
+
+<p>"No; there is no reason for us to doubt that,"
+said Lewes, and they walked on in silence towards
+the Stotts' cottage.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Challis knocked and walked in. They found Ellen
+Mary and her son at the tea-table.</p>
+
+<p>The mother rose to her feet and dropped a respectful
+curtsy. The boy glanced once at Gregory
+Lewes and then continued his meal as if he were unaware
+of any strange presence in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry. I am afraid we are interrupting
+you," Challis apologised. "Pray sit down, Mrs.
+Stott, and go on with your tea."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir. I'd just finished, sir," said
+Ellen Mary, and remained standing with an air of
+quiet deference.</p>
+
+<p>Challis took the celebrated armchair, and motioned
+Lewes to the window-sill, the nearest available
+seat for him. "Please sit down, Mrs. Stott,"
+he said, and Ellen Mary sat, apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>The boy pushed his cup towards his mother, and
+pointed to the teapot; he made a grunting sound
+to attract her attention.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll excuse me, sir," murmured Ellen Mary,
+and she refilled the cup and passed it back to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+son, who received it without any acknowledgment.
+Challis and Lewes were observing the boy intently,
+but he took not the least notice of their scrutiny.
+He discovered no trace of self-consciousness; Henry
+Challis and Gregory Lewes appeared to have no
+place in the world of his abstraction.</p>
+
+<p>The figure the child presented to his two observers
+was worthy of careful scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of four and a half years, the Wonder
+was bald, save for a few straggling wisps of reddish
+hair above the ears and at the base of the skull, and
+a weak, sparse down, of the same colour, on the top
+of his head. The eyebrows, too, were not marked by
+any line of hair, but the eyelashes were thick, though
+short, and several shades darker than the hair on
+the skull.</p>
+
+<p>The face is not so easily described. The mouth
+and chin were relatively small, overshadowed by that
+broad cliff of forehead, but they were firm, the chin
+well moulded, the lips thin and compressed. The
+nose was unusual when seen in profile. There was
+no sign of a bony bridge, but it was markedly curved
+and jutted out at a curious angle from the line of
+the face. The nostrils were wide and open. None
+of these features produced any effect of childishness;
+but this effect was partly achieved by the contours
+of the cheeks, and by the fact that there was
+no indication of any lines on the face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The eyes nearly always wore their usual expression
+of abstraction. It was very rarely that the
+Wonder allowed his intelligence to be exhibited by
+that medium. When he did, the effect was strangely
+disconcerting, blinding. One received an impression
+of extraordinary concentration: it was as
+though for an instant the boy was able to give one
+a glimpse of the wonderful force of his intellect.
+When he looked one in the face with intention, and
+suddenly allowed one to realise, as it were, all the
+dominating power of his brain, one shrank into insignificance,
+one felt as an ignorant, intelligent man
+may feel when confronted with some elaborate theorem
+of the higher mathematics. "Is it possible that
+any one can really understand these things?" such
+a man might think with awe, and in the same way
+one apprehended some vast, inconceivable possibilities
+of mind-function when the Wonder looked at one
+with, as I have said, intention.</p>
+
+<p>He was dressed in a little jacket-suit, and wore a
+linen collar; the knickerbockers, loose and badly
+cut, fell a little below the knees. His stockings were
+of worsted, his boots clumsy and thick-soled, though
+relatively tiny. One had the impression always that
+his body was fragile and small, but as a matter of
+fact the body and limbs were, if anything, slightly
+better developed than those of the average child of
+four and a half years.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Challis had ample opportunity to make these
+observations at various periods. He began them
+as he sat in the Stotts' cottage. At first he did not
+address the boy directly.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear your son has been having a religious controversy
+with Mr. Crashaw," was his introduction to
+the object of his visit.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, sir!" Plainly this was not news to Mrs.
+Stott.</p>
+
+<p>"Your son told you?" suggested Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! no, sir, 'e never told me," replied Mrs. Stott,
+"'twas Mr. Crashaw. 'E's been 'ere several times
+lately."</p>
+
+<p>Challis looked sharply at the boy, but he gave no
+sign that he heard what was passing.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Mr. Crashaw seems rather upset about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, sir, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; speak plainly," prompted Challis. "I assure
+you that you will have no cause to regret any
+confidence you may make to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't see as it's any business of Mr. Crashaw's,
+sir, if you'll forgive me for sayin' so."</p>
+
+<p>"He has been worrying you?"</p>
+
+<p>"'E 'as, sir, but 'e ..." she glanced at her son&mdash;she
+laid a stress on the pronoun always when she
+spoke of him that differentiated its significance&mdash;"'e
+'asn't seen Mr. Crashaw again, sir."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Challis turned to the boy. "You are not interested
+in Mr. Crashaw, I suppose?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The boy took no notice of the question.</p>
+
+<p>Challis was piqued. If this extraordinary child
+really had an intelligence, surely it must be possible
+to appeal to that intelligence in some way. He
+made another effort, addressing Mrs. Stott.</p>
+
+<p>"I think we must forgive Mr. Crashaw, you know,
+Mrs. Stott. As I understand it, your boy at the age
+of four years and a half has defied&mdash;his cloth, if
+I may say so." He paused, and as he received no
+answer, continued: "But I hope that matter may
+be easily arranged."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said Mrs. Stott. "It's very
+kind of you. I'm sure, I'm greatly obliged to you,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>"That's only one reason of my visit to you,
+however," Challis hesitated. "I've been wondering
+whether I might not be able to help you and your son
+in some other way. I understand that he has unusual
+power of&mdash;of intelligence."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed 'e 'as, sir," responded Mrs. Stott.</p>
+
+<p>"And he can read, can't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've learned 'im what I could, sir: it isn't much."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps I could lend him a few books."</p>
+
+<p>Challis made a significant pause, and again he
+looked at the boy; but as there was no response, he
+continued: "Tell me what he has read."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We've no books, sir, and we never 'ardly see a
+paper now. All we 'ave in the 'ouse is a Bible and
+two copies of Lillywhite's cricket annual as my 'usband
+left be'ind."</p>
+
+<p>Challis smiled. "Has he read those?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The Bible 'e 'as, I believe," replied Mrs. Stott.</p>
+
+<p>It was a conversation curious in its impersonality.
+Challis was conscious of the anomaly that he was
+speaking in the boy's presence, crediting him with
+a remarkable intelligence, and yet addressing a
+frankly ignorant woman as though the boy was not
+in the room. Yet how could he break that deliberate
+silence? It seemed to him as though there must,
+after all, be some mistake; yet how account for
+Crashaw's story if the boy were indeed an idiot?</p>
+
+<p>With a slight show of temper he turned to the
+Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to read?" he asked. "I have between
+forty and fifty thousand books in my library.
+I think it possible that you might find one or two
+which would interest you."</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder lifted his hand as though to ask for
+silence. For a minute, perhaps, no one spoke. All
+waited, expectant; Challis and Lewes with intent
+eyes fixed on the detached expression of the child's
+face, Ellen Mary with bent head. It was a strange,
+yet very logical question that came at last:</p>
+
+<p>"What should I learn out of all them books?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+asked the Wonder. He did not look at Challis as he
+spoke.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>Challis drew a deep breath and turned towards
+Lewes. "A difficult question, that, Lewes," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Lewes lifted his eyebrows and pulled at his fair
+moustache. "If you take the question literally,"
+he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"You might learn&mdash;the essential part ... of all
+the knowledge that has been ... discovered by
+mankind," said Challis. He phrased his sentence
+carefully, as though he were afraid of being trapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Should I learn what I am?" asked the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Challis understood the question in its metaphysical
+acceptation. He had the sense of a powerful
+but undirected intelligence working from the simple
+premisses of experience; of a cloistered mind that
+had functioned profoundly; a mind unbound by the
+tradition of all the speculations and discoveries of
+man, the essential conclusions of which were contained
+in that library at Challis Court.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" said Challis, after a perceptible interval,
+"that you will not learn from any books in my
+possession, but you will find grounds for speculation."</p>
+
+<p>"Grounds for speculation?" questioned the
+Wonder. He repeated the words quite clearly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Material&mdash;matter from which you can&mdash;er&mdash;formulate
+theories of your own," explained Challis.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder shook his head. It was evident that
+Challis's sentence conveyed little or no meaning to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He got down from his chair and took up an old
+cricket cap of his father's, a cap which his mother
+had let out by the addition of another gore of cloth
+that did not match the original material. He
+pulled this cap carefully over his bald head, and then
+made for the door.</p>
+
+<p>At the threshold the strange child paused, and
+without looking at any one present said: "I'll coom
+to your library," and went out.</p>
+
+<p>Challis joined Lewes at the window, and they
+watched the boy make his deliberate way along the
+garden path and up the lane towards the fields beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"You let him go out by himself?" asked Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"He likes to be in the air, sir," replied Ellen
+Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you have to let him go his own way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I will send the governess cart up for him to-morrow
+morning," said Challis, "at ten o'clock.
+That is, of course, if you have no objection to his
+coming."</p>
+
+<p>"'E said 'e'd coom, sir," replied Ellen Mary. Her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+tone implied that there was no appeal possible
+against her son's statement of his wishes.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>"His methods do not lack terseness," remarked
+Lewes, when he and Challis were out of earshot of
+the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>"His methods and manners are damnable," said
+Challis, "but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You were going to say?" prompted Lewes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what is your opinion?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not convinced, as yet," said Lewes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, surely," expostulated Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Not from objective, personal evidence. Let us
+put Crashaw out of our minds for the moment."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; go on, state your case."</p>
+
+<p>"He has, so far, made four remarks in our presence,"
+said Lewes, gesticulating with his walking
+stick. "Two of them can be neglected; his repetition
+of your words, which he did not understand, and
+his condescending promise to study your library."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I'm with you, so far."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, putting aside the preconception with which
+we entered the cottage, was there really anything
+in the other two remarks? Were they not the type
+of simple, unreasoning questions which one may
+often hear from the mouth of a child of that age?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+'What shall I learn from your books?' Well, it is
+the natural question of the ignorant child, who has
+no conception of the contents of books, no experience
+which would furnish material for his imagination."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"The second remark is more explicable still. It
+is a remark we all make in childhood, in some form
+or another. I remember quite well at the age of
+six or seven asking my mother: 'Which is me, my
+soul or my body?' I was brought up on the Church
+catechism. But you at once accepted these questions&mdash;which,
+I maintain, were questions possible in
+the mouth of a simple, ignorant child&mdash;in some deep,
+metaphysical acceptation. Don't you think, sir, we
+should wait for further evidence before we attribute
+any phenomenal intelligence to this child?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite the right attitude to take, Lewes&mdash;the scientific
+attitude," replied Challis. "Let's go by the
+lane," he added, as they reached the entrance to
+the wood.</p>
+
+<p>For some few minutes they walked in silence;
+Challis with his head down, his heavy shoulders
+humped. His hands were clasped behind him, dragging
+his stick as it were a tail, which he occasionally
+cocked. He walked with a little stumble now and
+again, his eyes on the ground. Lewes strode with a
+sure foot, his head up, and he slashed at the tangle of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+last year's growth on the bank whenever he passed
+some tempting butt for the sword-play of his stick.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think, then," said Challis at last, "that
+much of the atmosphere&mdash;you must have marked the
+atmosphere&mdash;of the child's personality, was a creation
+of our own minds, due to our preconceptions?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think so," Lewes replied, a touch of defiance
+in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that what you <i>want</i> to believe?" asked Challis.</p>
+
+<p>Lewes hit at a flag of dead bracken and missed.
+"You mean...?" he prevaricated.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that that is a much stronger influence
+than any preconception, my dear Lewes. I'm no
+pragmatist, as you know; but there can be no doubt
+that with the majority of us the wish to believe a
+thing is true constitutes the truth of that thing for
+us. And that is, in my opinion, the wrong attitude
+for either scientist or philosopher. Now, in the case
+we are discussing, I suppose at bottom I should like
+to agree with you. One does not like to feel that a
+child of four and a half has greater intellectual
+powers than oneself. Candidly, I do not like it at
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not! But I can't think that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You can if you try; you would at once if you
+wished to," returned Challis, anticipating the completion
+of Lewes's sentence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll admit that there are some remarkable facts
+in the case of this child," said Lewes, "but I do not
+see why we should, as yet, take the whole proposition
+for granted."</p>
+
+<p>"No! I am with you there," returned Challis.
+And no more was said until they were nearly home.</p>
+
+<p>Just before they turned into the drive, however,
+Challis stopped. "Do you know, Lewes," he said,
+"I am not sure that I am doing a wise thing in bringing
+that child here!"</p>
+
+<p>Lewes did not understand. "No, sir? Why not?"
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, think of the possibilities of that child, if
+he has all the powers I credit him with," said Challis.
+"Think of his possibilities for original thought if he
+is kept away from all the traditions of this futile
+learning." He waved an arm in the direction of
+the elongated chapel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! but surely," remonstrated Lewes, "that is
+a necessary groundwork. Knowledge is built up
+step by step."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it? I wonder. I sometimes doubt," said
+Challis. "Yes, I sometimes doubt whether we have
+ever learned anything at all that is worth knowing.
+And, perhaps, this child, if he were kept away from
+books.... However, the thing is done now, and
+in any case he would never have been able to dodge
+the School attendance officer."</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII<br />
+<small>HIS FIRST VISIT TO CHALLIS COURT</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">"Shall</span> you be able to help me in collating your
+notes of the Tikopia observations to-day, sir?"
+Lewes asked next morning. He rose from the breakfast-table
+and lit a cigarette. There was no ceremony
+between Challis and his secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"You forget our engagement for ten o'clock,"
+said Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Need that distract us?"</p>
+
+<p>"It need not, but doesn't it seem to you that it
+may furnish us with valuable material?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly pertinent, sir, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What line do you think of taking up, Lewes?"
+asked Challis with apparent irrelevance.</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to this&mdash;this phenomenon?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. I was speaking of your own ambitions."
+Challis had sauntered over to the window; he stood,
+with his back to Lewes, looking out at the blue and
+white of the April sky.</p>
+
+<p>Lewes frowned. He did not understand the gist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+of the question. "I suppose there is a year's work
+on this book before me yet," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite, quite," replied Challis, watching a cloud
+shadow swarm up the slope of Deane Hill. "Yes,
+certainly a year's work. I was thinking of the future."</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought of laboratory work in connection
+with psychology," said Lewes, still puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I remembered your saying something
+of the kind," murmured Challis absently. "We are
+going to have more rain. It will be a late spring this
+year."</p>
+
+<p>"Had the question any bearing on our engagement
+of this morning?" Lewes was a little anxious,
+uncertain whether this inquiry as to his future had
+not some particular significance; a hint, perhaps,
+that his services would not be required much longer.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I think it had," said Challis. "I saw the
+governess cart go up the road a few minutes since."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose the boy will be here in a quarter of
+an hour?" said Lewes by way of keeping up the
+conversation. He was puzzled; he did not know
+Challis in this mood. He did not conceive it possible
+that Challis could be nervous about the arrival of so
+insignificant a person as this Stott child.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all very ridiculous," broke out Challis suddenly;
+and he turned away from the window, and
+joined Lewes by the fire. "Don't you think so?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Challis laughed. "I'm not surprised," he said;
+"I was a trifle inconsecutive. But I wish you were
+more interested in this child, Lewes. The thought
+of him engrosses me, and yet I don't want to meet
+him. I should be relieved to hear that he wasn't
+coming. Surely you, as a student of psychology ..."
+he broke off with a lift of his heavy shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Yes! I <i>am</i> interested, certainly, as you
+say, as a student of psychology. We ought to take
+some measurements. The configuration of the skull
+is not abnormal otherwise than in its relation to the
+development of the rest of his body, but ..."
+Lewes meandered off into somewhat abstruse speculation
+with regard to the significance of craniology.</p>
+
+<p>Challis nodded his head and murmured: "Quite,
+quite," occasionally. He seemed glad that Lewes
+should continue to talk.</p>
+
+<p>The lecture was interrupted by the appearance of
+the governess cart.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, he <i>has</i> come," ejaculated Challis in
+the middle of one of Lewes's periods. "You'll have
+to see me through this, my boy. I'm damned if I
+know how to take the child."</p>
+
+<p>Lewes flushed, annoyed at the interruption of his
+lecture. He had believed that he had been interesting.
+"Curse the kid," was the thought in his
+mind as he followed Challis to the window.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Jessop, the groom deputed to fetch the Wonder
+from Pym, looked a little uneasy, perhaps a little
+scared. When he drew up at the porch, the child
+pointed to the door of the cart and indicated that
+it was to be opened for him. He was evidently used
+to being waited upon. When this command had
+been obeyed, he descended deliberately and then
+pointed to the front door.</p>
+
+<p>"Open!" he said clearly, as Jessop hesitated. The
+Wonder knew nothing of bells or ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>Jessop came down from the cart and rang.</p>
+
+<p>The butler opened the door. He was an old
+servant and accustomed to his master's eccentricities,
+but he was not prepared for the vision of that
+strange little figure, with a large head in a parti-coloured
+cricket-cap, an apparition that immediately
+walked straight by him into the hall, and pointed
+to the first door he came to.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear! Well, to be sure," gasped Heathcote.
+"Why, whatever&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Open!" commanded the Wonder, and Heathcote
+obeyed, weak-kneed.</p>
+
+<p>The door chanced to be the right one, the door of
+the breakfast-room, and the Wonder walked in, still
+wearing his cap.</p>
+
+<p>Challis came forward to meet him with a conventional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+greeting. "I'm glad you were able to
+come ..." he began, but the child took no notice;
+he looked rapidly round the room, and not finding
+what he wanted, signified his desire by a single
+word.</p>
+
+<p>"Books," he said, and looked at Challis.</p>
+
+<p>Heathcote stood at the door, hesitating between
+amazement and disapproval. "I've never seen the
+like," was how he phrased his astonishment later,
+in the servants' hall, "never in all my born days. To
+see that melon-'eaded himp in a cricket-cap hordering
+the master about. Well, there&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Jessop says he fair got the creeps drivin' 'im
+over," said the cook. "'E says the child's not right
+in 'is 'ead."</p>
+
+<p>Much embroidery followed in the servants' hall.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INTERLUDE</h2>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">This</span> brief history of the Hampdenshire Wonder
+is marked by a stereotyped division into three parts,
+an arbitrary arrangement dependent on the experience
+of the writer. The true division becomes manifest
+at this point. The life of Victor Stott was
+cut into two distinct sections, between which there
+is no correlation. The first part should tell the story
+of his mind during the life of experience, the time
+occupied in observation of the phenomena of life
+presented to him in fact, without any specific teaching
+on the theories of existence and progress, or on
+the speculation as to ultimate destiny. The second
+part should deal with his entry into the world of
+books; into that account of a long series of collated
+experiments and partly verified hypotheses we call
+science; into the imperfectly developed system of
+inductive and deductive logic which determines mathematics
+and philosophy; into the long, inaccurate
+and largely unverifiable account of human blindness
+and error known as history; and into the realm of
+idealism, symbol, and pitiful pride we find in the
+story of poetry, letters, and religion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I will confess that I once contemplated the writing
+of such a history. It was Challis who, in his courtly,
+gentle way, pointed out to me that no man living
+had the intellectual capacity to undertake so profound
+a work.</p>
+
+<p>For some three months before I had this conversation
+with Challis, I had been wrapped in solitude,
+dreaming, speculating. I had been uplifted in
+thought, I had come to believe myself inspired as
+a result of my separation from the world of men,
+and of the deep introspection and meditation in
+which I had been plunged. I had arrived at a point,
+perhaps not far removed from madness, at which I
+thought myself capable of setting out the true history
+of Victor Stott.</p>
+
+<p>Challis broke the spell. He cleared away the
+false glamour which was blinding and intoxicating
+me and brought me back to a condition of open-eyed
+sanity. To Challis I owe a great debt.</p>
+
+<p>Yet at the moment I was sunk in depression. All
+the glory of my vision had faded; the afterglow
+was quenched in the blackness of a night that drew
+out of the east and fell from the zenith as a curtain
+of utter darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Again Challis came to my rescue. He brought me
+a great sheaf of notes.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," he said, "if you can't write a true
+history of that strange child, I see no reason why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+you should not write his story as it is known to you,
+as it impinges on your own life. After all, you, in
+many ways, know more of him than any one. You
+came nearest to receiving his confidence."</p>
+
+<p>"But only during the last few months," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Does that matter?" said Challis with an upheaval
+of his shoulders&mdash;"shrug" is far too insignificant
+a word for that mountainous humping. "Is
+any biography founded on better material than you
+have at command?"</p>
+
+<p>He unfolded his bundle of notes. "See here," he
+said, "here is some magnificent material for you&mdash;first-hand
+observations made at the time. Can't
+you construct a story from that?"</p>
+
+<p>Even then I began to cast my story in a slightly
+biographical form. I wrote half a dozen chapters,
+and read them to Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Magnificent, my dear fellow," was his comment,
+"magnificent; but no one will believe it."</p>
+
+<p>I had been carried away by my own prose, and
+with the natural vanity of the author, I resented
+intensely his criticism.</p>
+
+<p>For some weeks I did not see Challis again, and I
+persisted in my futile endeavour, but always as I
+wrote that killing suggestion insinuated itself: "No
+one will believe you." At times I felt as a man
+may feel who has spent many years in a lunatic
+asylum; and after his release is for ever engaged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+in a struggle to allay the doubts of a leering
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>I gave up the hopeless task at last, and sought
+out Challis again.</p>
+
+<p>"Write it as a story," he suggested, "and give
+up the attempt to carry conviction."</p>
+
+<p>And in that spirit, adopting the form of a story,
+I did begin, and in that form I hope to finish.</p>
+
+<p>But here as I reach the great division, the determining
+factor of Victor Stott's life, I am constrained
+to pause and apologise. I have become
+uncomfortably conscious of my own limitations, and
+the feeble, ephemeral methods I am using. I am
+trifling with a wonderful story, embroidering my
+facts with the tawdry detail of my own imagining.</p>
+
+<p>I saw&mdash;I see&mdash;no other way.</p>
+
+<p>This is, indeed, a preface, yet I prefer to put it in
+this place, since it was at this time I wrote it.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>On the Common a faint green is coming again
+like a mist among the ash-trees, while the oak is still
+dead and bare. Last year the oak came first.</p>
+
+<p>They say we shall have a wet summer.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="bk5"><small>PART TWO (<i>Continued</i>)</small><br />
+THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p>
+<div class="bk5"><big>PART TWO (<i>Continued</i>)</big><br />
+THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS</div>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX<br />
+<small>HIS PASSAGE THROUGH THE PRISON OF KNOWLEDGE</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Challis</span> led the way to the library; Lewes, petulant
+and mutinous, hung in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder toddled forward, unabashed, to enter
+his new world. On the threshold, however, he
+paused. His comprehensive stare took in a sweeping
+picture of enclosing walls of books, and beyond
+was a vista of further rooms, of more walls all lined
+from floor to ceiling with records of human discovery,
+endeavour, doubt, and hope.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder stayed and stared. Then he took
+two faltering steps into the room and stopped again,
+and, finally, he looked up at Challis with doubt and
+question; his gaze no longer quelling and authoritative,
+but hesitating, compliant, perhaps a little child-like.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Ave you read all these?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>It was a curious picture. The tall figure of
+Challis, stooping, as always, slightly forward;
+Challis, with his seaman's eyes and scholar's head,
+his hands loosely clasped together behind his back,
+paying such scrupulous attention to that grotesque
+representative of a higher intellectuality, clothed in
+the dress of a villager, a patched cricket-cap drawn
+down over his globular skull, his little arms hanging
+loosely at his sides; who, nevertheless, even in this
+new, strange aspect of unwonted humility bore on
+his face the promise of some ultimate development
+which differentiated him from all other humanity,
+as the face of humanity is differentiated from the
+face of its prognathous ancestor.</p>
+
+<p>The scene is set in a world of books, and in the
+background lingers the athletic figure and fair head
+of Lewes, the young Cambridge undergraduate, the
+disciple of science, hardly yet across the threshold
+which divides him from the knowledge of his own
+ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ave you read all these?" asked the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"A greater part of them&mdash;in effect," replied
+Challis. "There is much repetition, you understand,
+and much record of experiment which becomes,
+in a sense, worthless when the conclusions
+are either finally accepted or rejected."</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the Wonder shifted and their expression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+became abstracted; he seemed to lose consciousness
+of the outer world; he wore the look
+which you may see in the eyes of Jakob Schlesinger's
+portrait of the mature Hegel, a look of profound
+introspection and analysis.</p>
+
+<p>There was an interval of silence, and then the
+Wonder unknowingly gave expression to a quotation
+from Hamlet. "Words," he whispered reflectively,
+and then again "words."</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Challis understood him. "You have not yet
+learned the meaning of words?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The brief period&mdash;the only one recorded&mdash;of
+amazement and submission was over. It may be
+that he had doubted during those few minutes of
+time whether he was well advised to enter into that
+world of books, whether he would not by so doing
+stunt his own mental growth. It may be that the
+decision of so momentous a question should have
+been postponed for a year&mdash;two years; to a time
+when his mind should have had further possibilities
+for unlettered expansion. However that may be,
+he decided now and finally. He walked to the table
+and climbed up on a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Books about words," he commanded, and
+pointed at Challis and Lewes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They brought him the latest production of the
+twentieth century in many volumes, the work of a
+dozen eminent authorities on the etymology of the
+English language, and they seated him on eight
+volumes of the <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i> (India paper
+edition) in order that he might reach the level
+of the table.</p>
+
+<p>At first they tried to show him how his wonderful
+dictionary should be used, but he pushed them on
+one side, neither then nor at any future time would
+he consent to be taught&mdash;the process was too tedious
+for him, his mind worked more fluently, rapidly, and
+comprehensively than the mind of the most gifted
+teacher that could have been found for him.</p>
+
+<p>So Challis and Lewes stood on one side and
+watched him, and he was no more embarrassed by
+their presence than if they had been in another world,
+as, possibly, they were.</p>
+
+<p>He began with volume one, and he read the title
+page and the introduction, the list of abbreviations,
+and all the preliminary matter in due order.</p>
+
+<p>Challis noted that when the Wonder began to
+read, he read no faster than the average educated
+man, but that he acquired facility at a most astounding
+rate, and that when he had been reading for a
+few days his eye swept down the column, as it were
+at a single glance.</p>
+
+<p>Challis and Lewes watched him for, perhaps, half<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+an hour, and then, seeing that their presence was
+of an entirely negligible value to the Wonder, they
+left him and went into the farther room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" asked Challis, "what do you make of
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is he reading or pretending to read?" parried
+Lewes. "Do you think it possible that he could
+read so fast? Moreover, remember that he has admitted
+that he knows few words of the English language,
+yet he does not refer from volume to volume;
+he does not look up the meanings of the many unknown
+words which must occur even in the introduction."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. I had noticed that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you think he <i>is</i> humbugging&mdash;pretending
+to read?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; that solution seems to me altogether unlikely.
+He could not, for one thing, simulate that
+look of attention. Remember, Lewes, the child is
+not yet five years old."</p>
+
+<p>"What is your explanation, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am wondering whether the child has not a memory
+beside which the memory of a Macaulay would
+appear insignificant."</p>
+
+<p>Lewes did not grasp Challis's intention. "Even
+so ..." he began.</p>
+
+<p>"And," continued Challis, "I am wondering
+whether, if that is the case, he is, in effect, prepared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+to learn the whole dictionary by heart, and, so to
+speak, collate its contents later, in his mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Sir!" Lewes smiled. The supposition was
+too outrageous to be taken seriously. "Surely, you
+can't mean that." There was something in Lewes's
+tone which carried a hint of contempt for so far-fetched
+a hypothesis.</p>
+
+<p>Challis was pacing up and down the library, his
+hands clasped behind him. "Yes, I mean it," he
+said, without looking up. "I put it forward as a
+serious theory, worthy of full consideration."</p>
+
+<p>Lewes sneered. "Oh, surely not, sir," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Challis stopped and faced him. "Why not,
+Lewes; why not?" he asked, with a kindly smile.
+"Think of the gap which separates your intellectual
+powers from those of a Polynesian savage. Why,
+after all, should it be impossible that this child's
+powers should equally transcend our own? A
+freak, if you will, an abnormality, a curious effect of
+nature's, like the giant puff-ball&mdash;but still&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! yes, sir, I grant you the thing is not impossible
+from a theoretical point of view," argued
+Lewes, "but I think you are theorising on altogether
+insufficient evidence. I am willing to admit that
+such a freak is theoretically possible, but I have not
+yet found the indications of such a power in the
+child."</p>
+
+<p>Challis resumed his pacing. "Quite, quite," he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+assented; "your method is perfectly correct&mdash;perfectly
+correct. We must wait."</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o'clock Challis brought a glass of milk
+and some biscuits, and set them beside the Wonder&mdash;he
+was apparently making excellent progress with
+the letter "A."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how are you getting on?" asked Challis.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder took not the least notice of the
+question, but he stretched out a little hand and took
+a biscuit and ate it, without looking up from his
+reading.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish he'd answer questions," Challis remarked
+to Lewes, later.</p>
+
+<p>"I should prescribe a sound shaking," returned
+Lewes.</p>
+
+<p>Challis smiled. "Well, see here, Lewes," he said,
+"I'll take the responsibility; you go and experiment;
+go and shake him."</p>
+
+<p>Lewes looked through the folding doors at the
+picture of the Wonder, intent on his study of the
+great dictionary. "Since you've franked me," he
+said, "I'll do it&mdash;but not now. I'll wait till he gives
+me some occasion."</p>
+
+<p>"Good," replied Challis, "my offer holds ...
+and, by the way, I have no doubt that an occasion
+will present itself. Doesn't it strike you as likely,
+Lewes, that we shall see a good deal of the child
+here?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They stood for some minutes, watching the picture
+of that intent student, framed in the written
+thoughts of his predecessors.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>The Wonder ignored an invitation to lunch; he
+ignored, also, the tray that was sent in to him. He
+read on steadily till a quarter to six, by which time
+he was at the end of "B," and then he climbed down
+from his Encyclop&aelig;dia, and made for the door.
+Challis, working in the farther room, saw him and
+came out to open the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going now?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The child nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I will order the cart for you, if you will wait ten
+minutes," said Challis.</p>
+
+<p>The child shook his head. "It's very necessary
+to have air," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Something in the tone and pronunciation struck
+Challis, and awoke a long dormant memory. The
+sentence spoken, suddenly conjured up a vision of
+the Stotts' cottage at Stoke, of the Stotts at tea, of
+a cradle in the shadow, and of himself, sitting in
+an uncomfortable armchair and swinging his stick
+between his knees. When the child had gone&mdash;walking
+deliberately, and evidently regarding the
+mile-and-a-half walk through the twilight wood and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+over the deserted Common as a trivial incident in
+the day's business&mdash;Challis set himself to analyse
+that curious association.</p>
+
+<p>As he strolled back across the hall to the library,
+he tried to reconstruct the scene of the cottage at
+Stoke, and to recall the outline of the conversation
+he had had with the Stotts.</p>
+
+<p>"Lewes!" he said, when he reached the room in
+which his secretary was working. "Lewes, this is
+curious," and he described the associations called up
+by the child's speech. "The curious thing is," he
+continued, "that I had gone to advise Mrs. Stott to
+take a cottage at Pym, because the Stoke villagers
+were hostile, in some way, and she did not care to
+take the child out in the street. It is more than
+probable that I used just those words, 'It is very
+necessary to have air,' very probable. Now, what
+about my memory theory? The child was only six
+months old at that time."</p>
+
+<p>Lewes appeared unconvinced. "There is nothing
+very unusual in the sentence," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," replied Challis, "I don't agree with
+you. It is not phrased as a villager would phrase it,
+and, as I tell you, it was not spoken with the local
+accent."</p>
+
+<p>"You may have spoken the sentence to-day," suggested
+Lewes.</p>
+
+<p>"I may, of course, though I don't remember saying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+anything of the sort, but that would not account for
+the curiously vivid association which was conjured
+up."</p>
+
+<p>Lewes pursed his lips. "No, no, no," he said.
+"But that is hardly ground for argument, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not," returned Challis thoughtfully;
+"but when you take up psychology, Lewes, I should
+much like you to specialise on a careful inquiry into
+association in connection with memory. I feel
+certain that if one can reproduce, as nearly as may
+be, any complex sensation one has experienced, no
+matter how long ago, one will stimulate what I may
+call an abnormal memory of all the associations
+connected with that experience. Just now I saw the
+interior of that room in the Stotts' cottage so clearly
+that I had an image of a dreadful oleograph of Disraeli
+hanging on the wall. But, now, I cannot for
+the life of me remember whether there was such an
+oleograph or not. I do not remember noticing it
+at the time."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's very interesting," replied Lewes.
+"There is certainly a wide field for research in that
+direction."</p>
+
+<p>"You might throw much light on our mental
+processes," replied Challis.</p>
+
+<p>(It was as the outcome of this conversation that
+Gregory Lewes did, two years afterwards, take up
+this line of study. The only result up to the present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+time is his little brochure <i>Reflexive Associations</i>,
+which has added little to our knowledge of the subject.)</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>Challis's anticipation that he and Lewes would be
+greatly favoured by the Wonder's company was
+fully realised.</p>
+
+<p>The child put in an appearance at half-past nine
+the next morning, just as the governess cart was
+starting out to fetch him. When he was admitted
+he went straight to the library, climbed on to the
+chair, upon which the volumes of the Encyclop&aelig;dia
+still remained, and continued his reading where he
+had left off on the previous evening.</p>
+
+<p>He read steadily throughout the day without
+giving utterance to speech of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>Challis and Lewes went out in the afternoon, and
+left the child deep in study. They came in at six
+o'clock, and went to the library. The Wonder, however,
+was not there.</p>
+
+<p>Challis rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"Has little Stott gone?" he asked when Heathcote
+came.</p>
+
+<p>"I 'aven't seen 'im, sir," said Heathcote.</p>
+
+<p>"Just find out if any one opened the door for him,
+will you?" said Challis. "He couldn't possibly have
+opened that door for himself."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No one 'asn't let Master Stott hout, sir," Heathcote
+reported on his return.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite sure, sir. I've made full hinquiries," said
+Heathcote with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we'd better find him," said Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"The window is open," suggested Lewes.</p>
+
+<p>"He would hardly ..." began Challis, walking
+over to the low sill of the open window, but he broke
+off in his sentence and continued, "By Jove, he did,
+though; look here!"</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, quite obvious that the Wonder had
+made his exit by the window; the tiny prints of his
+feet were clearly marked in the mould of the flower-bed;
+he had, moreover, disregarded all results of
+early spring floriculture.</p>
+
+<p>"See how he has smashed those daffodils," said
+Lewes. "What an infernally cheeky little brute he
+is!"</p>
+
+<p>"What interests me is the logic of the child,"
+returned Challis. "I would venture to guess that
+he wasted no time in trying to attract attention.
+The door was closed, so he just got out of the window.
+I rather admire the spirit; there is something
+Napoleonic about him. Don't you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>Lewes shrugged his shoulders. Heathcote's expression
+was quite non-committal.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better send Jessop up to Pym, Heathcote,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+said Challis. "Let him find out whether the
+child is safe at home."</p>
+
+<p>Jessop reported an hour afterwards that Master
+Stott had arrived home quite safely, and Mrs. Stott
+was much obliged.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>Altogether the Wonder spent five days, or about
+forty hours, on his study of the dictionary, and in
+the evening of his last day's work he left again by
+the open window. Challis, however, had been keeping
+him under fairly close observation, and knew
+that the preliminary task was finished.</p>
+
+<p>"What can I give that child to read to-day?"
+he asked at breakfast next morning.</p>
+
+<p>"I should reverse the arrangement; let him sit on
+the Dictionary and read the Encyclop&aelig;dia." Lewes
+always approached the subject of the Wonder with
+a certain supercilious contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not convinced yet that he isn't humbugging?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! Frankly, I'm not."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, we must wait for more evidence, before
+we argue about it," said Challis, but they sat
+on over the breakfast-table, waiting for the child to
+put in an appearance, and their conversation hovered
+over the topic of his intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"Half-past ten?" Challis ejaculated at last, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+surprise. "We are getting into slack habits,
+Lewes." He rose and rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently the Stott infant has had enough of
+it," suggested Lewes. "Perhaps he has exhausted
+the interest of dictionary illustrations."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see," replied Challis, and then to a
+deferentially appearing Heathcote he said: "Has
+Master Stott come this morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. Leastways, no one 'asn't let 'im in,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>"It may be that he is mentally collating the results
+of the past two days' reading," said Challis, as he
+and Lewes made their way to the library.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" was all Lewes's reply, but it conveyed
+much of impatient contempt for his employer's attitude.</p>
+
+<p>Challis only smiled.</p>
+
+<p>When they entered the library they found the
+Wonder hard at work, and he had, of his own initiative,
+adopted the plan ironically suggested by Lewes,
+for he had succeeded in transferring the Dictionary
+volumes to the chair, and he was deep in volume one,
+of the eleventh edition of the <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The library was never cleared up by any one except
+Challis or his deputy, but an early housemaid
+had been sent to dust, and she had left the casement
+of one of the lower lights of the window open. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+means of the Wonder's entrance was thus clearly in
+evidence.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Napoleonic," murmured Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"It's most infernal cheek," returned Lewes in a
+loud voice, "I should not be at all surprised if that
+promised shaking were not administered to-day."</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder took no notice. Challis says that on
+that morning his eyes were travelling down the page
+at about the rate at which one could count the lines.</p>
+
+<p>"He isn't reading," said Lewes. "No one could
+read as fast as that, and most certainly not a child
+of four and a half."</p>
+
+<p>"If he would only answer questions ..." hesitated
+Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! of course he won't do that," said Lewes.
+"He's clever enough not to give himself away."</p>
+
+<p>The two men went over to the table and looked
+down over the child's shoulder. He was in the middle
+of the article on "Aberration"&mdash;a technical
+treatise on optical physics.</p>
+
+<p>Lewes made a gesture. "Now do you believe he's
+humbugging?" he asked confidently, and made no
+effort to modulate his voice.</p>
+
+<p>Challis drew his eyebrows together. "My boy,"
+he said, and laid his hand lightly on Victor Stott's
+shoulder, "can you understand what you are reading
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>But no answer was vouchsafed. Challis sighed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+"Come along, Lewes," he said; "we must waste no
+more time."</p>
+
+<p>Lewes wore a look of smug triumph as they went
+to the farther room, but he was clever enough to
+refrain from expressing his triumph in speech.</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>Challis gave directions that the window which the
+Wonder had found to be his most convenient method
+of entry and exit should be kept open, except at
+night; and a stool was placed under the sill inside
+the room, and a low bench was fixed outside to facilitate
+the child's goings and comings. Also, a little
+path was made across the flower-bed.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder gave no trouble. He arrived at nine
+o'clock every morning, Sunday included, and left at
+a quarter to six in the evening. On wet days he
+was provided with a waterproof which had evidently
+been made by his mother out of a larger garment.
+This he took off when he entered the room and left
+on the stool under the window.</p>
+
+<p>He was given a glass of milk and a plate of bread-and-butter
+at twelve o'clock; and except for this he
+demanded and received no attention.</p>
+
+<p>For three weeks he devoted himself exclusively to
+the study of the Encyclop&aelig;dia.</p>
+
+<p>Lewes was puzzled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Challis spoke little of the child during these three
+weeks, but he often stood at the entrance to the farther
+rooms and watched the Wonder's eyes travelling
+so rapidly yet so intently down the page. That sight
+had a curious fascination for him; he returned to
+his own work by an effort, and an hour afterwards
+he would be back again at the door of the larger
+room. Sometimes Lewes would hear him mutter:
+"If he would only answer a few questions...."
+There was always one hope in Challis's mind. He
+hoped that some sort of climax might be reached
+when the Encyclop&aelig;dia was finished. The child
+must, at least, ask then for another book. Even if
+he chose one for himself, his choice might furnish
+some sort of a test.</p>
+
+<p>So Challis waited and said little; and Lewes was
+puzzled, because he was beginning to doubt whether
+it were possible that the child could sustain a pose
+so long. That, in itself, would be evidence of extraordinary
+abnormality. Lewes fumbled in his
+mind for another hypothesis.</p>
+
+<p>This reading craze may be symptomatic of some
+form of idiocy, he thought; "and I don't believe he
+does read," was his illogical deduction.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Stott usually came to meet her son, and
+sometimes she would come early in the afternoon
+and stand at the window watching him at his work;
+but neither Challis nor Lewes ever saw the Wonder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+display by any sign that he was aware of his mother's
+presence.</p>
+
+<p>During those three weeks the Wonder held himself
+completely detached from any intercourse with the
+world of men. At the end of that period he once
+more manifested his awareness of the human factor
+in existence.</p>
+
+<p>Challis, if he spoke little to Lewes of the Wonder
+during this time, maintained a strict observation of
+the child's doings.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder began his last volume of the Encyclop&aelig;dia
+one Wednesday afternoon soon after lunch,
+and on Thursday morning, Challis was continually
+in and out of the room watching the child's progress,
+and noting his nearness to the end of the colossal
+task he had undertaken.</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter to twelve he took up his old position
+in the doorway, and with his hands clasped behind
+his back he watched the reading of the last forty
+pages.</p>
+
+<p>There was no slackening and no quickening in the
+Wonder's rate of progress. He read the articles
+under "Z" with the same attention he had given to
+the remainder of the work, and then, arrived at the
+last page, he closed the volume and took up the
+Index.</p>
+
+<p>Challis suffered a qualm; not so much on account
+of the possible postponement of the crisis he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+awaiting, as because he saw that the reading of the
+Index could only be taken as a sign that the whole
+study had been unintelligent. No one could conceivably
+have any purpose in reading through an
+index.</p>
+
+<p>And at this moment Lewes joined him in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"What volume has he got to now?" asked Lewes.</p>
+
+<p>"The Index," returned Challis.</p>
+
+<p>Lewes was no less quick in drawing his inference
+than Challis had been.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that settles it, I should think," was
+Lewes's comment.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, wait," returned Challis.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder turned a dozen pages at once, glanced
+at the new opening, made a further brief examination
+of two or three headings near the end of the volume,
+closed the book, and looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you finished?" asked Challis.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder shook his head. "All this," he said&mdash;he
+indicated with a small and dirty hand the pile
+of volumes that were massed round him&mdash;"all
+this ..." he repeated, hesitated for a word, and
+again shook his head with that solemn, deliberate
+impressiveness which marked all his actions.</p>
+
+<p>Challis came towards the child, leaned over the
+table for a moment, and then sat down opposite to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+him. Between the two protagonists hovered Lewes,
+sceptical, inclined towards aggression.</p>
+
+<p>"I am most interested," said Challis. "Will you
+try to tell me, my boy, what you think of&mdash;all this?"</p>
+
+<p>"So elementary ... inchoate ... a disjunctive
+... patchwork," replied the Wonder. His
+abstracted eyes were blind to the objective world of
+our reality; he seemed to be profoundly analysing
+the very elements of thought.</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>Then that almost voiceless child found words.
+Heathcote's announcement of lunch was waved aside,
+the long afternoon waned, and still that thin trickle
+of sound flowed on.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder spoke in odd, pedantic phrases; he
+used the technicalities of every science; he constructed
+his sentences in unusual ways, and often he
+paused for a word and gave up the search, admitting
+that his meaning could not be expressed through
+the medium of any language known to him.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally Challis would interrupt him fiercely,
+would even rise from his chair and pace the room,
+arguing, stating a point of view, combating some
+suggestion that underlay the trend of that pitiless
+wisdom which in the end bore him down with its
+unanswerable insistence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>During those long hours much was stated by that
+small, thin voice which was utterly beyond the comprehension
+of the two listeners; indeed, it is doubtful
+whether even Challis understood a tithe of the
+theory that was actually expressed in words.</p>
+
+<p>As for Lewes, though he was at the time non-plussed,
+quelled, he was in the outcome impressed
+rather by the marvellous powers of memory exhibited
+than by the far finer powers shown in the superhuman
+logic of the synthesis.</p>
+
+<p>One sees that Lewes entered upon the interview
+with a mind predisposed to criticise, to destroy.
+There can be no doubt that as he listened his uninformed
+mind was endeavouring to analyse, to weigh,
+and to oppose; and this antagonism and his own
+thoughts continually interposed between him and
+the thought of the speaker. Lewes's account of
+what was spoken on that afternoon is utterly
+worthless.</p>
+
+<p>Challis's failure to comprehend was not, at the
+outset, due to his antagonistic attitude. He began
+with an earnest wish to understand: he failed only
+because the thing spoken was beyond the scope of
+his intellectual powers. But he did, nevertheless,
+understand the trend of that analysis of progress;
+he did in some half-realised way apprehend the gist
+of that terrible deduction of a final adjustment.</p>
+
+<p>He must have apprehended, in part, for he fiercely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+combated the argument, only to quaver, at last, into
+a silence which permitted again that trickle of hesitating,
+pedantic speech, which was yet so overwhelming,
+so conclusive.</p>
+
+<p>As the afternoon wore on, however, Challis's attitude
+must have changed; he must have assumed an
+armour of mental resistance not unlike the resistance
+of Lewes. Challis perceived, however dimly,
+that life would hold no further pleasure for him if
+he accepted that theory of origin, evolution, and
+final adjustment; he found in this cosmogony no
+place for his own idealism; and he feared to be convinced
+even by that fraction of the whole argument
+which he could understand.</p>
+
+<p>We see that Challis, with all his apparent devotion
+to science, was never more than a dilettante. He
+had another stake in the world which, at the last
+analysis, he valued more highly than the acquisition
+of knowledge. Those means of ease, of comfort, of
+liberty, of opportunity to choose his work among
+various interests, were the ruling influence of his
+life. With it all Challis was an idealist, and unpractical.
+His genial charity, his refinement of mind,
+his unthinking generosity, indicate the bias of a
+character which inclined always towards a picturesque
+optimism. It is not difficult to understand
+that he dared not allow himself to be convinced by
+Victor Stott's appalling synthesis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At last, when the twilight was deepening into
+night, the voice ceased, the child's story had been
+told, and it had not been understood. The Wonder
+never again spoke of his theory of life. He realised
+from that time that no one could comprehend him.</p>
+
+<p>As he rose to go, he asked one question that,
+simple as was its expression, had a deep and wonderful
+significance.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there none of my kind?" he said. "Is this,"
+and he laid a hand on the pile of books before him,
+"is this all?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is none of your kind," replied Challis; and
+the little figure born into a world that could not
+understand him, that was not ready to receive him,
+walked to the window and climbed out into the
+darkness.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>(Henry Challis is the only man who could ever
+have given any account of that extraordinary
+analysis of life, and he made no effort to recall the
+fundamental basis of the argument, and so allowed
+his memory of the essential part to fade. Moreover,
+he had a marked disinclination to speak of that
+afternoon or of anything that was said by Victor
+Stott during those six momentous hours of expression.
+It is evident that Challis's attitude to Victor
+Stott was not unlike the attitude of Captain Wallis
+to Victor Stott's father on the occasion of Hampdenshire's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+historic match with Surrey. "This man will
+have to be barred," Wallis said. "It means the end
+of cricket." Challis, in effect, thought that if Victor
+Stott were encouraged, it would mean the end of
+research, philosophy, all the mystery, idealism, and
+joy of life. Once, and once only, did Challis give
+me any idea of what he had learned during that
+afternoon's colloquy, and the substance of what
+Challis then told me will be found at the end of this
+volume.)</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X<br />
+<small>HIS PASTORS AND MASTERS</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">For</span> many months after that long afternoon in the
+library, Challis was affected with a fever of restlessness,
+and his work on the book stood still. He was
+in Rome during May, and in June he was seized by
+a sudden whim and went to China by the Trans-Siberian
+railway. Lewes did not accompany him.
+Challis preferred, one imagines, to have no intercourse
+with Lewes while the memory of certain pronouncements
+was still fresh. He might have been
+tempted to discuss that interview, and if, as was
+practically certain, Lewes attempted to pour contempt
+on the whole affair, Challis might have been
+drawn into a defence which would have revived many
+memories he wished to obliterate.</p>
+
+<p>He came back to London in September&mdash;he made
+the return journey by steamer&mdash;and found his secretary
+still working at the monograph on the primitive
+peoples of Melanesia.</p>
+
+<p>Lewes had spent the whole summer in Challis's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+town house in Eaton Square, whither all the material
+had been removed two days after that momentous
+afternoon in the library of Challis Court.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been wanting your help badly for some
+time, sir," Lewes said on the evening of Challis's
+return. "Are you proposing to take up the work
+again? If not ..." Gregory Lewes thought he
+was wasting valuable time.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, of course; I am ready to begin again
+now, if you care to go on with me," said Challis.
+He talked for a few minutes of the book without
+any great show of interest. Presently they came to
+a pause, and Lewes suggested that he should give
+some account of how his time had been spent.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow," replied Challis, "to-morrow will be
+time enough. I shall settle down again in a few
+days." He hesitated a moment, and then said:
+"Any news from Chilborough?"</p>
+
+<p>"N-no, I don't think so," returned Lewes. He
+was occupied with his own interests; he doubted
+Challis's intention to continue his work on the book&mdash;the
+announcement had been so half-hearted.</p>
+
+<p>"What about that child?" asked Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"That child?" Lewes appeared to have forgotten
+the existence of Victor Stott.</p>
+
+<p>"That abnormal child of Stott's?" prompted
+Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Of course, yes. I believe he still goes nearly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+every day to the library. I have been down there
+two or three times, and found him reading. He
+has learned the use of the index-catalogue. He can
+get any book he wants. He uses the steps."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what he reads?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I can't say I do."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think will become of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! these infant prodigies, you know," said
+Lewes with a large air of authority, "they all go
+the same way. Most of them die young, of course,
+the others develop into ordinary commonplace men
+rather under than over the normal ability. After
+all, it is what one would expect. Nature always
+maintains her average by some means or another.
+If a child like this with his abnormal memory were
+to go on developing, there would be no place for
+him in the world's economy. The idea is inconceivable."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite, quite," murmured Challis, and after a
+short silence he added: "You think he will deteriorate,
+that his faculties will decay prematurely?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should say there could be no doubt of it,"
+replied Lewes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! well. I'll go down and have a look at him,
+one day next week," said Challis; but he did not
+go till the middle of October.</p>
+
+<p>The immediate cause of his going was a letter from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+Crashaw, who offered to come up to town, as the
+matter was one of "really peculiar urgency."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if young Stott has been blaspheming
+again," Challis remarked to Lewes. "Wire the man
+that I'll go down and see him this afternoon. I
+shall motor. Say I'll be at Stoke about half-past
+three."</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Challis was ushered into Crashaw's study on his
+arrival, and found the rector in company with another
+man&mdash;introduced as Mr. Forman&mdash;a jolly-looking,
+high-complexioned man of sixty or so, with
+a great quantity of white hair on his head and face;
+he was wearing an old-fashioned morning-coat and
+grey trousers that were noticeably too short for him.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw lost no time in introducing the subject
+of "really peculiar urgency," but he rambled in his
+introduction.</p>
+
+<p>"You have probably forgotten," he said, "that
+last spring I had to bring a most horrible charge
+against a child called Victor Stott, who has since
+been living, practically, as I may say, under your
+&aelig;gis, that is, he has, at least, spent a greater part
+of his day, er&mdash;playing in your library at Challis
+Court."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite, quite; I remember perfectly," said Challis.
+"I made myself responsible for him up to a certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+point. I gave him an occupation. It was intended,
+was it not, to divert his mind from speaking against
+religion to the yokels?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite a character, if I may say so," put in Mr.
+Forman cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw was seated at his study table; the affair
+had something the effect of an examining magistrate
+taking the evidence of witnesses.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," he said testily; "I did ask your help,
+Mr. Challis, and I did, in a way, receive some assistance
+from you. That is, the child has to some extent
+been isolated by spending so much of his time at your
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he broken out again?" asked Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"If I understand you to mean has the child been
+speaking openly on any subject connected with
+religion, I must say 'No,'" said Crashaw. "But he
+never attends any Sunday school, or place of worship;
+he has received no instruction in&mdash;er&mdash;any
+sacred subject, though I understand he is able to
+read; and his time is spent among books which,
+pardon me, would not, I suppose, be likely to give
+a serious turn to his thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"Serious?" questioned Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I should say 'religious,'" replied
+Crashaw. "To me the two words are synonymous."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Forman bowed his head slightly with an air<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+of reverence, and nodded two or three times to express
+his perfect approval of the rector's sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>"You think the child's mind is being perverted
+by his intercourse with the books in the library
+where he&mdash;he&mdash;'plays' was your word, I believe?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not altogether," replied Crashaw, drawing
+his eyebrows together. "We can hardly suppose
+that he is able at so tender an age to read, much less
+to understand, those works of philosophy and science
+which would produce an evil effect on his mind. I
+am willing to admit, since I, too, have had some
+training in scientific reading, that writers on those
+subjects are not easily understood even by the mature
+intelligence."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why, exactly, do you wish me to prohibit
+the child from coming to Challis Court?"</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly you have not realised that the child is
+now five years old?" said Crashaw with an air of
+conferring illumination.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! Yes. An age of some discretion, no
+doubt," returned Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"An age at which the State requires that he
+should receive the elements of education," continued
+Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" said Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Time he went to school," explained Mr. Forman.
+"I've been after him, you know. I'm the
+attendance officer for this district."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Challis for once committed a breach of good manners.
+The import of the thing suddenly appealed
+to his sense of humour: he began to chuckle and
+then he laughed out a great, hearty laugh, such as
+had not been stirred in him for twenty years.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! forgive me, forgive me," he said, when he
+had recovered his self-control. "But you don't
+know; you can't conceive the utter, childish absurdity
+of setting that child to recite the multiplication
+table with village infants of his own age. Oh! believe
+me, if you could only guess, you would laugh
+with me. It's so funny, so inimitably funny."</p>
+
+<p>"I fail to see, Mr. Challis," said Crashaw, "that
+there is anything in any way absurd or&mdash;or unusual
+in the proposition."</p>
+
+<p>"Five is the age fixed by the State," said Mr.
+Forman. He had relaxed into a broad smile in
+sympathy with Challis's laugh, but he had now relapsed
+into a fair imitation of Crashaw's intense
+seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! How can I explain?" said Challis. "Let
+me take an instance. You propose to teach him,
+among other things, the elements of arithmetic?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a part of the curriculum," replied Mr.
+Forman.</p>
+
+<p>"I have only had one conversation with this
+child," went on Challis&mdash;and at the mention of that
+conversation his brows drew together and he became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+very grave again; "but in the course of that conversation
+this child had occasion to refer, by way of
+illustration, to some abstruse theorem of the differential
+calculus. He did it, you will understand, by
+way of making his meaning clear&mdash;though the illustration
+was utterly beyond me: that reference represented
+an act of intellectual condescension."</p>
+
+<p>"God bless me, you don't say so?" said Mr.
+Forman.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot see," said Crashaw, "that this instance
+of yours, Mr. Challis, has any real bearing on the
+situation. If the child is a mathematical genius&mdash;there
+have been instances in history, such as Blaise
+Pascal&mdash;he would not, of course, receive elementary
+instruction in a subject with which he was already
+acquainted."</p>
+
+<p>"You could not find any subject, believe me,
+Crashaw, in which he could be instructed by any
+teacher in a Council school."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, I don't agree with you," returned
+Crashaw. "He is sadly in need of some religious
+training."</p>
+
+<p>"He would not get that at a Council school," said
+Challis, and Mr. Forman shook his head sadly, as
+though he greatly deprecated the fact.</p>
+
+<p>"He must learn to recognise authority," said
+Crashaw. "When he has been taught the necessity
+of submitting himself to all his governors, teachers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+spiritual pastors, and masters: ordering himself
+lowly and reverently to all his betters; when, I say,
+he has learnt that lesson, he may be in a fit and
+proper condition to receive the teachings of the Holy
+Church."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Forman appeared to think he was attending
+divine service. If the rector had said "Let us pray,"
+there can be no doubt that he would immediately
+have fallen on his knees.</p>
+
+<p>Challis shook his head. "You can't understand,
+Crashaw," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>do</i> understand," said Crashaw, rising to his
+feet, "and I intend to see that the statute is not
+disobeyed in the case of this child, Victor Stott."</p>
+
+<p>Challis shrugged his shoulders; Mr. Forman assumed
+an expression of stern determination.</p>
+
+<p>"In any case, why drag me into it?" asked
+Challis.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw sat down again. The flush which had
+warmed his sallow skin subsided as his passion died
+out. He had worked himself into a condition of
+righteous indignation, but the calm politeness of
+Challis rebuked him. If Crashaw prided himself on
+his devotion to the Church, he did not wish that
+attitude to overshadow the pride he also took in the
+belief that he was Challis's social equal. Crashaw's
+father had been a lawyer, with a fair practice in
+Derby, but he had worked his way up to a partnership<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+from the position of office-boy, and Percy
+Crashaw seldom forgot to be conscious that he was
+a gentleman by education and profession.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not wish to <i>drag</i> you into this business,"
+he said quietly, putting his elbows on the writing-table
+in front of him, and reassuming the judicial
+attitude he had adopted earlier; "but I regard this
+child as, in some sense, your prot&eacute;g&eacute;." Crashaw put
+the tips of his fingers together, and Mr. Forman
+watched him warily, waiting for his cue. If this was
+to be a case for prayer, Mr. Forman was ready, with
+a clean white handkerchief to kneel upon.</p>
+
+<p>"In some sense, perhaps," returned Challis. "I
+haven't seen him for some months."</p>
+
+<p>"Cannot you see the necessity of his attending
+school?" asked Crashaw, this time with an insinuating
+suavity; he believed that Challis was coming
+round.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Challis sighed with a note of expostulation.
+"Oh! the thing's grotesque, ridiculous."</p>
+
+<p>"If that's so," put in Mr. Forman, who had been
+struck by a brilliant idea, "why not bring the child
+here, and let the Reverend Mr. Crashaw, or myself,
+put a few general questions to 'im?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye-es," hesitated Crashaw, "that might be done;
+but, of course, the decision does not rest with us."</p>
+
+<p>"It rests with the Local Authority," mused<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+Challis. He was running over three or four names of
+members of that body who were known to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said Crashaw, "the Local Education
+Authority alone has the right to prosecute, but&mdash;&mdash;"
+He did not state his antithesis. They had come to
+the crux which Crashaw had wished to avoid. He
+had no influence with the committee of the L.E.A.,
+and Challis's recommendation would have much
+weight. Crashaw intended that Victor Stott should
+attend school, but he had bungled his preliminaries;
+he had rested on his own authority, and forgotten
+that Challis had little respect for that influence.
+Conciliation was the only card to play now.</p>
+
+<p>"If I brought him, he wouldn't answer your questions,"
+sighed Challis. "He's very difficult to deal
+with."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he, indeed?" sympathised Mr. Forman. "I've
+'ardly seen 'im myself; not to speak to, that is."</p>
+
+<p>"He might come with his mother," suggested
+Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>Challis shook his head. "By the way, it is the
+mother whom you would proceed against?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The parent is responsible," said Mr. Forman.
+"She will be brought before a magistrate and fined
+for the first offence."</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't fine her if she comes before me," replied
+Challis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Crashaw smiled. He meant to avoid that eventuality.</p>
+
+<p>The little meeting lapsed into a brief silence.
+There seemed to be nothing more to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Crashaw, at last, with a rising inflexion
+that had a conciliatory, encouraging, now-my-little-man
+kind of air, "We-ll, of course, no one
+wishes to proceed to extremes. I think, Mr. Challis,
+I think I may say that you are the person who has
+most influence in this matter, and I cannot believe
+that you will go against the established authority
+both of the Church and the State. If it were only
+for the sake of example."</p>
+
+<p>Challis rose deliberately. He shook his head, and
+unconsciously his hands went behind his back. There
+was hardly room for him to pace up and down, but
+he took two steps towards Mr. Forman, who immediately
+rose to his feet; and then turned and went
+over to the window. It was from there that he
+pronounced his ultimatum.</p>
+
+<p>"Regulations, laws, religious and lay authorities,"
+he said, "come into existence in order to deal with
+the rule, the average. That must be so. But if we
+are a reasoning, intellectual people we must have
+some means of dealing with the exception. That
+means rests with a consensus of intelligent opinion
+strong enough to set the rule upon one side. In an
+overwhelming majority of cases there <i>is</i> no such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+consensus of opinion, and the exceptional individual
+suffers by coming within the rule of a law which
+should not apply to him. Now, I put it to you, as
+reasoning, intelligent men" ('ear, 'ear, murmured
+Mr. Forman automatically), "are we, now that we
+have the power to perform a common act of justice,
+to exempt an unfortunate individual exception who
+has come within the rule of a law that holds no
+application for him, or are we to exhibit a crass
+stupidity by enforcing that law? Is it not better to
+take the case into our own hands, and act according
+to the dictates of common sense?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very forcibly put," murmured Mr. Forman.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not finding any fault with the law or the
+principle of the law," continued Challis; "but it is,
+it must be, framed for the average. We must use
+our discretion in dealing with the exception&mdash;and
+this is an exception such as has never occurred since
+we have had an Education Act."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't agree with you," said Crashaw, stubbornly.
+"I do not consider this an exception."</p>
+
+<p>"But you <i>must</i> agree with me, Crashaw. I have
+a certain amount of influence and I shall use it."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case," replied Crashaw, rising to his feet,
+"I shall fight you to the bitter end. I am <i>determined</i>"&mdash;he
+raised his voice and struck the writing-table
+with his fist&mdash;"I am <i>determined</i> that this
+infidel child shall go to school. I am prepared, if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+necessary, to spend all my leisure in seeing that the
+law is carried out."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Forman had also risen. "Very right, very
+right, indeed," he said, and he knitted his mild brows
+and stroked his patriarchal white beard with an
+appearance of stern determination.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you would be better advised to let the
+matter rest," said Challis.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Forman looked inquiringly at the representative
+of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall fight," replied Crashaw, stubbornly,
+fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!" said Mr. Forman.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, as you think best," was Challis's last
+word.</p>
+
+<p>As Challis walked down to the gate, where his
+motor was waiting for him, Mr. Forman trotted up
+from behind and ranged himself alongside.</p>
+
+<p>"More rain wanted yet for the roots, sir," he said.
+"September was a grand month for 'arvest, but we
+want rain badly now."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite, quite," murmured Challis, politely. He
+shook hands with Mr. Forman before he got into
+the car.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Forman, standing politely bareheaded, saw
+that Mr. Challis's car went in the direction of
+Ailesworth.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI<br />
+<small>HIS EXAMINATION</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Challis's</span> first visit was paid to Sir Deane Elmer,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>
+that man of many activities, whose name inevitably
+suggests his favourite phrase of "Organised Progress"&mdash;with
+all its variants.</p>
+
+<p>This is hardly the place in which to criticise a
+man of such diverse abilities as Deane Elmer, a man
+whose name still figures so prominently in the public
+press in connection with all that is most modern
+in eugenics; with the Social Reform programme of
+the moderate party; with the reconstruction of our
+penal system; with education, and so many kindred
+interests; and, finally, of course, with colour photography
+and process printing. This last Deane
+Elmer always spoke of as his hobby, but we may
+doubt whether all his interests were not hobbies in
+the same sense. He is the natural descendant of
+those earlier amateur scientists&mdash;the adjective conveys
+no reproach&mdash;of the nineteenth century, among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+whom we remember such striking figures as those of
+Lord Avebury and Sir Francis Galton.</p>
+
+<p>In appearance Deane Elmer was a big, heavy,
+rather corpulent man, with a high complexion, and
+his clean-shaven jowl and his succession of chins
+hung in heavy folds. But any suggestion of material
+grossness was contradicted by the brightness of his
+rather pale-blue eyes, by his alertness of manner,
+and by his ready, whimsical humour.</p>
+
+<p>As chairman of the Ailesworth County Council,
+and its most prominent unpaid public official&mdash;after
+the mayor&mdash;Sir Deane Elmer was certainly the most
+important member of the Local Authority, and
+Challis wisely sought him at once. He found him
+in the garden of his comparatively small establishment
+on the Quainton side of the town. Elmer was
+very much engaged in photographing flowers from
+nature through the ruled screen and colour filter&mdash;in
+experimenting with the Elmer process, in fact; by
+which the intermediate stage of a coloured negative
+is rendered unnecessary. His apparatus was complicated
+and cumbrous.</p>
+
+<p>"Show Mr. Challis out here," he commanded the
+man who brought the announcement.</p>
+
+<p>"You must forgive me, Challis," said Elmer, when
+Challis appeared. "We haven't had such a still day
+for weeks. It's the wind upsets us in this process.
+Screens create a partial vacuum."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was launched on a lecture upon his darling
+process before Challis could get in a word. It was
+best to let him have his head, and Challis took an
+intelligent interest.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until the photographs were taken, and
+his two assistants could safely be trusted to complete
+the mechanical operations, that Elmer could
+be divorced from his hobby. He was full of jubilation.
+"We should have excellent results," he
+boomed&mdash;he had a tremendous voice&mdash;"but we shan't
+be able to judge until we get the blocks made. We
+do it all on the spot. I have a couple of platens in
+the shops here; but we shan't be able to take a pull
+until to-morrow morning, I'm afraid. You shall
+have a proof, Challis. We <i>should</i> get magnificent
+results." He looked benignantly at the vault of
+heaven, which had been so obligingly free from any
+current of air.</p>
+
+<p>Challis was beginning to fear that even now he
+would be allowed no opportunity to open the subject
+of his mission. But quite suddenly Elmer dropped
+the shutter on his preoccupation, and with that
+ready adaptability which was so characteristic of
+the man, forgot his hobby for the time being, and
+turned his whole attention to a new subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he said, "what is the latest news in
+anthropology?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A very remarkable phenomenon," replied Challis.
+"That is what I have come to see you about."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were in Paraguay pigging it with
+the Guaranis&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; I don't touch the Americas," interposed
+Challis. "I want all your attention, Elmer. This
+is important."</p>
+
+<p>"Come into my study," said Elmer, "and let us
+have the facts. What will you have&mdash;tea, whisky,
+beer?"</p>
+
+<p>Challis's r&eacute;sum&eacute; of the facts need not be reported.
+When it was accomplished, Elmer put several keen
+questions, and finally delivered his verdict thus:</p>
+
+<p>"We must see the boy, Challis. Personally I am,
+of course, satisfied, but we must not give Crashaw
+opportunity to raise endless questions, as he can and
+will. There is Mayor Purvis, the grocer, to be reckoned
+with, you must remember. He represents a
+powerful Nonconformist influence. Crashaw will get
+hold of him&mdash;and work him if we see Purvis first.
+Purvis always stiffens his neck against any breach
+of conventional procedure. If Crashaw saw him
+first, well and good, Purvis would immediately jump
+to the conclusion that Crashaw intended some subtle
+attack on the Nonconformist position, and would
+side with us."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I know Purvis," mused Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Purvis &amp; Co. in the Square," prompted Elmer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+"Black-and-white fellow; black moustache and side
+whiskers, black eyes and white face. There's a suggestion
+of the Methodist pulpit about him. Doesn't
+appear in the shop much, and when he does, always
+looks as if he'd sooner sell you a Bible than a bottle
+of whisky."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes! I know," said Challis. "I daresay
+you're right, Elmer; but it will be difficult to persuade
+this child to answer any questions his examiners
+may put to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely he must be open to reason," roared Elmer.
+"You tell me he has an extraordinary intelligence,
+and in the next sentence you imply that the child's a
+fool who can't open his mouth to serve his own
+interests. What's your paradox?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sublimated material. Intellectual insight and
+absolute spiritual blindness," replied Challis, getting
+to his feet. "The child has gone too far in one
+direction&mdash;in another he has made not one step. His
+mind is a magnificent, terrible machine. He has the
+imagination of a mathematician and a logician developed
+beyond all conception, he has not one spark
+of the imagination of a poet. And so he cannot
+deal with men; he can't understand their weaknesses
+and limitations; they are geese and hens to him,
+creatures to be scared out of his vicinity. However,
+I will see what I can do. Could you arrange for
+the members of the Authority to come to my place?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I should think so. Yes," said Elmer. "I say,
+Challis, are you sure you're right about this child?
+Sounds to me like some&mdash;some freak."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll see," returned Challis. "I'll try and
+arrange an interview. I'll let you know."</p>
+
+<p>"And, by the way," said Elmer, "you had better
+invite Crashaw to be present. He will put Purvis's
+back up, and that'll enlist the difficult grocer on
+our side probably."</p>
+
+<p>When Challis had gone, Elmer stood for a few
+minutes, thoughtfully scratching the ample red surface
+of his wide, clean-shaven cheek. "I don't
+know," he ejaculated at last, addressing his empty
+study, "I don't know." And with that expression
+he put all thought of Victor Stott away from him,
+and sat down to write an exhaustive article on the
+necessity for a broader basis in primary education.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Challis called at the rectory of Stoke-Underhill on
+the way back to his own house.</p>
+
+<p>"I give way," was the characteristic of his attitude
+to Crashaw, and the rector suppled his back
+again, remembered the Derby office-boy's tendency
+to brag, and made the amende honorable. He even
+overdid his magnanimity and came too near subservience&mdash;so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+lasting is the influence of the lessons
+of youth.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw did not mention that in the interval between
+the two interviews he had called upon Mr.
+Purvis in the Square. The ex-mayor had refused
+to commit himself to any course of action.</p>
+
+<p>But Challis forgot the rectory and all that it
+connoted before he was well outside the rectory's
+front door. Challis had a task before him that he
+regarded with the utmost distaste. He had warmly
+championed a cause; he had been heated by the
+presentation of a manifest injustice which was none
+the less tyrannical because it was ridiculous. And
+now he realised that it was only the abstract question
+which had aroused his enthusiastic advocacy,
+and he shrank from the interview with Victor Stott&mdash;that
+small, deliberate, intimidating child.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Challis, the savant, the man of repute in
+letters, the respected figure in the larger world;
+Challis, the proprietor and landlord; Challis, the
+power among known men, knew that he would have
+to plead, to humble himself, to be prepared for a
+rebuff&mdash;worst of all, to acknowledge the justice of
+taking so undignified a position. Any aristocrat
+may stoop with dignity when he condescends of his
+own free will; but there are few who can submit
+gracefully to deserved contempt.</p>
+
+<p>Challis was one of the few. He had many admirable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+qualities. Nevertheless, during that short
+motor ride from Stoke to his own house, he resented
+the indignity he anticipated, resented it intensely&mdash;and
+submitted.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>He was allowed no respite. Victor Stott was
+emerging from the library window as Challis rolled
+up to the hall door. It was one of Ellen Mary's days&mdash;she
+stood respectfully in the background while her
+son descended; she curtsied to Challis as he came
+forward.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment. He would not risk insult
+in the presence of his chauffeur and Mrs. Stott. He
+confronted the Wonder; he stood before him, and
+over him like a cliff.</p>
+
+<p>"I must speak to you for a moment on a matter
+of some importance," said Challis to the little figure
+below him, and as he spoke he looked over the child's
+head at the child's mother. "It is a matter that
+concerns your own welfare. Will you come into the
+house with me for a few minutes?"</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary nodded, and Challis understood. He
+turned and led the way. At the door, however, he
+stood aside and spoke again to Mrs. Stott. "Won't
+you come in and have some tea, or something?"
+he asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, thank you, sir," replied Ellen Mary;
+"I'll just wait 'ere till 'e's ready."</p>
+
+<p>"At least come in and sit down," said Challis, and
+she came in and sat in the hall. The Wonder had
+already preceded them into the house. He had
+walked into the morning-room&mdash;probably because
+the door stood open, though he was now tall enough
+to reach the handles of the Challis Court doors. He
+stood in the middle of the room when Challis entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you sit down?" said Challis.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know if you are aware," began Challis,
+"that there is a system of education in England at
+the present time, which requires that every child
+should attend school at the age of five years, unless
+the parents are able to provide their children with
+an education elsewhere."</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Challis inferred that he need proffer no further
+information with regard to the Education Act.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, it is very absurd," he continued, "and I
+have, myself, pointed out the absurdity; but there
+is a man of some influence in this neighbourhood
+who insists that you should attend the elementary
+school." He paused, but the Wonder gave no sign.</p>
+
+<p>"I have argued with this man," continued Challis,
+"and I have also seen another member of the Local
+Education Authority&mdash;a man of some note in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+larger world&mdash;and it seems that you cannot be
+exempted unless you convince the Authority that
+your knowledge is such that to give you a Council
+school education would be the most absurd farce."</p>
+
+<p>"Cannot you stand in loco parentis?" asked the
+Wonder suddenly, in his still, thin voice.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean," said Challis, startled by this outburst,
+"that I am in a sense providing you with an
+education? Quite true; but there is Crashaw to deal
+with."</p>
+
+<p>"Inform him," said the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Challis sighed. "I have," he said, "but he can't
+understand." And then, feeling the urgent need to
+explain something of the motives that govern this
+little world of ours&mdash;the world into which this
+strangely logical exception had been born&mdash;Challis
+attempted an exposition.</p>
+
+<p>"I know," he said, "that these things must seem
+to you utterly absurd, but you must try to realise
+that you are an exception to the world about you;
+that Crashaw or I, or, indeed, the greatest minds of
+the present day, are not ruled by the fine logic which
+you are able to exercise. We are children compared
+to you. We are swayed even in the making of our
+laws by little primitive emotions and passions, self-interests,
+desires. And at the best we are not capable
+of ordering our lives and our government to
+those just ends which we may see, some of us, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+abstractly right and fine. We are at the mercy of
+that great mass of the people who have not yet won
+to an intellectual and discriminating judgment of
+how their own needs may best be served, and whose
+representatives consider the interests of a party, a
+constituency, and especially of their own personal
+ambitions and welfare, before the needs of humanity
+as a whole, or even the humanity of these little
+islands.</p>
+
+<p>"Above all, we are divided man against man. We
+are split into parties and factions, by greed and
+jealousies, petty spites and self-seeking, by unintelligence,
+by education, and by our inability&mdash;a mental
+inability&mdash;'to see life steadily and see it whole,' and
+lastly, perhaps chiefly, by our intense egotisms, both
+physical and intellectual.</p>
+
+<p>"Try to realise this. It is necessary, because
+whatever your wisdom, you have to live in a world
+of comparative ignorance, a world which cannot
+appreciate you, but which can and will fall back
+upon the compelling power of the savage&mdash;the resort
+to physical, brute force."</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder nodded. "You suggest&mdash;&mdash;?" he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Merely that you should consent to answer certain
+elementary questions which the members of the
+Local Authority will put to you," replied Challis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+"I can arrange that these questions be asked here&mdash;in
+the library. Will you consent?"</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder nodded, and made his way into the
+hall, without another word. His mother rose and
+opened the front door for him.</p>
+
+<p>As Challis watched the curious couple go down
+the drive, he sighed again, perhaps with relief, perhaps
+at the impotence of the world of men.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>There were four striking figures on the Education
+Committee selected by the Ailesworth County
+Council.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these was Sir Deane Elmer, who was
+also chairman of the Council at this time. The
+second was the vice-chairman, Enoch Purvis, the
+ex-mayor, commonly, if incorrectly, known as
+"Mayor" Purvis.</p>
+
+<p>The third was Richard Standing, J.P., who owned
+much property on the Quainton side of the town.
+He was a bluff, hearty man, devoted to sport and
+agriculture; a Conservative by birth and inclination,
+a staunch upholder of the Church and the Tariff
+Reform movement.</p>
+
+<p>The fourth was the Rev. Philip Steven, a co-opted
+member of the Committee, head master of the Ailesworth
+Grammar School. Steven was a tall, thin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+man with bent shoulders, and he had a long, thin
+face, the length of which was exaggerated by his
+square brown beard. He wore gold-mounted spectacles
+which, owing to his habit of dropping his
+head, always needed adjustment whenever he looked
+up. The movement of lifting his head and raising
+his hand to his glasses had become so closely associated,
+that his hand went up even when there was
+no apparent need for the action. Steven spoke of
+himself as a Broad Churchman, and in his speech on
+prize-day he never omitted some allusion to the necessity
+for "marching" or "keeping step" with the
+times. But Elmer was inclined to laugh at this
+assumption of modernity. "Steven," he said, on one
+occasion, "marks time and thinks he is keeping step.
+And every now and then he runs a little to catch
+up." The point of Elmer's satire lay in the fact
+that Steven was usually to be seen either walking
+very slowly, head down, lost in abstraction; or&mdash;when
+aroused to a sense of present necessity&mdash;going
+with long-strides as if intent on catching up with
+the times without further delay. Very often, too,
+he might be seen running across the school playground,
+his hand up to those elusive glasses of his.
+"There goes Mr. Steven, catching up with the times,"
+had become an accepted phrase.</p>
+
+<p>There were other members of the Education Committee,
+notably Mrs. Philip Steven, but they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+subordinate. If those four striking figures were
+unanimous, no other member would have dreamed
+of expressing a contrary opinion. But up to this
+time they had not yet been agreed upon any important
+line of action.</p>
+
+<p>This four, Challis and Crashaw met in the morning-room
+of Challis Court one Thursday afternoon
+in November. Elmer had brought a stenographer
+with him for scientific purposes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Challis, when they were all assembled.
+"The&mdash;the subject&mdash;I mean, Victor Stott is
+in the library. Shall we adjourn?" Challis had not
+felt so nervous since the morning before he had sat
+for honours in the Cambridge Senate House.</p>
+
+<p>In the library they found a small child, reading.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>He did not look up when the procession entered,
+nor did he remove his cricket cap. He was in his
+usual place at the centre table.</p>
+
+<p>Challis found chairs for the Committee, and the
+members ranged themselves round the opposite side
+of the table. Curiously, the effect produced was that
+of a class brought up for a viva voce examination,
+and when the Wonder raised his eyes and glanced
+deliberately down the line of his judges, this effect
+was heightened. There was an audible fidgeting,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+a creak of chairs, an indication of small embarrassments.</p>
+
+<p>"Her&mdash;um!" Deane Elmer cleared his throat
+with noisy vigour; looked at the Wonder, met his
+eyes and looked hastily away again; "Hm!&mdash;her&mdash;rum!"
+he repeated, and then he turned to Challis.
+"So this little fellow has never been to school?" he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Challis frowned heavily. He looked exceedingly
+uncomfortable and unhappy. He was conscious
+that he could take neither side in this controversy&mdash;that
+he was in sympathy with no one of the seven
+other persons who were seated in his library.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head impatiently in answer to Sir
+Deane Elmer's question, and the chairman turned
+to the Rev. Philip Steven, who was gazing intently
+at the pattern of the carpet.</p>
+
+<p>"I think, Steven," said Elmer, "that your large
+experience will probably prompt you to a more efficient
+examination than we could conduct. Will you
+initiate the inquiry?"</p>
+
+<p>Steven raised his head slightly, put a readjusting
+hand up to his glasses, and then looked sternly at
+the Wonder over the top of them. Even the sixth
+form quailed when the head master assumed this
+expression, but the small child at the table was gazing
+out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless Steven was slightly embarrassed by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+detachment of the examinee, and blundered. "What
+is the square root of 226?" he asked&mdash;he probably
+intended to say 225.</p>
+
+<p>"15&middot;03329&mdash;to five places," replied the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Steven started. Neither he nor any other member
+of the Committee was capable of checking that
+answer without resort to pencil and paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me!" ejaculated Squire Standing.</p>
+
+<p>Elmer scratched the superabundance of his purple
+jowl, and looked at Challis, who thrust his hands
+into his pockets and stared at the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw leaned forward and clasped his hands
+together. He was biding his time.</p>
+
+<p>"Mayor" Purvis alone seemed unmoved. "What's
+that book he's got open in front of him?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"May I see?" interposed Challis hurriedly, and
+he rose from his chair, picked up the book in question,
+glanced at it for a moment, and then handed
+it to the grocer. The book was Van Vloten's Dutch
+text and Latin translation of Spinoza's Short
+Treatise.</p>
+
+<p>The grocer turned to the title-page. "Ad&mdash;beany&mdash;dick&mdash;ti&mdash;de&mdash;Spy&mdash;nozer,"
+he read aloud
+and then: "What's it all about, Mr. Challis?" he
+asked. "German or something, I take it?"</p>
+
+<p>"In any case it has nothing to do with elementary
+arithmetic," replied Challis curtly, "Mr. Steven will
+set your mind at ease on that point."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, certainly," murmured Steven.</p>
+
+<p>Grocer Purvis closed the book carefully and replaced
+it on the desk. "What does half a stone o'
+loaf sugar at two-three-farthings come to?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder shook his head. He did not understand
+the grocer's phraseology.</p>
+
+<p>"What is seven times two and three quarters?"
+translated Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"19&middot;25," answered the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that in shillin's?" asked Purvis.</p>
+
+<p>"1&middot;60416."</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong!" returned the grocer triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;excuse me, Mr. Purvis," interposed Steven,
+"I think not. The&mdash;the&mdash;er&mdash;examinee has given
+the correct mathematical answer to five places of
+decimals&mdash;that is, so far as I can check him mentally."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it seems to me," persisted the grocer, "as
+he's gone a long way round to answer a simple question
+what any fifth-standard child could do in his
+head. I'll give him another."</p>
+
+<p>"Cast it in another form," put in the chairman.
+"Give it as a multiplication sum."</p>
+
+<p>Purvis tucked his fingers carefully into his waistcoat
+pockets. "I put the question, Mr. Chairman,"
+he said, "as it'll be put to the youngster when he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+has to tot up a bill. That seems to be a sound and
+practical form for such questions to be put in."</p>
+
+<p>Challis sighed impatiently. "I thought Mr. Steven
+had been delegated to conduct the first part of the
+examination," he said. "It seems to me that we are
+wasting a lot of time."</p>
+
+<p>Elmer nodded. "Will you go on, Mr. Steven?"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>Challis was ashamed for his compeers. "What
+children we are," he thought.</p>
+
+<p>Steven got to work again with various arithmetical
+questions, which were answered instantly, and
+then he made a sudden leap and asked: "What is
+the binomial theorem?"</p>
+
+<p>"A formula for writing down the coefficient of
+any stated term in the expansion of any stated power
+of a given binomial," replied the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Elmer blew out his cheeks and looked at Challis,
+but met the gaze of Mr. Steven, who adjusted his
+glasses and said, "I am satisfied under this head."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all beyond me," remarked Squire Standing
+frankly.</p>
+
+<p>"I think, Mr. Chairman, that we've had enough
+theoretical arithmetic," said Purvis. "There's a
+few practical questions I'd like to put."</p>
+
+<p>"No more arithmetic, then," assented Elmer, and
+Crashaw exchanged a glance of understanding with
+the grocer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, how old was our Lord when He began His
+ministry?" asked the grocer.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncertain," replied the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Purvis smiled. "Any Sunday-school child
+knows that!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, of course," murmured Crashaw.</p>
+
+<p>But Steven looked uncomfortable. "Are you
+sure you understand the purport of the answer, Mr.
+Purvis?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Can there be any doubt about it?" replied the
+grocer. "I asked how old our Lord was when He
+began His ministry, and he"&mdash;he made an indicative
+gesture with one momentarily released hand towards
+the Wonder&mdash;"and he says he's 'uncertain.'"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," interposed Challis impatiently, "he
+meant that the answer to your question was uncertain."</p>
+
+<p>"How's that?" returned the grocer. "I've always
+understood&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite, quite," interrupted Challis. "But what
+we have always understood does not always correspond
+to the actual fact."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you intend by your answer?" put in
+Elmer quickly, addressing the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"The evidence rests mainly on Luke's Gospel,"
+answered the Wonder, "but the phrase '<span title="archomenos h&ocirc;sei et&ocirc;n triakonta">&#7936;&#961;&#967;&#8057;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#962; &#8033;&#963;&#8050;&#953; &#7952;&#964;&#8182;&#957; &#964;&#961;&#953;&#8049;&#954;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#945;</span>'
+is vague&mdash;it allows latitude in
+either direction. According to the chronology of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+John's Gospel the age might have been about
+thirty-two."</p>
+
+<p>"It says 'thirty' in the Bible, and that's good
+enough for me," said the grocer, and Crashaw muttered
+"Heresy, heresy," in an audible under tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Sounds very like blarsphemy to me," said Purvis,
+"like doubtin' the word of God. I'm for sending him
+to school."</p>
+
+<p>Deane Elmer had been regarding the face of the
+small abstracted child with considerable interest.
+He put aside for the moment the grocer's intimation
+of his voting tendency.</p>
+
+<p>"How many elements are known to chemists?"
+asked Elmer of the examinee.</p>
+
+<p>"Eighty-one well characterised; others have been
+described," replied the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Which has the greatest atomic weight?" asked
+Elmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Uranium."</p>
+
+<p>"And that weight is?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the oxygen basis of 16&mdash;238&middot;5."</p>
+
+<p>"Extraordinary powers of memory," muttered
+Elmer, and there was silence for a moment, a silence
+broken by Squire Standing, who, in a loud voice,
+asked suddenly and most irrelevantly, "What's your
+opinion of Tariff Reform?"</p>
+
+<p>"An empirical question that cannot be decided
+from a theoretical basis," replied the Wonder.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Elmer laughed out, a great shouting guffaw.
+"Quite right, quite right," he said, his cheeks shaking
+with mirth. "What have you to say to that, Standing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I say that Tariff Reform's the only way to save
+the country," replied Squire Standing, looking very
+red and obstinate, "and if this Government&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Challis rose to his feet. "Oh! aren't you all satisfied?"
+he said. "Is this Committee here to argue
+questions of present politics? What more evidence
+do you need?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not satisfied," put in Purvis resolutely, "nor
+is the Rev. Mr. Crashaw, I fancy."</p>
+
+<p>"He has no vote," said Challis. "Elmer, what
+do you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think we may safely say that the child has
+been, and is being, provided with an education elsewhere,
+and that he need not therefore attend the
+elementary school," replied Elmer, still chuckling.</p>
+
+<p>"On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, is that what
+you put to the meeting?" asked Purvis.</p>
+
+<p>"This is quite informal," replied Elmer. "Unless
+we are all agreed, the question must be put to the
+full Committee."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we argue the point in the other room?"
+suggested Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, certainly," said Elmer. "We can
+return, if necessary."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the four striking figures of the Education
+Committee filed out, followed by Crashaw and the
+stenographer.</p>
+
+<p>Challis, coming last, paused at the door and
+looked back.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder had returned to his study of Spinoza.</p>
+
+<p>Challis waved a hand to the unconscious figure.
+"I must join my fellow-children," he said grimly,
+"or they will be quarrelling."</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>But when he joined his fellow-children, Challis
+stood at the window of the morning-room, attending
+little to the buzz of voices and the clatter of glasses
+which marked the relief from the restraint of the
+examination-room. Even the stenographer was
+talking; he had joined Crashaw and Purvis&mdash;a lemonade
+group; the other three were drinking whisky.
+The division, however, is arbitrary, and in no way
+significant.</p>
+
+<p>Challis caught a fragment of the conversation here
+and there: a bull-roar from Elmer or Squire Standing;
+an occasional blatancy from Purvis; a vibrant
+protest from Crashaw; a hesitating tenor pronouncement
+from Steven.</p>
+
+<p>"Extraordinary powers of memory.... It isn't
+facts, but what they stand for that I.... Don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+know his Bible&mdash;that's good enough for me....
+Heresy, heresy.... An astounding memory, of
+course, quite astounding, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The simple exposition of each man's theme was
+dogmatically asserted, and through it all Challis,
+standing alone, hardly conscious of each individual
+utterance, was still conscious that the spirits of those
+six men were united in one thing, had they but
+known it. Each was endeavouring to circumscribe
+the powers of the child they had just left&mdash;each was
+insistent on some limitation he chose to regard as
+vital.</p>
+
+<p>They came to no decision that afternoon. The
+question as to whether the Authority should prosecute
+or not had to be referred to the Committee.</p>
+
+<p>At the last, Crashaw entered his protest and announced
+once more that he would fight the point to
+the bitter end.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw's religious hatred was not, perhaps, altogether
+free from a sense of affronted dignity, but it
+was nevertheless a force to be counted; and he had
+that obstinacy of the bigot which has in the past
+contributed much fire and food to the pyre of martyrdom.
+He had, too, a power of initiative within
+certain limits. It is true that the bird on a free
+wing could avoid him with contemptuous ease, but
+along his own path he was a terrifying juggernaut.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+Crashaw, thus circumscribed, was a power, a moving
+force.</p>
+
+<p>But now he was seeking to crush, not some paralysed
+rabbit on the road, but an elusive spirit of
+swiftness which has no name, but may be figured as
+the genius of modernity. The thing he sought to
+obliterate ran ahead of him with a smiling facility
+and spat rearwards a vaporous jet of ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw might crush his clerical wideawake over
+his frowning eyebrows, arm himself with a slightly
+dilapidated umbrella, and seek with long, determined
+strides the members of the Local Education Authority,
+but far ahead of him had run an intelligence
+that represented the instructed common sense of
+modernity.</p>
+
+<p>It was for Crashaw to realise&mdash;as he never could
+and never did realise&mdash;that he was no longer the
+dominant force of progress; that he had been outstripped,
+left toiling and shouting vain words on a
+road that had served its purpose, and though it still
+remained and was used as a means of travel, was
+becoming year by year more antiquated and
+despised.</p>
+
+<p>Crashaw toiled to the end, and no one knows how
+far his personal purpose and spite were satisfied, but
+he could never impede any more that elusive spirit
+of swiftness; it had run past him.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Afterwards Lord Quainton.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII<br />
+<small>HIS INTERVIEW WITH HERR GROSSMANN</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Crashaw</span> must have suffered greatly just at that
+time; and the anticipation of his defeat by the Committee
+was made still more bitter by the wonderful
+visit of Herr Grossmann. It is true that that visit
+feebly helped Crashaw's cause at the moment by further
+enlisting the sympathies and strenuous endeavour
+of the Nonconformist Purvis; but no effort
+of the ex-mayor could avail to upset the majority
+of the Local Education Authority and the grocer,
+himself, was not a person acceptable to Crashaw.
+The two men were so nearly allied by their manner
+of thought and social origin; and Crashaw instinctively
+flaunted the splendid throne of his holy office,
+whenever he and Purvis were together. Purvis was
+what the rector might have described as an ignorant
+man. It is a fact that, until Crashaw very fully and
+inaccurately informed him, he had never even heard
+of Hugo Grossmann.</p>
+
+<p>In that conversation between Crashaw and Purvis,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+the celebrated German Professor figured as the veritable
+Anti-Christ, the Devil's personal representative
+on earth; but Crashaw was not a safe authority on
+Science and Philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Herr Grossmann's world-wide reputation was
+certainly not won in the field of religious controversy.
+He had not at that time reached the pinnacle
+of achievement which placed him so high above
+his brilliant contemporaries, and now presents him
+as the unique figure and representative of twentieth-century
+science. But his very considerable contributions
+to knowledge had drawn the attention of
+Europe for ten years, and he was already regarded
+by his fellow-scientists with that mixture of contempt
+and jealousy which inevitably precedes the
+world's acceptance of its greatest men.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Deane Elmer, for example, was a generous
+and kindly man; he had never been involved in any
+controversy with the professional scientists whose
+ground he continually encroached upon, and yet he
+could not hear the name of Grossmann without
+frowning. Grossmann had the German vice of thoroughness.
+He took up a subject and exhausted it,
+as far as is possible within the limits of our present
+knowledge; and his monograph on Heredity had
+demonstrated with a detestable logic that much of
+Elmer's treatise on Eugenics was based on evidence
+that must be viewed with the gravest suspicion. Not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+that Grossmann had directly attacked that treatise;
+he had made no kind of reference to it in his own
+book; but his irrefutable statements had been quoted
+by every reviewer of "Eugenics" who chanced to have
+come across the English translation of "Heredity
+and Human Development," to the confounding of
+Elmer's somewhat too optimistic prophecies concerning
+the possibility of breeding a race that should
+approximate to a physical and intellectual perfection.</p>
+
+<p>And it happened that Elmer met Grossmann at
+an informal gathering of members of the Royal Society
+a few days after the examination of the Wonder
+in the Challis Court Library. Herr Grossmann
+was delivering an impromptu lecture on the limits of
+variation from the normal type, when Elmer came in
+and joined the group of the great Professor's listeners,
+every one of whom was seeking some conclusive
+argument to confute their guest's overwhelmingly
+accurate collation of facts.</p>
+
+<p>Elmer realised instantly that his opportunity had
+come at last. He listened patiently for a few minutes
+to the flow of the German's argument, and then
+broke in with a loud exclamation of dissent. All the
+learned members of the Society turned to him at
+once, with a movement of profound relief and expectation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You said what?" asked Grossmann with a frown
+of great annoyance.</p>
+
+<p>Elmer thrust out his lower lip and looked at his
+antagonist with the expression of a man seeking a
+vital spot for the coup de grace.</p>
+
+<p>"I said, Herr Professor," Elmer returned, "that
+there are exceptions which confound your argument."</p>
+
+<p>"For example?" Grossmann said, putting his
+hands behind him and gently nodding his head like a
+tolerant schoolmaster awaiting the inevitable confusion
+of the too intrepid scholar.</p>
+
+<p>"Christian Heinecken?" suggested Elmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! You have not then read my brochure on
+certain abnormalities reported in history?" Grossmann
+said, and continued, "Mr. Aylmer, is it not?
+To whom I am speaking? Yes? We have met, I believe,
+once in Leipzig. I thought so. But in my
+brochure, Mr. Aylmer, I have examined the Heinecken
+case and shown my reasons to regard it as not so
+departing from the normal."</p>
+
+<p>Elmer shook his head. "Your reasons are not
+valid, Herr Professor," he said and held up a corpulent
+forefinger to enforce Grossmann's further
+attention. "They seemed convincing at the time, I
+admit, but this new prodigy completely upsets your
+case."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! What is that? What new prodigy?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+sneered Grossmann; and two or three savants among
+the little ring of listeners, although they had not
+that perfect confidence in Elmer which would have
+put them at ease, nodded gravely as if they were
+aware of the validity of his instance.</p>
+
+<p>Elmer blew out his cheeks and raised his eyebrows.
+"Ah! you haven't heard of him!" he remarked
+with a rather fleshy surprise. "Victor
+Stott, you know, son of a professional cricketer,
+prot&eacute;g&eacute; of Henry Challis, the anthropologist. Oh!
+you ought to investigate that case, Herr Professor.
+It is most remarkable, most remarkable."</p>
+
+<p>"Ach! What form does the abnormality take?"
+asked Grossmann suspiciously, and his tone made it
+clear that he had little confidence in the value of
+any report made to him by such an observer as Sir
+Deane Elmer.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't pretend to give you anything like a full
+account of it," Elmer returned. "I have only seen
+the child once. But, honestly, Herr Professor, you
+cannot use that brochure of yours in any future
+argument until you have investigated this case of
+young Stott. It confutes you."</p>
+
+<p>"I can see him, then?" Grossmann asked, frowning.
+In that company he could not afford to decline
+the challenge that had been thrown down.
+There were, at least, five men present who would,
+he believed, immediately conduct the examination on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+their own account, should he refuse the opportunity;
+men who would not fail to use their material for the
+demolition of that pamphlet on the type of abnormality,
+more particularly represented by the amazing
+precocity of Christian Heinecken.</p>
+
+<p>To the layman such an attack may seem a small
+matter, and likely to have little effect on such a
+reputation as that already won by Hugo Grossmann;
+and it should be explained that in the Professor's
+great work on "Heredity and Human Development,"
+an essential argument was based on the
+absence of any considerable <i>progressive</i> variation
+from the normal. Indeed it was from this premise
+that he developed the celebrated "variation" theory
+which is, now, generally admitted to have compromised
+the whole principle of "Natural Selection"
+while it has given a wonderful impetus to all recent
+investigations and experiments on the lines first indicated
+by Mendel.</p>
+
+<p>"I can see him, then?" asked Grossmann, with
+the faintly annoyed air of one who is compelled by
+circumstances to undertake a futile task.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, I will arrange an interview for you,"
+Elmer replied, and went on to give an account of
+his own experience, an account that lost nothing in
+the telling.</p>
+
+<p>Elmer created a mild sensation in the rooms of
+the Royal Society that evening.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p>
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>He found Challis at his house in Eaton Square
+the next morning, but it became evident from the
+outset that the plan of confounding Grossmann did
+not appeal to the magnate of Stoke-Underhill.
+Challis frowned and prevaricated. "It's a thousand
+to one, the child won't condescend to answer," was
+his chief evasion.</p>
+
+<p>Elmer was not to be frustrated in the development
+of his scheme by any such trivial excuse as
+that. He began to display a considerable annoyance
+at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! nonsense; nonsense, Challis," he said. "You
+make altogether too much fuss about this prodigy of
+yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Not mine," Challis interrupted. "Take him over
+yourself, Elmer. Bring him out. Exhibit him. I
+make you a gift of all my interest in him."</p>
+
+<p>Elmer looked thoughtful for a moment, as if he
+were seriously considering that proposition, and then
+he said, "I recognise that there are&mdash;difficulties. The
+child seems&mdash;er&mdash;to have a queer, morose temper,
+doesn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>Challis shook his head. "It isn't that," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Elmer scratched his cheek. "I understand," he
+began, and then broke off and went on, "I'm putting
+this as a personal favour, Challis; but it is more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+than that. You know my theories with regard to
+the future of the race. I have a steady faith in our
+enormous potentialities for real progress. But it
+must be organised, and Grossmann is just now
+standing in our way. That stubborn materialism
+of his has infected many fine intelligences; and I
+would make very great sacrifices in order to clear
+this great and terrible obstacle out of the way."</p>
+
+<p>"And you believe that this interview ..." interrupted
+Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"I do, indeed," Elmer said. "It will destroy one
+of Grossmann's most vital premisses. This prodigy
+of yours&mdash;he is unquestionably a prodigy&mdash;demonstrates
+the fact of an immense progressive variation.
+Once that is conceded, the main argument of Grossmann's
+'Heredity' is invalidated. We shall have
+knocked away the keystone of his mechanistic theory
+of evolution...."</p>
+
+<p>"But suppose that the boy refuses...."</p>
+
+<p>"He did not refuse to see us."</p>
+
+<p>"That was to save himself from further trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"But isn't he susceptible to argument?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not the kind of argument you have been using
+to me," Challis said gravely.</p>
+
+<p>Elmer blew like a porpoise; looked very thoughtful
+for a moment, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>"You could represent Grossmann as the final court<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+of appeal&mdash;the High Lord Muck-a-muck of the
+L.E.A."</p>
+
+<p>"I should have to do something of the sort,"
+Challis admitted, and continued with a spurt of
+temper. "But understand, Elmer, I don't do it
+again; no, not to save the reputation of the Royal
+Society."</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Unhappily, no record exists of the conversation
+between the Wonder and Herr Grossmann.</p>
+
+<p>The Professor seems at the last moment to have
+had some misgiving as to the nature of the interview
+that was before him, and refused to have a
+witness to the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>Challis made the introduction, and he says that
+the Wonder regarded Grossmann with perhaps
+rather more attention than he commonly conceded
+to strangers; and that the Professor exhibited the
+usual signs of embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether, Grossmann was in the library for
+about half an hour, and he displayed no sign of perturbation
+when he rejoined Challis and Elmer in
+the breakfast-room. Indeed, only one fact of any
+significance emerges to throw suspicion on Grossmann's
+attitude during the progress of that secluded
+half-hour with the greatest intellect of all time&mdash;the
+Professor's spectacles had been broken.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He spoke of the accident with a casual air when
+he was in the breakfast-room, but Challis remarked
+a slight flush on the great scientist's face as he referred,
+perhaps a trifle too ostentatiously, to the
+incident. And although it is worthless as evidence,
+there is something rather suspicious in Challis's discovery
+of finely powdered glass in his library&mdash;a
+mere pinch on the parquet near the further window
+of the big room, several feet away from the table
+at which the Wonder habitually sat. Challis would
+never have noticed the glass, had not one larger
+atom that had escaped pulverisation, caught the
+light from the window and drawn his attention.</p>
+
+<p>But even this find is in no way conclusive. The
+Professor may quite well have walked over to the
+window, taken off his spectacles to wipe them and
+dropped them as he, himself, explained. While the
+crushing of some fragment of one of the lenses was
+probably due to the chance of his stepping upon it,
+as he turned on his heel to continue the momentarily
+interrupted conversation. It is hard to believe that
+so great a man as Grossmann could have been convulsed
+by a petty rage that found expression in
+some act of wanton destruction.</p>
+
+<p>His own brief account of the interview accords
+very well with the single reference to the Wonder
+which exists in the literature of the world. This
+reference is a footnote to a second edition of Grossmann's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+brochure entitled "An Explanation of Certain
+Intellectual Abnormalities reported in History"
+("Eine Erkl&auml;rung gewisser Intellektueller geschichtlich
+&uuml;berlieferter Anormalen Erscheinungen"). This
+footnote comes at the end of Grossmann's masterly
+analysis of the Heinecken case and reads: "I recently
+examined a similar case of abnormality in
+England, but found that it presented no such marked
+divergence from the type as would demand serious
+investigation."</p>
+
+<p>And in his brief account of the interview rendered
+to Challis and Elmer, Herr Grossmann, in effect, did
+no more than draft that footnote.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>It must remain uncertain, now, whether or not
+Elmer would have persisted in his endeavour to exploit
+the Wonder to the confounding of Grossmann,
+despite Challis's explicit statement that he would
+do no more, not even if it were to save the reputation
+of the Royal Society. Elmer certainly had the
+virtue of persistence and might have made the attempt.
+But in one of his rare moments of articulate
+speech, the Wonder decided the fate of that threatened
+controversy beyond the possibility of appeal.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke to Challis that same afternoon. He put
+up his tiny hand to command attention and made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+the one clear statement on record of his own interests
+and ambitions in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Challis, turning from his discovery of the Professor's
+crushed glasses, listened in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"This Grossmann," the Wonder said, "was not
+concerned in my exemption?"</p>
+
+<p>Challis shook his head. "He is the last," the Wonder
+concluded with a fine brevity. "You and your
+kind have no interest in truth."</p>
+
+<p>That last statement may have had a double intention.
+It is obvious from the Wonder's preliminary
+question,&mdash;which had, indeed, also the quality
+of an assertion,&mdash;how plainly he had recognised that
+Grossmann had been introduced under false pretences.
+But, it is permissible to infer that the pronouncement
+went deeper than that. The Wonder's
+logic penetrated far into the mysteries of life and
+he may have seen that Grossmann's attitude was
+warped by the human limitations of his ambition to
+shine as a great exponent of science; that he dared
+not follow up a line of research which might end in
+the invalidation of his great theory of heredity.</p>
+
+<p>Victor Stott had once before expounded his philosophy
+and Challis, on that occasion, had deliberately
+refused to listen. And we may guess that
+Grossmann, also, might have received some great
+illumination, had he chosen to pay deference to a
+mind so infinitely greater than his own.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII<br />
+<small>FUGITIVE</small></h2>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Meanwhile</span> a child of five&mdash;all unconscious that his
+quiet refusal to participate in the making and breaking
+of reputations was temporarily a matter of considerable
+annoyance to a Fellow of the Royal Society&mdash;ran
+through a well-kept index of the books in the
+library of Challis Court&mdash;an index written clearly
+on cards that occupied a great nest of accessible
+drawers; two cards with a full description to each
+book, alphabetically arranged, one card under the
+title of the work and one under the author's name.</p>
+
+<p>The child made no notes as he studied&mdash;he never
+wrote a single line in all his life; but when a drawer
+of that delightful index had been searched, he would
+walk here and there among the three rooms at his
+disposal, and by the aid of the flight of framed steps
+that ran smoothly on rubber-tyred wheels, he would
+take down now and again some book or another
+until, returning to the table at last to read, he sat
+in an enceinte of piled volumes that had been collected
+round him.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes he read a book from beginning to end,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+more often he glanced through it, turning a dozen
+pages at a time, and then pushed it on one side with
+a gesture displaying the contempt that was not
+shown by any change of expression.</p>
+
+<p>On many afternoons the sombrely clad figure of a
+tall, gaunt woman would stand at the open casement
+of a window in the larger room, and keep a mystic
+vigil that sometimes lasted for hours. She kept her
+gaze fixed on that strange little figure whenever it
+roved up and down the suite of rooms or clambered
+the pyramid of brown steps that might have made
+such a glorious plaything for any other child. And
+even when her son was hidden behind the wall of
+volumes he had built, the woman would still stare
+in his direction, but then her eyes seemed to look
+inwards; at such times she appeared to be wrapped
+in an introspective devotion.</p>
+
+<p>Very rarely, the heavy-shouldered figure of a man
+would come to the doorway of the larger room, and
+also keep a silent vigil&mdash;a man who would stand for
+some minutes with thoughtful eyes and bent brows
+and then sigh, shake his head and move away, gently
+closing the door behind him.</p>
+
+<p>There were few other interruptions to the silence
+of that chapel-like library. Half a dozen times in
+the first few months a fair-haired, rather supercilious
+young man came and fetched away a few volumes;
+but even he evidenced an inclination to walk on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+tiptoe, a tendency that mastered him whenever
+he forgot for a moment his self-imposed r&ocirc;le of
+scorn....</p>
+
+<p>Outside, over the swelling undulations of rich
+grass the sheep came back with close-cropped, ungainly
+bodies to a land that was yellow with buttercups.
+But when one looked again, their wool hung
+about them, and they were snatching at short turf
+that was covered at the woodside by a sprinkle of
+brown leaves. Then the sheep have gone, and the
+wood is black with February rain. And, again, the
+unfolding of the year is about us; a thickening of
+high twigs in the wood, a glint of green on the blackthorn....</p>
+
+<p>Nearly three cycles of death and birth have run
+their course, and then the strange little figure comes
+no more to the library at Challis Court.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="bk5">PART THREE<br />
+<big>MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER</big></div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p>
+<div class="bk5"><big>PART THREE</big><br />
+MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER</div>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV<br />
+<small>HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">The</span> circumstance that had intrigued me for so long
+was determined with an abruptness only less remarkable
+than the surprise of the onset. Two deaths
+within six months brought to me, the first, a competence,
+the second, release from gall and bitterness.
+For the first time in my life I was a free man. At
+forty one can still look forward, and I put the past
+behind me and made plans for the future. There
+was that book of mine still waiting to be written.</p>
+
+<p>It was wonderful how the detail of it all came
+back to me&mdash;the plan of it, the thread of development,
+even the very phrases that I had toyed with.
+The thought of the book brought back a train of
+associations. There was a phrase I had coined as
+I had walked out from Ailesworth to Stoke-Underhill;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+a chapter I had roughed out the day I went to
+see Ginger Stott at Pym. It seemed to me that the
+whole conception of the book was associated in some
+way with that neighbourhood. I remembered at last
+that I had first thought of writing it after my return
+from America, on the day that I had had that curious
+experience with the child in the train. It occurred to
+me that by a reversal of the process, I might regain
+many more of my original thoughts; that by going
+to live, temporarily perhaps, in the neighbourhood
+of Ailesworth, I might revive other associations.</p>
+
+<p>The picture of Pym presented itself to me very
+clearly. I remembered that I had once thought
+that Pym was a place to which I might retire one
+day in order to write the things I wished to write.
+I decided to make the dream a reality, and I wrote
+to Mrs. Berridge at the Wood Farm, asking her if
+she could let me have her rooms for the spring,
+summer, and autumn.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>I was all aglow with excitement on the morning
+that I set out for the Hampden Hills. This was
+change, I thought, freedom, adventure. This was
+the beginning of life, my real entry into the joy of
+living.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The world was alight with the fire of growth.
+May had come with a clear sky and a torrent of
+green was flowing over field, hedge, and wood. I
+remember that I thanked "whatever gods there be,"
+that one could live so richly in the enjoyment of
+these things.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Farmer Bates met me at Great Hittenden Station.
+His was the only available horse and cart at Pym,
+for the Berridges were in a very small way, and it is
+doubtful if they could have made both ends meet if
+Mrs. Berridge had not done so well by letting her
+two spare rooms.</p>
+
+<p>I have a great admiration for Farmer Bates and
+Mrs. Berridge. I regret intensely that they should
+both have been unhappily married. If they had
+married each other they would undoubtedly have
+made a success of life.</p>
+
+<p>Bates was a Cockney by birth, but always he had
+had an ambition to take a farm, and after twenty
+years of work as a skilled mechanic he had thrown
+up a well-paid job, and dared the uncertainties which
+beset the English farmer. That venture was a constant
+bone of strife between him and his wife. Mrs.
+Bates preferred the town. It has always seemed
+to me that there was something fine about Bates and
+his love for the land.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good growing weather, Mr. Bates," I said, as I
+climbed up into the cart.</p>
+
+<p>"Shouldn't be sorry to see some more rain," replied
+Bates, and damped my ardour for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Just before we turned into the lane that leads up
+the long hill to Pym, we passed a ramshackle cart,
+piled up with a curious miscellany of ruinous furniture.
+A man was driving, and beside him sat a
+slatternly woman and a repulsive-looking boy of ten
+or twelve years old, with a great swollen head and
+an open, slobbering mouth.</p>
+
+<p>I was startled. I jumped to the conclusion that
+this was the child I had seen in the train, the son of
+Ginger Stott.</p>
+
+<p>As we slowed down to the ascent of the long hill,
+I said to Bates: "Is that Stott's boy?"</p>
+
+<p>Bates looked at me curiously. "Why, no," he
+said. "Them's the 'Arrisons. 'Arrison's dead now;
+he was a wrong 'un, couldn't make a job of it, nohow.
+They used to live 'ere, five or six year ago, and now
+'er 'usband's dead, Mrs. 'Arrison's coming back with
+the boy to live. Worse luck. We thought we was
+shut of 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" I said. "The boy's an idiot, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"'Orrible," replied Bates, shaking his head, "'orrible;
+can't speak nor nothing; goes about bleating
+and baa-ing like an old sheep."</p>
+
+<p>I looked round, but the ramshackle cart was hidden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+by the turn of the road. "Does Stott still live
+at Pym?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not Ginger," replied Bates. "He lives at Ailesworth.
+Mrs. Stott and 'er son lives here."</p>
+
+<p>"The boy's still alive then?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Bates.</p>
+
+<p>"Intelligent child?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"They say," replied Bates. "Book-learnin' and
+such. They say 'e's read every book in Mr. Challis's
+librairy."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he go to school?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. They let 'im off. Leastways Mr. Challis
+did. They say the Reverend Crashaw, down at
+Stoke, was fair put out about it."</p>
+
+<p>I thought that Bates emphasised the "on dit"
+nature of his information rather markedly. "What
+do <i>you</i> think of him?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Me?" said Bates. "I don't worry my 'ead about
+him. I've got too much to <i>do</i>." And he went off
+into technicalities concerning the abundance of
+charlock on the arable land of Pym. He called it
+"garlic." I saw that it was typical of Bates that
+he should have too much to <i>do</i>. I reflected that his
+was the calling which begot civilisation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>The best and surest route from Pym to the Wood
+Farm is, appropriately, by way of the wood; but
+in wet weather the alternative of various cart tracks
+that wind among the bracken and shrub of the Common,
+is preferable in many ways. May had been
+very dry that year, however, and Farmer Bates
+chose the wood. The leaves were still light on the
+beeches. I remember that as I tried to pierce the
+vista of stems that dipped over the steep fall of
+the hill, I promised myself many a romantic exploration
+of the unknown mysteries beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was so bright that afternoon that
+nothing, I believe, could have depressed me. When
+I had reached the farm and looked round the low,
+dark room with its one window, a foot from the
+ground and two from the ceiling, I only thought that
+I should be out-of-doors all the time. It amused
+me that I could touch the ceiling with my head by
+standing on tiptoe, and I laughed at the framed
+"presentation plates" from old Christmas numbers
+on the walls. These things are merely curious when
+the sun is shining and it is high May, and one is
+free to do the desired work after twenty years in a
+galley.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>At a quarter to eight that evening I saw the sun
+set behind the hills. As I wandered reflectively
+down the lane that goes towards Challis Court, a
+blackbird was singing ecstatically in a high elm;
+here and there a rabbit popped out and sat up, the
+picture of precocious curiosity. Nature seemed to
+be standing in her doorway for a careless half-hour's
+gossip, before putting up the shutters to bar the
+robbers who would soon be about their work of the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>It was still quite light as I strolled back over the
+Common, and I chose a path that took me through
+a little spinney of ash, oak, and beech, treading carefully
+to avoid crushing the tender crosiers of bracken
+that were just beginning to break their way through
+the soil.</p>
+
+<p>As I emerged from the little clump of wood, I saw
+two figures going away from me in the direction of
+Pym.</p>
+
+<p>One was that of a boy wearing a cricket-cap; he
+was walking deliberately, his hands hanging at his
+sides; the other figure was a taller boy, and he threw
+out his legs in a curious, undisciplined way, as
+though he had little control over them. At first sight
+I thought he was not sober.</p>
+
+<p>The two passed out of sight behind a clump of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+hawthorn, but once I saw the smaller figure turn
+and face the other, and once he made a repelling
+gesture with his hands.</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to me that the smaller boy was trying
+to avoid his companion; that he was, in one
+sense, running away from him, that he walked as one
+might walk away from some threatening animal, deliberately&mdash;to
+simulate the appearance of courage.</p>
+
+<p>I fancied the bigger boy was the idiot Harrison I
+had seen that afternoon, and Farmer Bates's "We
+hoped we were shut of him" recurred to me. I
+wondered if the idiot were dangerous or only a
+nuisance.</p>
+
+<p>I took the smaller boy to be one of the villagers'
+children. I noticed that his cricket-cap had a dark
+patch as though it had been mended with some other
+material.</p>
+
+<p>The impression which I received from this trivial
+affair was one of disappointment. The wood and
+the Common had been so deserted by humanity, so
+given up to nature, that I felt the presence of the
+idiot to be a most distasteful intrusion. "If that
+horrible thing is going to haunt the Common there
+will be no peace or decency," was the idea that
+presented itself. "I must send him off, the brute,"
+was the corollary. But I disliked the thought of
+being obliged to drive him away.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>The next morning I did not go on the Common;
+I was anxious to avoid a meeting with the Harrison
+idiot. I had been debating whether I should drive
+him away if I met him. Obviously I had no more
+right on the Common than he had&mdash;on the other
+hand, he was a nuisance, and I did not see why I
+should allow him to spoil all my pleasure in that
+ideal stretch of wild land which pressed on three
+sides of the Wood Farm. It was a stupid quandary
+of my own making; but I am afraid it was rather
+typical of my mental attitude. I am prone to set
+myself tasks, such as this eviction of the idiot from
+common ground, and equally prone to avoid them by
+a process of procrastination.</p>
+
+<p>By way of evasion I walked over to Deane Hill
+and surveyed the wonderful panorama of neat country
+that fills the basin between the Hampden and
+the Quainton Hills. Seen from that height, it has
+something the effect of a Dutch landscape, it all
+looks so amazingly tidy. Away to the left I looked
+over Stoke-Underhill. Ailesworth was a blur in the
+hollow, but I could distinguish the high fence of the
+County Ground.</p>
+
+<p>I sat all the morning on Deane Hill, musing and
+smoking, thinking of such things as Ginger Stott,
+and the match with Surrey. I decided that I must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+certainly go and see Stott's queer son, the phenomenon
+who had, they say, read all the books in Mr.
+Challis's library. I wondered what sort of a library
+this Challis had, and who he was. I had never heard
+of him before. I think I must have gone to sleep
+for a time.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Berridge came to clear away my dinner&mdash;I
+dined, without shame, at half-past twelve&mdash;I
+detained her with conversation. Presently I asked
+about little Stott.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a queer one, that's what he is," said Mrs.
+Berridge. She was a neat, comely little woman,
+rather superior to her station, and it seemed to me,
+certainly superior to her clod of a husband.</p>
+
+<p>"A great reader, Farmer Bates tells me," I said.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Berridge passed that by. "His mother's in
+trouble about him this morning," she said. "She's
+such a nice, respectable woman, and has all her milk
+and eggs and butter off of us. She was here this
+morning while you were out, sir, and, what I could
+make of it that 'Arrison boy had been chasing her
+boy on the Common last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" I said with sudden enlightenment. "I believe
+I saw them." At the back of my mind I was
+struggling desperately with a vague remembrance.
+It may sound incredible, but I had only the dimmest
+memory of my later experience of the child.
+The train incident was still fresh in my mind, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+I could not remember what Stott had told me when
+I talked with him by the pond. I seemed to have
+an impression that the child had some strange power
+of keeping people at a distance; or was I mixing
+up reality with some Scandinavian fairy tale?</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely, sir," Mrs. Berridge went on. "What
+upset Mrs. Stott was that her boy's never upset by
+anything&mdash;he has a curious way of looking at you,
+sir, that makes you wish you wasn't there; but from
+what Mrs. Stott says, this 'Arrison boy wasn't to
+be drove off, anyhow, and her son came in quite
+flurried like. Mrs. Stott seemed quite put out about
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless I might have had more information
+from my landlady, but I was struggling to reconstruct
+that old experience which had slipped away
+from me, and I nodded and turned back to the book
+I had been pretending to read. Mrs. Berridge was
+one of those unusual women&mdash;for her station in life&mdash;who
+know when to be silent, and she finished her
+clearing away without initiating any further remarks.</p>
+
+<p>When she had finished I went out onto the Common
+and looked for the pond where I had talked
+with Ginger Stott.</p>
+
+<p>I found it after a time, and then I began to gather
+up the threads I had dropped.</p>
+
+<p>It all came back to me, little by little. I remembered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+that talk I had had with him, his very gestures;
+I remembered how he had spoken of habits, or the
+necessity for the lack of them, and that took me
+back to the scene in the British Museum Reading
+Room, and to my theory. I was suddenly alive to
+that old interest again.</p>
+
+<p>I got up and walked eagerly in the direction of
+Mrs. Stott's cottage.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV<br />
+<small>THE INCIPIENCE OF MY SUBJECTION TO THE WONDER</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Victor Stott</span> was in his eighth year when I met him
+for the third time. I must have stayed longer than
+I imagined by the pond on the Common, for Mrs.
+Stott and her son had had tea, and the boy was
+preparing to go out. He stopped when he saw me
+coming; an unprecedented mark of recognition, so
+I have since learned.</p>
+
+<p>As I saw him then, he made a remarkable, but not
+a repulsively abnormal figure. His baldness struck
+one immediately, but it did not give him a look of
+age. Then one noticed that his head was unmistakably
+out of proportion to his body, yet the disproportion
+was not nearly so marked as it had been
+in infancy. These two things were conspicuous; the
+less salient peculiarities were observed later; the
+curious little beaky nose that jutted out at an unusual
+angle from the face, the lips that were too
+straight and determined for a child, the laxity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+the limbs when the body was in repose&mdash;lastly, the
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When I met Victor Stott on this, third, occasion,
+there can be no doubt that he had lost something of
+his original power. This may have been due to his
+long sojourn in the world of books, a sojourn that
+had, perhaps, altered the strange individuality of his
+thought; or it may have been due, in part at least,
+to his recent recognition of the fact that the power
+of his gaze exercised no influence over creatures
+such as the Harrison idiot. Nevertheless, though
+something of the original force had abated, he still
+had an extraordinary, and, so far as I can learn,
+altogether unprecedented power of enforcing his will
+without word or gesture; and I may say here that in
+those rare moments when Victor Stott looked me
+in the face, I seemed to see a rare and wonderful
+personality peering out through his eyes,&mdash;the personality
+which had, no doubt, spoken to Challis and
+Lewes through that long afternoon in the library
+of Challis Court. Normally one saw a curious, unattractive,
+rather repulsive figure of a child; when
+he looked at one with that rare look of intention,
+the man that lived within that unattractive body
+was revealed, his insight, his profundity, his unexampled
+wisdom. If we mark the difference between
+man and animals by a measure of intelligence, then
+surely this child was a very god among men.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p>
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Victor Stott did not look at me when I entered his
+mother's cottage; I saw only the unattractive exterior
+of him, and I blundered into an air of patronage.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this your boy?" I said, when I had greeted
+her. "I hear he is a great scholar."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," replied Ellen Mary quietly. She never
+boasted to strangers.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't remember me, I suppose?" I went on,
+foolishly; trying, however, to speak as to an equal.
+"You were in petticoats the last time I saw you."</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder was standing by the window, his arms
+hanging loosely at his sides; he looked out aslant
+up the lane; his profile was turned towards me. He
+made no answer to my question.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, sir, he remembers," replied Ellen Mary.
+"He never forgets anything."</p>
+
+<p>I paused, uncomfortably. I was slightly huffed
+by the boy's silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to spend the summer here," I said
+at last. "I hope he will come to see me. I have
+brought a good many books with me; perhaps he
+might care to read some of them."</p>
+
+<p>I had to talk <i>at</i> the boy; there was no alternative.
+Inwardly I was thinking that I had Kant's Critique
+and Hegel's Phenomenology among my books. "He
+may put on airs of scholarship," I thought; "but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+I fancy that he will find those two works rather
+above the level of his comprehension as yet." I did
+not recognise the fact that it was I who was putting
+on airs, not Victor Stott.</p>
+
+<p>"'E's given up reading the past six weeks, sir,"
+said Ellen Mary, "but I daresay he will come and
+see your books."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke demurely, and she did not look at her
+son; I received the impression that her statements
+were laid before him to take up, reject, or pass
+unnoticed as he pleased.</p>
+
+<p>I was slightly exasperated. I turned to the Wonder.
+"Would you care to come?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded without looking at me, and walked out
+of the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"'E'll go with you now, sir," prompted Ellen
+Mary. "That's what 'e means."</p>
+
+<p>I followed the Wonder in a condition of suppressed
+irritation. "His mother might be able to interpret
+his rudeness," I thought, "but I would teach him
+to convey his intentions more clearly. The child
+had been spoilt."</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>The Wonder chose the road over the Common. I
+should have gone by the wood, but when we came
+to the entrance of the wood, he turned up on to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+Common. He did not ask me which way I preferred.
+Indeed, we neither of us spoke during the half-mile
+walk that separated the Wood Farm from the last
+cottage in Pym.</p>
+
+<p>I was fuming inwardly. I had it in my mind at
+that time to put the Wonder through some sort of
+an examination. I was making plans to contribute
+towards his education, to send him to Oxford, later.
+I had adumbrated a scheme to arouse interest in
+his case among certain scholars and men of influence
+with whom I was slightly acquainted. I had been
+very much engrossed with these plans as I had made
+my way to the Stotts' cottage. I was still somewhat
+exalted in mind with my dreams of a vicarious brilliance.
+I had pictured the Wonder's magnificent
+passage through the University; I had acted, in
+thought, as the generous and kindly benefactor....
+It had been a grandiose dream, and the reality was
+so humiliating. Could I make this mannerless child
+understand his possibilities? Had he any ambition?</p>
+
+<p>Thinking of these things, I had lagged behind as
+we crossed the Common, and when I came to the
+gate of the farmyard, the Wonder was at the door
+of the house. He did not wait for me, but walked
+straight into my sitting-room. When I entered, I
+found him seated on the low window-sill, turning
+over the top layer of books in the large case which
+had been opened, but not unpacked. There was no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+place to put the books; in fact, I was proposing to
+have some shelves put up, if Mrs. Berridge had no
+objection.</p>
+
+<p>I entered the room in a condition of warm indignation.
+"Cheek" was the word that was in my mind.
+"Confounded cheek," I muttered. Nevertheless I
+did not interrupt the boy; instead, I lit a cigarette,
+sat down and watched him.</p>
+
+<p>I was sceptical at first. I noted at once the sure
+touch with which the boy handled my books, the
+practised hand that turned the pages, the quick
+examination of title-page and the list of contents,
+the occasional swift reference to the index, but I
+did not believe it possible that any one could read
+so fast as he read when he did condescend for a few
+moments to give his attention to a few consecutive
+pages. "Was it a pose?" I thought, yet he was
+certainly an adept in handling the books. I was
+puzzled, yet I was still sceptical&mdash;the habit of experience
+was towards disbelief&mdash;a boy of seven and
+a half could not possibly have the mental equipment
+to skim all that philosophy....</p>
+
+<p>My books were being unpacked very quickly.
+Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Leibnitz, Nietzsche,
+Hume, Bradley, William James had all been rejected
+and were piled on the floor, but he had hesitated
+longer over Bergson's <i>Creative Evolution</i>. He really
+seemed to be giving that some attention, though he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+read it&mdash;if he were reading it&mdash;so fast that the hand
+which turned the pages hardly rested between each
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>When Bergson was sent to join his predecessors,
+I determined that I would get some word out of
+this strange child&mdash;I had never yet heard him speak,
+not a single syllable. I determined to brave all
+rebuffs. I was prepared for that.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" I said, when Bergson was laid down.
+"Well! What do you make of that?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned and looked out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>I came and sat on the end of the table within a
+few feet of him. From that position I, too, could
+see out of the window, and I saw the figure of the
+Harrison idiot slouching over the farmyard gate.</p>
+
+<p>A gust of impatience whirled over me. I caught
+up my stick and went out quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Now then," I said, as I came within speaking
+distance of the idiot, "get away from here. Out
+with you!"</p>
+
+<p>The idiot probably understood no word of what
+I said, but like a dog he was quick to interpret my
+tone and gesture. He made a revoltingly inhuman
+sound as he shambled away, a kind of throaty yelp.
+I walked back to the house. I could not avoid the
+feeling that I had been unnecessarily brutal.</p>
+
+<p>When I returned the Wonder was still staring out
+of the window; but though I did not guess it then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+the idiot had served my purpose better than my
+determination. It was to the idiot that I owed my
+subsequent knowledge of Victor Stott. The Wonder
+had found a use for me. He was resigned to bear
+with my feeble mental development, because I was
+strong enough to keep at bay that half-animal
+creature who appeared to believe that Victor Stott
+was one of his own kind&mdash;the only one he had ever
+met. The idiot in some unimaginable way had inferred
+a likeness between himself and the Wonder&mdash;they
+both had enormous heads&mdash;and the idiot was
+the only human being over whom the Wonder was
+never able to exercise the least authority.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>I went in and sat down again on the end of the
+table. I was rather heated. I lit another cigarette
+and stared at the Wonder, who was still looking out
+of the window.</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a few seconds, and then he
+spoke of his own initiative.</p>
+
+<p>"Illustrates the weakness of argument from history
+and analogy," he said in a clear, small voice,
+addressing no one in particular. "Hegel's limitations
+are qualitatively those of Harrison, who argues
+that I and he are similar in kind."</p>
+
+<p>The proposition was so astounding that I could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+find no answer immediately. If the statement had
+been made in boyish language I should have laughed
+at it, but the phraseology impressed me.</p>
+
+<p>"You've read Hegel, then?" I asked evasively.</p>
+
+<p>"Subtract the endeavour to demonstrate a preconceived
+hypothesis from any known philosophy,"
+continued the Wonder, without heeding my question,
+"and the remainder, the only valuable material, is
+found to be distorted." He paused as if waiting for
+my reply.</p>
+
+<p>How could one answer such propositions as these
+offhand? I tried, however, to get at the gist of the
+sentence, and, as the silence continued, I said with
+some hesitation: "But it is impossible, surely, to
+approach the work of writing, say a philosophy,
+without some apprehension of the end in view?"</p>
+
+<p>"Illogical," replied the Wonder, "not philosophy;
+a system of trial and error&mdash;to evaluate a complex
+variable function." He paused a moment, and then
+glanced down at the pile of books on the floor.
+"More millions," he said.</p>
+
+<p>I think he meant that more millions of books
+might be written on this system without arriving at
+an answer to the problem, but I admit that I am
+at a loss, that I cannot interpret his remarks. I
+wrote them down an hour or two after they were
+uttered, but I may have made mistakes. The mathematical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+metaphor is beyond me. I have no acquaintance
+with the higher mathematics.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder had a very expressionless face, but I
+thought at this moment that he wore a look of
+sadness; and that look was one of the factors which
+helped me to understand the unbridgeable gulf that
+lay between his intellect and mine. I think it was
+at this moment that I first began to change my
+opinion. I had been regarding him as an unbearable
+little prig, but it flashed across me as I watched him
+now, that his mind and my own might be so far
+differentiated that he was unable to convey his
+thoughts to me. "Was it possible," I wondered,
+"that he had been trying to talk down to my level?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid I don't quite follow you," I said.
+I had intended to question him further, to urge him
+to explain, but it came to me that it would be quite
+hopeless to go on. How can one answer the unreasoning
+questions of a child? Here I was the child,
+though a child of slightly advanced development. I
+could appreciate that it was useless to persist in a
+futile "Why, why?" when the answer could only
+be given in terms that I could not comprehend.
+Therefore I hesitated, sighed, and then with that
+obstinacy of vanity which creates an image of self-protection
+and refuses to relinquish it, I said:</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you could explain yourself; not on this
+particular point of philosophy, but your life&mdash;&mdash;" I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+stopped, because I did not know how to phrase my
+demand. What was it, after all, that I wanted to
+learn?</p>
+
+<p>"That I can't explain," said the Wonder. "There
+are no data."</p>
+
+<p>I saw that he had accepted my request for explanation
+in a much wider sense than I had intended,
+and I took him up on this.</p>
+
+<p>"But haven't you any hypothesis?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot work on the system of trial and error,"
+replied the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Our conversation went no further this afternoon,
+for Mrs. Berridge came in to lay the cloth. She
+looked askance, I thought, at the figure on the
+window-sill, but she ventured no remark save to ask
+if I was ready for my supper.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, oh! yes!" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I lay for two, sir?" asked Mrs. Berridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you stay and have supper?" I said to the
+Wonder, but he shook his head, got up and walked
+out of the room. I watched him cross the farmyard
+and make his way over the Common.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" I said to Mrs. Berridge, when the boy
+was out of sight, "that child is what in America
+they call 'the limit,' Mrs. Berridge."</p>
+
+<p>My landlady put her lips together, shook her head,
+and shivered slightly. "He gives me the shudders,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span></p>
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>I neither read nor wrote that evening. I forgot
+to go out for a walk at sunset. I sat and pondered
+until it was time for bed, and then I pondered myself
+to sleep. No vision came to me, and I had no relevant
+dreams.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning at seven o'clock I saw Mrs.
+Stott come over the Common to fetch her milk from
+the farm. I waited until her business was done, and
+then I went out and walked back with her.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to understand about your son," I said
+by way of making an opening.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me quickly. "You know, 'e 'ardly
+ever speaks to me, sir," she said.</p>
+
+<p>I was staggered for a moment. "But you understand
+him?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"In some ways, sir," was her answer.</p>
+
+<p>I recognised the direction of the limitation. "Ah!
+we none of us understand him in all ways," I said,
+with a touch of patronage.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," replied Ellen Mary. She evidently
+agreed to that statement without qualification.</p>
+
+<p>"But what is he going to do?" I asked. "When
+he grows up, I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say, sir. We must leave that to 'im."</p>
+
+<p>I accepted the rebuke more mildly than I should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+have done on the previous day. "He never speaks
+of his future?" I said feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>There seemed to be nothing more to say. We had
+only gone a couple of hundred yards, but I paused
+in my walk. I thought I might as well go back
+and get my breakfast. But Mrs. Stott looked at
+me as though she had something more to say. We
+stood facing each other on the cart track.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I can't be of any use?" I asked
+vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary became suddenly voluble.</p>
+
+<p>"I 'ope I'm not askin' too much, sir," she said,
+"but there is a way you could 'elp if you would. 'E
+'ardly ever speaks to me, as I've said, but I've been
+opset about that 'Arrison boy. 'E's a brute beast,
+sir, if you know what I mean, and <i>'e</i>" (she differentiated
+her pronouns only by accent, and where there
+is any doubt I have used italics to indicate that her
+son is referred to) "doesn't seem to 'ave the same
+'old on 'im as <i>'e</i> does over others. It's truth, I am
+not easy in my mind about it, sir, although <i>'e</i> 'as
+never said a word to me, not being afraid of anything
+like other children, but 'e seems to have took
+a sort of a fancy to you, sir" (I think this was intended
+as the subtlest flattery), "and if you was to
+go with 'im when 'e takes 'is walks&mdash;'e's much in the
+air, sir, and a great one for walkin'&mdash;I think 'e'd be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+glad of your cump'ny, though maybe 'e won't never
+say it in so many words. You mustn't mind 'im
+being silent, sir; there's some things we can't understand,
+and though, as I say, 'e 'asn't said anything
+to me, it's not that I'm scheming be'ind 'is back, for
+I know 'is meaning without words being necessary."</p>
+
+<p>She might have said more, but I interrupted her
+at this point. "Certainly, I will come and fetch
+him,"&mdash;I lapsed unconsciously into her system of
+denomination&mdash;"this morning, if you are sure he
+would like to come out with me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm quite sure, sir," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"About nine o'clock?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That would do nicely, sir," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>As I walked back to the farm I was thinking of
+the life of those two occupants of the Stotts' cottage.
+The mother who watched her son in silence, studying
+his every look and action in order to gather his
+meaning; who never asked her son a question nor
+expected from him any statement of opinion; and
+the son wrapped always in that profound speculation
+which seemed to be his only mood. What a household!</p>
+
+<p>It struck me while I was having breakfast that I
+seemed to have let myself in for a duty that might
+prove anything but pleasant.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span></p>
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>There is nothing to say of that first walk of mine
+with the Wonder. I spoke to him once or twice
+and he answered by nodding his head; even this
+notice I now know to have been a special mark of
+favour, a condescension to acknowledge his use for
+me as a guardian. He did not speak at all on this
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>I did not call for him in the afternoon; I had
+made other plans. I wanted to see the man Challis,
+whose library had been at the disposal of this astonishing
+child. Challis might be able to give me further
+information. The truth of the matter is that
+I was in two minds as to whether I would stay at
+Pym through the summer, as I had originally
+intended. I was not in love with the prospect which
+the sojourn now held out for me. If I were to be
+constituted head nursemaid to Master Victor Stott,
+there would remain insufficient time for the progress
+of my own book on certain aspects of the growth of
+the philosophic method.</p>
+
+<p>I see now, when I look back, that I was not convinced
+at that time, that I still doubted the Wonder's
+learning. I may have classed it as a freakish pedantry,
+the result of an unprecedented memory.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Berridge had much information to impart
+on the subject of Henry Challis. He was her husband's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+landlord, of course, and his was a hallowed
+name, to be spoken with decency and respect. I am
+afraid I shocked Mrs. Berridge at the outset by my
+casual "Who's this man Challis?" She certainly
+atoned by her own manner for my irreverence; she
+very obviously tried to impress me. I professed submission,
+but was not intimidated, rather my curiosity
+was aroused.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Berridge was not able to tell me the one thing
+I most desired to know, whether the lord of Challis
+Court was in residence; but it was not far to walk,
+and I set out about two o'clock.</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>Challis was getting into his motor as I walked up
+the drive. I hurried forward to catch him before
+the machine was started. He saw me coming and
+paused on the doorstep.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you want to see me?" he asked, as I came
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Challis?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't keep you now," I said, "but perhaps
+you could let me know some time when I could see
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," he said, with the air of a man who is
+constantly subjected to annoyance by strangers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+"But perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me what
+it is you wish to see me about? I might be able to
+settle it now, at once."</p>
+
+<p>"I am staying at the Wood Farm," I began. "I
+am interested in a very remarkable child&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! take my advice, leave him alone," interrupted
+Challis quickly.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I looked my amazement, for Challis
+laughed. "Oh, well," he said, "of course you won't
+take such spontaneous advice as that. I'm in no
+hurry. Come in." He took off his heavy overcoat
+and threw it into the tonneau. "Come round again
+in an hour," he said to the chauffeur.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very good of you," I protested, "I could
+come quite well at any other time."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm in no hurry," he repeated. "You had better
+come to the scene of Victor Stott's operations. He
+hasn't been here for six weeks, by the way. Can
+you throw any light on his absence?"</p>
+
+<p>I made a friend that afternoon. When the car
+came back at four o'clock, Challis sent it away
+again. "I shall probably stay down here to-night,"
+he said to the butler, and to me: "Can you stay to
+dinner? I must convince you about this child."</p>
+
+<p>"I have dined once to-day," I said. "At half-past
+twelve. I have no other excuse."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! well," said Challis, "you needn't eat, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+I must. Get us something, Heathcote," he said to
+the butler, "and bring tea here."</p>
+
+<p>Much of our conversation after dinner was not
+relevant to the subject of the Wonder; we drifted
+into a long argument upon human origins which
+has no place here. But by that time I had been
+very well informed as to all the essential facts of the
+Wonder's childhood, of his entry into the world of
+books, of his earlier methods, and of the significance
+of that long speech in the library. But at that point
+Challis became reserved. He would give me no
+details.</p>
+
+<p>"You must forgive me; I can't go into that," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"But it is so incomparably important," I protested.</p>
+
+<p>"That may be, but you must not question me.
+The truth of the matter is that I have a very confused
+memory of what the boy said, and the little I
+might remember, I prefer to leave undisturbed."</p>
+
+<p>He piqued my curiosity, but I did not press him.
+It was so evident that he did not wish to speak on
+that head.</p>
+
+<p>He walked up with me to the farm at ten o'clock
+and came into my room.</p>
+
+<p>"We need not keep you out of bed, Mrs. Berridge,"
+he said to my flustered landlady. "I daresay we
+shall be up till all hours. We promise to see that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+the house is locked up." Mr. Berridge stood a figure
+of subservience in the background.</p>
+
+<p>My books were still heaped on the floor. Challis
+sat down on the window-sill and looked over some
+of them. "Many of these Master Stott probably
+read in my library," he remarked, "in German.
+Language is no bar to him. He learns a language
+as you or I would learn a page of history."</p>
+
+<p>Later on, I remember that we came down to
+essentials. "I must try and understand something
+of this child's capacities," I said in answer to a hint
+of Challis's that I should leave the Wonder alone.
+"It seems to me that here we have something which
+is of the first importance, of greater importance,
+indeed, than anything else in the history of the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>"But you can't make him speak," said Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall try," I said. "I recognise that we cannot
+compel him, but I have a certain hold over him. I
+see from what you have told me that he has treated
+me with most unusual courtesy. I assure you that
+several times when I spoke to him this morning he
+nodded his head."</p>
+
+<p>"A good beginning," laughed Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't understand," I went on, "how it is that
+you are not more interested. It seems to me that
+this child knows many things which we have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+patiently attempting to discover since the dawn of
+civilisation."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite," said Challis. "I admit that, but ...
+well, I don't think I want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely," I said, "this key to all knowledge&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We are not ready for it," replied Challis. "You
+can't teach metaphysics to children."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless my ardour was increased, not abated,
+by my long talk with Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go on," I said, as I went out to the farm
+gate with him at half-past two in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! well," he answered, "I shall come over and
+see you when I get back." He had told me earlier
+that he was going abroad for some months.</p>
+
+<p>We hesitated a moment by the gate, and instinctively
+we both looked up at the vault of the sky and
+the glimmering dust of stars.</p>
+
+<p>The same thought was probably in both our minds,
+the thought of the insignificance of this little system
+that revolves round one of the lesser lights of the
+Milky Way, but that thought was not to be expressed
+save by some banality, and we did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall certainly look you up when I come back,"
+said Challis.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I hope you will," I said lamely.</p>
+
+<p>I watched the loom of his figure against the vague
+background till I could distinguish it no longer.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI<br />
+<small>THE PROGRESS AND RELAXATION OF MY SUBJECTION</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">The</span> memory of last summer is presented to me now
+as a series of pictures, some brilliant, others vague,
+others again so uncertain that I cannot be sure how
+far they are true memories of actual occurrences,
+and how far they are interwoven with my thoughts
+and dreams. I have, for instance, a recollection of
+standing on Deane Hill and looking down over the
+wide panorama of rural England, through a driving
+mist of fine rain. This might well be counted among
+true memories, were it not for the fact that clearly
+associated with the picture is an image of myself
+grown to enormous dimensions, a Brocken spectre
+that threatened the world with titanic gestures of
+denouncement, and I seem to remember that this
+figure was saying: "All life runs through my fingers
+like a handful of dry sand." And yet the remembrance
+has not the quality of a dream.</p>
+
+<p>I was, undoubtedly, overwrought at times. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+were days when the sight of a book filled me with
+physical nausea, with contempt for the littleness,
+the narrow outlook, that seemed to me to characterise
+every written work. I was fiercely, but quite
+impotently, eager at such times to demonstrate the
+futility of all the philosophy ranged on the rough
+wooden shelves in my gloomy sitting-room. I would
+walk up and down and gesticulate, struggling, fighting
+to make clear to myself what a true philosophy
+should set forth. I felt at such times that all the
+knowledge I needed for so stupendous a task was
+present with me in some inexplicable way, was even
+pressing upon me, but that my brain was so clogged
+and heavy that not one idea of all that priceless
+wisdom could be expressed in clear thought. "I
+have never been taught to think," I would complain,
+"I have never perfected the machinery of thought,"
+and then some dictum thrown out haphazard by the
+Wonder&mdash;his conception of light conversation&mdash;would
+recur to me, and I would realise that however
+well I had been trained, my limitations would remain,
+that I was an undeveloped animal, only one stage
+higher than a totem-fearing savage, a creature of
+small possibilities, incapable of dealing with great
+problems.</p>
+
+<p>Once the Wonder said to me, in a rare moment of
+lucid condescension to my feeble intellect, "You
+figure space as a void in three dimensions, and time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+as a line that runs across it, and all other conceptions
+you relegate to that measure." He implied
+that this was a cumbrous machinery which had no
+relation to reality, and could define nothing. He
+told me that his idea of force, for example, was a
+pure abstraction, for which there was no figure in
+my mental outfit.</p>
+
+<p>Such pronouncements as these left me struggling
+like a drowning man in deep water. I felt that it
+<i>must</i> be possible for me to come to the surface, but
+I could do nothing but flounder; beating fiercely with
+limbs that were so powerful and yet so utterly useless.
+I saw that my very metaphors symbolised my
+feebleness; I had no terms for my own mental condition;
+I was forced to resort to some inapplicable
+physical analogy.</p>
+
+<p>These fits of revolt against the limitations of
+human thought grew more frequent as the summer
+progressed. Day after day my self-sufficiency and
+conceit were being crushed out of me. I was always
+in the society of a boy of seven whom I was forced
+to regard as immeasurably my intellectual superior.
+There was no department of useful knowledge in
+which I could compete with him. Compete indeed!
+I might as well speak of a third-standard child competing
+with Macaulay in a general knowledge paper.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Useful</i> knowledge," I have written, but the
+phrase needs definition. I might have taught the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+Wonder many things, no doubt; the habits of men
+in great cities, the aspects of foreign countries, or
+the subtleties of cricket; but when I was with him
+I felt&mdash;and my feelings must have been typical&mdash;that
+such things as these were of no account.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of the summer, the occasions
+upon which I was able to stimulate myself into a
+condition of bearable complacency were very rare.
+I often thought of Challis's advice to leave the Wonder
+alone. I should have gone away if I had been
+free, but Victor Stott had a use for me, and I was
+powerless to disobey him. I feared him, but he controlled
+me at his will. I feared him as I had once
+feared an imaginary God, but I did not hate him.</p>
+
+<p>One curious little fragment of wisdom came to me
+as the result of my experience&mdash;a useless fragment
+perhaps, but something that has in one way altered
+my opinion of my fellow-men. I have learnt that
+a measure of self-pride, of complacency, is essential
+to every human being. I judge no man any more
+for displaying an overweening vanity, rather do I
+envy him this representative mark of his humanity.
+The Wonder was completely and quite inimitably
+devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had
+no meaning for him. It was inconceivable that he
+should compare himself with any of his fellow-creatures,
+and it was inconceivable that any honour they
+might have lavished upon him would have given<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+him one moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone
+among aliens who were unable to comprehend him,
+aliens who could not flatter him, whose opinions were
+valueless to him. He had no more common ground
+on which to air his knowledge, no more grounds for
+comparison by which to achieve self-conceit than a
+man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep.
+From what I have heard him say on the subject of
+our slavery to preconceptions, I think the metaphor
+of sheep is one which he might have approved.</p>
+
+<p>But the result of all this, so far as I am concerned,
+is a feeling of admiration for those men who are
+capable of such magnificent approval for themselves,
+the causes they espouse, their family, their country,
+and their species; it is an approval which I fear I
+can never again attain in full measure.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen possibilities which have enforced a
+humbleness that is not good for my happiness nor
+conducive to my development. Henceforward I will
+espouse the cause of vanity. It is only the vain who
+deprecate vanity in others.</p>
+
+<p>But there were times in the early period of my
+association with Victor Stott when I rebelled vigorously
+against his complacent assumption of my
+ignorance.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span></p>
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>May was a gloriously fine month, and we were
+much out of doors. Unfortunately, except for one
+fortnight in August, that was all the settled weather
+we had that summer.</p>
+
+<p>I remember sitting one afternoon staring at the
+same pond that Ginger Stott had stared at when
+he told me that the boy now beside me was a "blarsted
+freak."</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder had said nothing that day, but now
+he began to enunciate some of his incomprehensible
+commonplaces in that thin, clear voice of his. I
+wrote down what I could remember of his utterances
+when I went home, but now I read them over again
+I am exceedingly doubtful whether I reported him
+correctly. There is, however, one dictum which
+seems clearly phrased, and when I recall the scene,
+I remember trying to push the induction he had
+started. The pronouncement, as I have it written,
+is as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"Pure deduction from a single premiss, unaided
+by previous knowledge of the functions of the terms
+used in the expansion of the argument, is an act of
+creation, incontrovertible, and outside the scope of
+human reasoning."</p>
+
+<p>I believe he meant to say&mdash;but my notes are horribly
+confused&mdash;that logic and philosophy were only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+relative, being dependent always in a greater or
+less degree upon the test of a material experiment for
+verification.</p>
+
+<p>Here, as always, I find the Wonder's pronouncements
+very elusive. In one sense I see that what I
+have quoted here is a self-evident proposition, but
+I have the feeling that behind it there lies some
+gleam of wisdom which throws a faint light on the
+profound problem of existence.</p>
+
+<p>I remember that in my own feeble way I tried to
+analyse this statement, and for a time I thought I
+had grasped one significant aspect of it. It seemed
+to me that the possibility of conceiving a philosophy
+that was not dependent for verification upon material
+experiment&mdash;that is to say, upon evidence
+afforded by the five senses&mdash;indicates that there is
+something which is not matter; but that since the
+development of such a philosophy is not possible to
+our minds, we must argue that our dependence upon
+matter is so intimate that it is almost impossible to
+conceive that we are actuated by any impulse which
+does not arise out of a material complex.</p>
+
+<p>At the back of my mind there seemed to be a
+thought that I could not focus, I trembled on the
+verge of some great revelation that never came.</p>
+
+<p>Through my thoughts there ran a thread of reverence
+for the intelligence that had started my speculations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+If only he could speak in terms that I could
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>I looked round at the Wonder. He was, as usual,
+apparently lost in abstraction, and quite unconscious
+of my regard.</p>
+
+<p>The wind was strong on the Common, and he
+sniffed once or twice and then wiped his nose. He
+did not use a handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>It came to me at the moment that he was no more
+than a vulgar little village boy.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>There were few incidents to mark the progress of
+that summer. I marked the course of time by my
+own thoughts and feelings, especially by my growing
+submission to the control of the Wonder.</p>
+
+<p>It was curious to recall that I had once thought
+of correcting the Wonder's manners, of administering,
+perhaps, a smacking. That was a fault of
+ignorance. I had often erred in the same way in
+other experiences of life, but I had not taken the
+lesson to heart. I remember at school our "head"
+taking us&mdash;I was in the lower fifth then&mdash;in Latin
+verse. He rebuked me for a false quantity, and I,
+very cocksure, disputed the point and read my line.
+The head pointed out very gravely that I had been
+misled by an English analogy in my pronunciation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+of the word "maritus," and I grew very hot and
+ashamed and apologetic. I feel much the same now
+when I think of my early attitude towards the Wonder.
+But this time, I think, I have profited by my
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, one incident which in the light
+of subsequent events it seems worth while to record.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon in early July, when the sky had
+lifted sufficiently for us to attempt some sort of a
+walk, we made our way down through the sodden
+woods in the direction of Deane Hill.</p>
+
+<p>As we were emerging into the lane at the foot of
+the slope, I saw the Harrison idiot lurking behind
+the trunk of a big beech. This was only the third
+time I had seen him since I drove him away from
+the farm, and on the two previous occasions he had
+not come close to us.</p>
+
+<p>This time he had screwed up his courage to follow
+us. As we climbed the lane I saw him slouching
+up the hedge-side behind us.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder took no notice, and we continued our
+way in silence.</p>
+
+<p>When we reached the prospect at the end of the
+hill, where the ground falls away like a cliff and you
+have a bird's-eye view of two counties, we sat down
+on the steps of the monument erected in honour of
+those Hampdenshire men whose lives were thrown
+away in the South-African war.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That view always has a soothing effect upon me,
+and I gave myself up to an ecstasy of contemplation
+and forgot, for a few moments, the presence of the
+Wonder, and the fact that the idiot had followed us.</p>
+
+<p>I was recalled to existence by the sound of a
+foolish, conciliatory mumbling, and looked round to
+see the leering face of the Harrison idiot ogling the
+Wonder from the corner of the plinth. The Wonder
+was between me and the idiot, but he was apparently
+oblivious of either of us.</p>
+
+<p>I was about to rise and drive the idiot away, but
+the Wonder, still staring out at some distant horizon,
+said quietly, "Let him be."</p>
+
+<p>I was astonished, but I sat still and awaited
+events.</p>
+
+<p>The idiot behaved much as I have seen a very
+young and nervous puppy behave.</p>
+
+<p>He came within a few feet of us, gurgling and
+crooning, flapping his hands and waggling his great
+head; his uneasy eyes wandered from the Wonder
+to me and back again, but it was plainly the Wonder
+whom he wished to propitiate. Then he suddenly
+backed as if he had dared too much, flopped on to
+the wet grass and regarded us both with foolish,
+goggling eyes. For a few seconds he lay still, and
+then he began to squirm along the ground towards
+us, a few inches at a time, stopping every now and
+again to bleat and gurgle with that curious, crooning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+note which he appeared to think would pacificate
+the object of his overtures.</p>
+
+<p>I stood by, as it were; ready to obey the first hint
+that the presence of this horrible creature was
+distasteful to the Wonder, but he gave no sign.</p>
+
+<p>The idiot had come within five or six feet of us,
+wriggling himself along the wet grass, before the
+Wonder looked at him. The look when it came was
+one of those deliberate, intentional stares which
+made one feel so contemptible and insignificant.</p>
+
+<p>The idiot evidently regarded this look as a sign of
+encouragement. He knelt up, began to flap his
+hands and changed his crooning note to a pleased,
+emphatic bleat.</p>
+
+<p>"A-ba-ba," he blattered, and made uncouth
+gestures, by which I think he meant to signify
+that he wanted the Wonder to come and play with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Still the Wonder gave no sign, but his gaze never
+wavered, and though the idiot was plainly not
+intimidated, he never met that gaze for more than a
+second or two. Nevertheless he came on, walking
+now on his knees, and at last stretched out a hand
+to touch the boy he so curiously desired for a playmate.</p>
+
+<p>That broke the spell. The Wonder drew back
+quickly&mdash;he never allowed one to touch him&mdash;got
+up and climbed two or three steps higher up the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+base of the monument. "Send him away," he said
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>"That'll do," I said threateningly to the idiot,
+and at the sound of my voice and the gesture of my
+hand, he blenched, yelped, rolled over away from
+me, and then got to his feet and shambled off for
+several yards before stopping to regard us once more
+with his pacificatory, disgusting ogle.</p>
+
+<p>"Send him away," repeated the Wonder, as I
+hesitated, and I rose to my feet and pretended to
+pick up a stone.</p>
+
+<p>That was enough. The idiot yelped again and
+made off. This time he did not stop, though he
+looked over his shoulder several times as he lolloped
+away among the low gorse, to which look I replied
+always with the threat of an imaginary stone.</p>
+
+<p>The Wonder made no comment on the incident as
+we walked home. He had shown no sign of fear.
+It occurred to me that my guardianship of him was
+merely a convenience, not a protection from any
+danger.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>As time went on it became increasingly clear to
+me that my chance of obtaining the Wonder's
+confidence was becoming more and more remote.</p>
+
+<p>At first he had replied to my questions; usually,
+it is true, by no more than an inclination of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+head, but he soon ceased to make even this acknowledgment
+of my presence.</p>
+
+<p>So I fell by degrees into a persistent habit of
+silence, admitted my submission by obtruding
+neither remark nor question upon my constant
+companion, and gave up my intention of using the
+Wonder as a means to gratify my curiosity concerning
+the problem of existence.</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice I saw Crashaw at a distance. He
+undoubtedly recognised the Wonder, and I think he
+would have liked to come up and rebuke him&mdash;perhaps
+me, also; but probably he lacked the
+courage. He would hover within sight of us for a
+few minutes, scowling, and then stalk away. He
+gave me the impression of being a dangerous man,
+a thwarted fanatic, brooding over his defeat. If I
+had been Mrs. Stott, I should have feared the
+intrusion of Crashaw more than the foolish overtures
+of the Harrison idiot. But there was, of course,
+the Wonder's compelling power to be reckoned with,
+in the case of Crashaw.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>Challis came back in early September, and it was
+he who first coaxed, and then goaded me into rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>Challis did not come too soon.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of August I was seeing visions, not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+pleasant, inspiriting visions, but the indefinite, perplexing
+shapes of delirium.</p>
+
+<p>I think it must have been in August that I stood
+on Deane Hill, through an afternoon of fine, driving
+rain, and had a vision of myself playing tricks with
+the sands of life.</p>
+
+<p>I had begun to lose my hold on reality. Silence,
+contemplation, a long-continued wrestle with the
+profound problems of life, were combining to break
+up the intimacy of life and matter, and my brain
+was not of the calibre to endure the strain.</p>
+
+<p>Challis saw at once what ailed me.</p>
+
+<p>He came up to the farm one morning at twelve
+o'clock. The date was, I believe, the twelfth of September.
+It was a brooding, heavy morning, with
+half a gale of wind blowing from the south-west, but
+it had not rained, and I was out with the Wonder
+when Challis arrived.</p>
+
+<p>He waited for me and talked to the flattered Mrs.
+Berridge, remonstrated kindly with her husband for
+his neglect of the farm, and incidentally gave him a
+rebate on the rent.</p>
+
+<p>When I came in, he insisted that I should come to
+lunch with him at Challis Court.</p>
+
+<p>I consented, but stipulated that I must be back
+at Pym by three o'clock to accompany the Wonder
+for his afternoon walk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Challis looked at me curiously, but allowed the
+stipulation.</p>
+
+<p>We hardly spoke as we walked down the hill&mdash;the
+habit of silence had grown upon me, but after lunch
+Challis spoke out his mind.</p>
+
+<p>On that occasion I hardly listened to him, but he
+came up to the farm again after tea and marched
+me off to dinner at the Court. I was strangely
+plastic when commanded, but when he suggested
+that I should give up my walks with the Wonder,
+go away ... I smiled and said "Impossible," as
+though that ended the matter.</p>
+
+<p>Challis, however, persisted, and I suppose I was
+not too far gone to listen to him. I remember his
+saying: "That problem is not for you or me or
+any man living to solve by introspection. Our work
+is to add knowledge little by little, data here and
+there, for future evidence."</p>
+
+<p>The phrase struck me, because the Wonder had
+once said "There are no data," when in the early
+days I had asked him whether he could say definitely
+if there was any future existence possible
+for us?</p>
+
+<p>Now Challis put it to me that our work was to find
+data, that every little item of real knowledge added
+to the feeble store man has accumulated in his few
+thousand years of life, was a step, the greatest step
+any man could possibly make.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But could we not get, not a small but a very
+important item, from Victor Stott?"</p>
+
+<p>Challis shook his head. "He is too many thousands
+of years ahead of us," he said. "We can only
+bridge the gap by many centuries of patient toil.
+If a revelation were made to us, we should not understand
+it."</p>
+
+<p>So, by degrees, Challis's influence took possession
+of me and roused me to self-assertion.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, half in dread, I stayed at home and
+read a novel&mdash;no other reading could hold my attention&mdash;philosophy
+had become nauseating.</p>
+
+<p>I expected to see the strange little figure of the
+Wonder come across the Common, but he never came,
+nor did I receive any reproach from Ellen Mary.
+I think she had forgotten her fear of the Harrison
+idiot.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, I did not give up my guardianship
+all at once. Three times after that morning I took
+the Wonder for a walk. He made no allusion to my
+defalcations. Indeed he never spoke. He relinquished
+me as he had taken me up, without comment
+or any expression of feeling.</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>On the twenty-ninth of September I went down to
+Challis Court and stayed there for a week. Then I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+returned for a few days to Wood Farm in order to
+put my things together and pack my books. I had
+decided to go to Cairo for the winter with Challis.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past one o'clock on Thursday, the eighth
+of October, I was in the sitting-room, when I saw
+the figure of Mrs. Stott coming across the Common.
+She came with a little stumbling run. I could see
+that she was agitated even before she reached the
+farmyard gate.</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII<br />
+<small>RELEASE</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">She</span> opened the front door without knocking, and
+came straight into my sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>"'E's not 'ere," she said in a manner that left it
+doubtful whether she made an assertion or asked a
+question.</p>
+
+<p>"Your son?" I said. I had risen when she came
+into the room, "No; I haven't seen him to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary was staring at me, but it was clear
+that she neither saw nor heard me. She had a look
+of intense concentration. One could see that she was
+calculating, thinking, thinking....</p>
+
+<p>I went over to her and took her by the arm. I
+gently shook her. "Now, tell me what's the matter?
+What has happened?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>She made an effort to collect herself, loosened her
+arm from my hold and with an instinctive movement
+pushed forward the old bonnet, which had slipped to
+the back of her head.</p>
+
+<p>"'E 'asn't been in to 'is dinner," she said hurriedly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+"I've been on the Common looking for 'im."</p>
+
+<p>"He may have made a mistake in the time," I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>She made a movement as though to push me on
+one side, and turned towards the door. She was
+calculating again. Her expression said quite plainly,
+"Could he be there, could he be <i>there</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come," I said, "there is surely no need
+to be anxious yet."</p>
+
+<p>She turned on me. "'E never makes a mistake
+in the time," she said fiercely, "'e always knows the
+time to the minute without clock or watch. Why
+did you leave 'im alone?"</p>
+
+<p>She broke off in her attack upon me and continued:
+"'E's never been late before, not a minute,
+and now it's a hour after 'is time."</p>
+
+<p>"He may be at home by now," I said. She took
+the hint instantly and started back again with the
+same stumbling little run.</p>
+
+<p>I picked up my hat and followed her.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>The Wonder was not at the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my dear woman, you must keep calm," I
+said. "There is absolutely no reason to be disturbed.
+You had better go to Challis Court and see if he is
+in the library, I&mdash;&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm a fool," broke in Ellen Mary with sudden
+decision, and she set off again without another word.
+I followed her back to the Common and watched
+her out of sight. I was more disturbed about her
+than about the non-appearance of the Wonder. He
+was well able to take care of himself, but she....
+How strange that with all her calculations she had
+not thought of going to Challis Court, to the place
+where her son had spent so many days. I began to
+question whether the whole affair was not, in some
+way, a mysterious creation of her own disordered
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, I took upon myself to carry out that
+part of the programme which I had not been allowed
+to state in words to Mrs. Stott, and set out for Deane
+Hill. It was just possible that the Wonder might
+have slipped down that steep incline and injured
+himself. Possible, but very unlikely; the Wonder
+did not take the risks common to boys of his age,
+he did not disport himself on dangerous slopes.</p>
+
+<p>As I walked I felt a sense of lightness, of relief
+from depression. I had not been this way by myself
+since the end of August. It was good to be alone
+and free.</p>
+
+<p>The day was fine and not cold, though the sun was
+hidden. I noticed that the woods showed scarcely
+a mark of autumn decline.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a soul to be seen by the monument.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+I scrambled down the slope and investigated the base
+of the hill and came back another way through the
+woods. I saw no one. I stopped continually and
+whistled loudly. If he is anywhere near at hand, I
+thought, and in trouble, he will hear that and answer
+me. I did not call him by name. I did not know
+what name to call. It would have seemed absurd to
+have called "Victor." No one ever addressed him
+by name.</p>
+
+<p>My return route brought me back to the south
+edge of the Common, the point most remote from
+the farm. There I met a labourer whom I knew by
+sight, a man named Hawke. He was carrying a
+stick, and prodding with it foolishly among the furze
+and gorse bushes. The bracken was already dying
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you looking for?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It's this 'ere Master Stott, sir," he said, looking
+up. "'E's got loarst seemingly."</p>
+
+<p>I felt a sudden stab of self-reproach. I had been
+taking things too easily. I looked at my watch. It
+was a quarter to four.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Challis 'ave told me to look for 'un," added
+the man, and continued his aimless prodding of the
+gorse.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Mr. Challis?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'E's yonder, soomewheres." He made a vague
+gesture in the direction of Pym.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sun had come out, and the Common was all
+aglow. I hastened towards the village.</p>
+
+<p>On the way I met Farmer Bates and two or three
+labourers. They, too, were beating among the gorse
+and brown bracken. They told me that Mr. Challis
+was at the cottage and I hurried on. All the neighbourhood,
+it seems, was searching for the Wonder.
+In the village I saw three or four women standing
+with aprons over their heads, talking together.</p>
+
+<p>I had never seen Pym so animated.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>I met Challis in the lane. He was coming away
+from Mrs. Stott's cottage.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you found him?" I asked stupidly. I knew
+quite well that the Wonder was not found, and yet
+I had a fond hope that I might, nevertheless, be
+mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>Challis shook his head. "There will be a mad
+woman in that cottage if he doesn't come back by
+nightfall," he remarked with a jerk of his head.
+"I've done what I can for her."</p>
+
+<p>I explained that I had been over to Deane Hill,
+searching and calling.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't see anything?" asked Challis, echoing
+my foolish query of a moment before. I shook my
+head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We were both agitated without doubt.</p>
+
+<p>We soon came up with Farmer Bates and his men.
+They stopped and touched their hats when they saw
+us, and we put the same silly question to them.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't found him?" We knew perfectly
+well that they would have announced the fact at
+once if they had found him.</p>
+
+<p>"One of you go over to the Court and get any
+man you can find to come and help," said Challis.
+"Tell Heathcote to send every one."</p>
+
+<p>One of the labourers touched his cap again, and
+started off at once with a lumbering trot.</p>
+
+<p>Challis and I walked on in silence, looking keenly
+about us and stopping every now and then and calling.
+We called "Hallo! Hallo-o!" It was an
+improvement upon my whistle.</p>
+
+<p>"He's such a little chap," muttered Challis once;
+"it would be so easy to miss him if he were unconscious."</p>
+
+<p>It struck me that the reference to the Wonder
+was hardly sufficiently respectful. I had never
+thought of him as "a little chap." But Challis had
+not known him so intimately as I had.</p>
+
+<p>The shadows were fast creeping over the Common.
+At the woodside it was already twilight. The whole
+of the western sky right up to the zenith was a
+finely shaded study in brilliant orange and yellow.
+"More rain," I thought instinctively, and paused<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+for a moment to watch the sunset. The black distance
+stood clearly silhouetted against the sky. One
+could discern the sharp outline of tiny trees on the
+distant horizon.</p>
+
+<p>We met Heathcote and several other men in the
+lane.</p>
+
+<p>"Shan't be able to do much to-night, sir," said
+Heathcote. "It'll be dark in 'alf an hour, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, do what you can in half an hour," replied
+Challis, and to me he said, "You'd better come back
+with me. We've done what we can."</p>
+
+<p>I had a picture of him then as the magnate; I
+had hardly thought of him in that light before. The
+arduous work of the search he could delegate to his
+inferiors. Still, he had come out himself, and I doubt
+not that he had been altogether charming to the
+bewildered, distraught mother.</p>
+
+<p>I acquiesced in his suggestion. I was beginning
+to feel very tired.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Heathcote was at the gate when we arrived
+at the Court. "'Ave they found 'im, sir?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," replied Challis.</p>
+
+<p>I followed him into the house.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p>
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>As I walked back at ten o'clock it was raining
+steadily. I had refused the offer of a trap. I went
+through the dark and sodden wood, and lingered
+and listened. The persistent tap, tap, tap of the
+rain on the leaves irritated me. How could one hear
+while that noise was going on? There was no other
+sound. There was not a breath of wind. Only that
+perpetual tap, tap, tap, patter, patter, drip, tap,
+tap. It seemed as if it might go on through
+eternity....</p>
+
+<p>I went to the Stotts' cottage, though I knew there
+could be no news. Challis had given strict instructions
+that any news should be brought to him immediately.
+If it was bad news it was to be brought
+to him before the mother was told.</p>
+
+<p>There was a light burning in the cottage, and the
+door was set wide open.</p>
+
+<p>I went up to the door but I did not go in.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary was sitting in a high chair, her hands
+clasped together, and she rocked continually to and
+fro. She made no sound; she merely rocked herself
+with a steady, regular persistence.</p>
+
+<p>She did not see me standing at the open door, and
+I moved quietly away.</p>
+
+<p>As I walked over the Common&mdash;I avoided the
+wood deliberately&mdash;I wondered what was the human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
+limit of endurance. I wondered whether Ellen Mary
+had not reached that limit.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Berridge had not gone to bed, and there were
+some visitors in the kitchen. I heard them talking.
+Mrs. Berridge came out when I opened the front
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"Any news, sir?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No; no news," I said. I had been about to ask
+her the same question.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>I did not go to sleep for some time. I had a
+picture of Ellen Mary before my eyes, and I could
+still hear that steady pat, patter, drip, of the rain
+on the beech leaves.</p>
+
+<p>In the night I awoke suddenly, and thought I
+heard a long, wailing cry out on the Common. I
+got up and looked out of the window, but I could
+see nothing. The rain was still falling, but there
+was a blur of light that showed where the moon was
+shining behind the clouds. The cry, if there had
+been a cry, was not repeated.</p>
+
+<p>I went back to bed and soon fell asleep again.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know whether I had been dreaming, but
+I woke suddenly with a presentation of the little
+pond on the Common very clear before me.</p>
+
+<p>"We never looked in the pond," I thought, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+then&mdash;"but he could not have fallen into the pond;
+besides, it's not two feet deep."</p>
+
+<p>It was full daylight, and I got up and found that
+it was nearly seven o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>The rain had stopped, but there was a scurry of
+low, threatening cloud that blew up from the south.</p>
+
+<p>I dressed at once and went out. I made my way
+directly to the Stotts' cottage.</p>
+
+<p>The lamp was still burning and the door open,
+but Ellen Mary had fallen forward on to the table;
+her head was pillowed on her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>is</i> a limit to our endurance," I reflected,
+"and she has reached it."</p>
+
+<p>I left her undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>Outside I met two of Farmer Bates's labourers
+going back to work.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to come up with me to the pond," I
+said.</p>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<p>The pond was very full.</p>
+
+<p>On the side from which we approached, the ground
+sloped gradually, and the water was stretching out
+far beyond its accustomed limits.</p>
+
+<p>On the farther side the gorse among the trunks of
+the three ash-trees came right to the edge of the
+bank. On that side the bank was three or four feet
+high.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We came to the edge of the pond, and one of the
+labourers waded in a little way&mdash;the water was very
+shallow on that side&mdash;but we could see nothing for
+the scum of weed, little spangles of dirty green, and
+a mass of some other plant that had borne a little
+white flower in the earlier part of the year&mdash;stuff
+like dwarf hemlock.</p>
+
+<p>Under the farther bank, however, I saw one comparatively
+clear space of black water.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go round," I said, and led the way.</p>
+
+<p>There was a tiny path which twisted between the
+gorse roots and came out at the edge of the farther
+bank by the stem of the tallest ash. I had seen tiny
+village boys pretending to fish from this point with
+a stick and a piece of string. There was a dead
+branch of ash some five or six feet long, with the
+twigs partly twisted off; it was lying among the
+bushes. I remembered that I had seen small boys
+using this branch to clear away the surface weed.
+I picked it up and took it with me.</p>
+
+<p>I wound one arm round the trunk of the ash, and
+peered over into the water under the bank.</p>
+
+<p>I caught sight of something white under the water.
+I could not see distinctly. I thought it was a piece
+of broken ware&mdash;the bottom of a basin. I had picked
+up the ash stick and was going to probe the deeper
+water with it. Then I saw that the dim white object
+was globular.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The end of my stick was actually in the water.
+I withdrew it quickly, and threw it behind me.</p>
+
+<p>My heart began to throb painfully.</p>
+
+<p>I turned my face away and leaned against the
+ash-tree.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you see anythin'?" asked one of the labourers
+who had come up behind me.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Christ!" I said. I turned quickly from the
+pond and pressed a way through the gorse.</p>
+
+<p>I was overwhelmingly and disgustingly sick.</p>
+
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+<p>By degrees the solid earth ceased to wave and
+sway before me like a rolling heave of water, and I
+looked up, pressing my hands to my head&mdash;my hands
+were as cold as death.</p>
+
+<p>My clothes were wet and muddy where I had lain
+on the sodden ground. I got to my feet and instinctively
+began to brush at the mud.</p>
+
+<p>I was still a little giddy, and I swayed and sought
+for support.</p>
+
+<p>I could see the back of one labourer. He was
+kneeling by the ash-tree bending right down over
+the water. The other man was standing in the pond,
+up to his waist in water and mud. I could just see
+his head and shoulders....</p>
+
+<p>I staggered away in the direction of the village.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p>
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+<p>I found Ellen Mary still sitting in the same chair.
+The lamp was fluttering to extinction, the flame
+leaping spasmodically, dying down till it seemed that
+it had gone out, and then again suddenly flickering
+up with little clicking bursts of flame. The air
+reeked intolerably of paraffin.</p>
+
+<p>I blew the lamp out and pushed it on one side.</p>
+
+<p>There was no need to break the news to Ellen
+Mary. She had known last night, and now she was
+beyond the reach of information.</p>
+
+<p>She sat upright in her chair and stared out into
+the immensity. Her hands alone moved, and they
+were not still for an instant. They lay in her lap,
+and her fingers writhed and picked at her dress.</p>
+
+<p>I spoke to her once, but I knew that her mind was
+beyond the reach of my words.</p>
+
+<p>"It is just as well," I thought; "but we must get
+her away."</p>
+
+<p>I went out and called to the woman next door.</p>
+
+<p>She was in her kitchen, but the door was open.
+She came out when I knocked.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor thing," she said, when I told her. "It <i>'as</i>
+been a shock, no doubt. She was so wrapped hup
+in the boy."</p>
+
+<p>She could hardly have said less if her neighbour
+had lost half-a-crown.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Get her into your cottage before they come," I
+said harshly, and left her.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to get out of the lane before the men
+came back, but I had hardly started before I saw
+them coming.</p>
+
+<p>They had made a chair of their arms, and were
+carrying him between them. They had not the least
+fear of him, now.</p>
+
+<h3>IX</h3>
+
+<p>The Harrison idiot suddenly jumped out of the
+hedge.</p>
+
+<p>I put my hand to my throat. I wanted to cry
+out, to stop him, but I could not move. I felt sick
+again, and utterly weak and powerless, and I could
+not take my gaze from that little doll with the great
+drooping head that rolled as the men walked.</p>
+
+<p>I was reminded, disgustingly, of children with a
+guy.</p>
+
+<p>The idiot ran shambling down the lane. He knew
+the two men, who tolerated him and laughed at him.
+He was not afraid of them nor their burden.</p>
+
+<p>He came right up to them. I heard one of the
+men say gruffly, "Now then, you cut along off!"</p>
+
+<p>I believe the idiot must have touched the dead
+body.</p>
+
+<p>I was gripping my throat in my hand; I was trying
+desperately to cry out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Whether the idiot actually touched the body or
+not I cannot say, but he must have realised in his
+poor, bemused brain that the thing was dead.</p>
+
+<p>He cried out with his horrible, inhuman cry,
+turned, and ran up the lane towards me. He fell on
+his face a few yards from me, scrambled wildly to
+his feet again and came on yelping and shrieking.
+He was wildly, horribly afraid. I caught sight of
+his face as he passed me, and his mouth was distorted
+into a square, his upper lip horribly drawn up over
+his ragged, yellow teeth. Suddenly he dashed at the
+hedge and clawed his way through. I heard him still
+yelping appallingly as he rushed away across the
+field....</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII<br />
+<small>IMPLICATIONS</small></h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">The</span> jury returned a verdict of "Accidental death."</p>
+
+<p>If there had been any traces of a struggle, I had
+not noticed them when I came to the edge of the
+pond. There may have been marks as if a foot had
+slipped. I was not thinking of evidence when I
+looked into the water.</p>
+
+<p>There were marks enough when the police came
+to investigate, but they were the marks made by a
+twelve-stone man in hobnail boots, who had scrambled
+into, and out of, the pond. As the inspector
+said, it was not worth while wasting any time in
+looking for earlier traces of footsteps below those
+marks.</p>
+
+<p>Nor were there any signs of violence on the body.
+It was in no way disfigured, save by the action of
+the water, in which it had lain for perhaps eighteen
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>There was, indeed, only one point of any significance
+from the jury's point of view, and that they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+put on one side, if they considered it at all; the body
+was pressed into the mud.</p>
+
+<p>The Coroner asked a few questions about this
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>Was the mud very soft? Yes, very soft, liquid
+on top.</p>
+
+<p>How was the body lying? Face downwards.</p>
+
+<p>What part of the body was deepest in the mud?
+The chest. The witness said he had hard work to
+get the upper part of the body released; the head
+was free, but the mud held the rest. "The mooad
+soocked like," was the expressive phrase of the
+witness.</p>
+
+<p>The Coroner passed on to other things. Had any
+one a spite against the child? and such futilities.
+Only once more did he revert to that solitary significant
+fact. "Would it be possible," he asked of
+the abashed and self-conscious labourer, "would it
+be possible for the body to have worked its way
+down into the soft mud as you have described it to
+have been found?"</p>
+
+<p>"We-el," said the witness, "'twas in the stacky
+mooad, 'twas through the sarft stoof."</p>
+
+<p>"But this soft mud would suck any solid body
+down, would it not?" persisted the Coroner.</p>
+
+<p>And the witness recalled the case of a duck that
+had been sucked into the same soft pond mud the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+summer before, and cited the instance. He forgot
+to add that on that occasion the mud had not been
+under water.</p>
+
+<p>The Coroner accepted the instance. There can be
+no question that both he and the jury were anxious
+to accept the easier explanation.</p>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>But I know perfectly well that the Wonder did
+not fall into the pond by accident.</p>
+
+<p>I should have known, even if that conclusive evidence
+with regard to his being pushed into the mud
+had never come to light.</p>
+
+<p>He may have stood by the ash-tree and looked
+into the water, but he would never have fallen. He
+was too perfectly controlled; and, with all his apparent
+abstraction, no one was ever more alive to
+the detail of his surroundings. He and I have walked
+together perforce in many slippery places, but I
+have never known him to fall or even begin to lose
+his balance, whereas I have gone down many times.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; I know that he was pushed into the pond,
+and I know that he was held down in the mud, most
+probably by the aid of that ash stick I had held.
+But it was not for me to throw suspicion on any
+one at that inquest, and I preferred to keep my
+thoughts and my inferences to myself. I should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+have done so, even if I had been in possession of
+stronger evidence.</p>
+
+<p>I hope that it was the Harrison idiot who was to
+blame. He was not dangerous in the ordinary sense,
+but he might quite well have done the thing in play&mdash;as
+he understood it. Only I cannot quite understand
+his pushing the body down after it fell. That
+seems to argue vindictiveness&mdash;and a logic which I
+can hardly attribute to the idiot. Still, who can
+tell what went on in the distorted mind of that poor
+creature? He is reported to have rescued the dead
+body of a rabbit from the undergrowth on one occasion,
+and to have blubbered when he could not bring
+it back to life.</p>
+
+<p>There is but one other person who could have been
+implicated, and I hesitate to name him in this place.
+Yet one remembers what terrific acts of misapplied
+courage and ferocious brutality the fanatics of history
+have been capable of performing when their
+creed and their authority have been set at naught.</p>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Ellen Mary never recovered her sanity. She died
+a few weeks ago in the County Asylum. I hear that
+her husband attended the funeral. When she lost
+her belief in the supernal wisdom and power of her
+god, her world must have fallen about her. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+thing she had imagined to be solid, real, everlasting,
+had proved to be friable and destructible like all
+other human building.</p>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>The Wonder is buried in Chilborough churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>You may find the place by its proximity to the
+great marble mausoleum erected over the remains
+of Sir Edward Bigg, the well-known brewer and
+philanthropist.</p>
+
+<p>The grave of Victor Stott is marked by a small
+stone, some six inches high, which is designed to
+catch the foot rather than the eye of the seeker.</p>
+
+<p>The stone bears the initials "V. S.," and a date&mdash;no
+more.</p>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>I saw the Wonder before he was buried.</p>
+
+<p>I went up into the little bedroom and looked at
+him in his tiny coffin.</p>
+
+<p>I was no longer afraid of him. His power over
+me was dissipated. He was no greater and no less
+than any other dead thing.</p>
+
+<p>It was the same with every one. He had become
+that "poor little boy of Mrs. Stott's." No one spoke
+of him with respect now. No one seemed to remember
+that he had been in any way different from other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>
+"poor little fellows" who had died an untimely death.</p>
+
+<p>One thing did strike me as curious. The idiot,
+the one person who had never feared him living, had
+feared him horribly when he was dead....</p>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX<br />
+<small>EPILOGUE</small></h2>
+
+<h3>THE USES OF MYSTERY</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="smcap">Something</span> Challis has told me; something I have
+learned for myself; and there is something which
+has come to me from an unknown source.</p>
+
+<p>But here again we are confronted with the original
+difficulty&mdash;the difficulty that for some conceptions
+there is no verbal figure.</p>
+
+<p>It is comprehensible, it is, indeed, obvious that
+the deeper abstract speculation of the Wonder's
+thought cannot be set out by any metaphor that
+would be understood by a lesser intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>We see that many philosophers, whose utterances
+have been recorded in human history&mdash;that record
+which floats like a drop of oil on the limitless ocean
+of eternity&mdash;have been confronted with this same
+difficulty, and have woven an intricate and tedious
+design of words in their attempt to convey some
+single conception&mdash;some conception which themselves
+could see but dimly when disguised in the
+masquerade of language; some figure that as it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+limned grew ever more confused beneath the wrappings
+of metaphor, so that we who read can glimpse
+scarce a hint of its original shape and likeness.
+We see, also, that the very philosophers who caricatured
+their own eidolon, became intrigued with
+the logical abstraction of words and were led away
+into a wilderness of barren deduction&mdash;their one inspired
+vision of a stable premiss distorted and at last
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>How then shall we hope to find words to adumbrate
+a philosophy which starts by the assumption
+that we can have no impression of reality until we
+have rid ourselves of the interposing and utterly
+false concepts of space and time, which delimit the
+whole world of human thought.</p>
+
+<p>I admit that one cannot even begin to do this
+thing; within our present limitations our whole machinery
+of thought is built of these two original concepts.
+They are the only gauges wherewith we may
+measure every reality, every abstraction; wherewith
+we may give outline to any image or process of
+the mind. Only when we endeavour to grapple with
+that indeterminable mystery of consciousness can
+we conceive, however dimly, some idea of a pure
+abstraction uninfluenced by and independent of,
+those twin bases of our means of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Here it is that Challis has paused. Here he says
+that we must wait, that no revelation can reveal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+what we are incapable of understanding, that only
+by the slow process of evolution can we attain to
+any understanding of the mystery we have sought
+to solve by our futile and primitive hypotheses.</p>
+
+<p>"But then," I have pressed him, "why do you
+hesitate to speak of what you heard on that afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>And once he answered me:</p>
+
+<p>"I glimpsed a finality," he said, "and that appalled
+me. Don't you see that ignorance is the
+means of our intellectual pleasure? It is the solving
+of the problem that brings enjoyment&mdash;the solved
+problem has no further interest. So when all is
+known, the stimulus for action ceases; when all is
+known there is quiescence, nothingness. Perfect
+knowledge implies the peace of death, implies the
+state of being one&mdash;our pleasures are derived from
+action, from differences, from heterogeneity.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! pity the child," said Challis, "for whom
+there could be no mystery. Is not mystery the first
+and greatest joy of life? Beyond the gate there is
+unexplored mystery for us in our childhood. When
+that is explored, there are new and wonderful possibilities
+beyond the hills, then beyond the seas, beyond
+the known world, in the everyday chances and
+movements of the unknown life in which we are circumstanced.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely we should all perish through sheer inanity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+or die desperately by suicide if no mystery
+remained in the world. Mystery takes a thousand
+beautiful shapes; it lurks even in the handiwork of
+man, in a stone god, or in some mighty, intricate
+machine, incomprehensibly deliberate and determined.
+The imagination endows the man-made thing
+with consciousness and powers, whether of reservation
+or aloofness; the similitude of meditation and
+profundity is wrought into stone. Is there not
+source for mystery to the uninstructed in the great
+machine registering the progress of its own achievement
+with each solemn, recurrent beat of its metal
+pulse?</p>
+
+<p>"Behind all these things is the wonder of the imagination
+that never approaches more nearly to
+the creation of a hitherto unknown image than when
+it thus hesitates on the verge of mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"There is yet so much, so very much cause for
+wondering speculation. Science gains ground so
+slowly. Slowly it has outlined, however vaguely,
+the uncertainties of our origin so far as this world
+is concerned, while the mystic has fought for his
+entrancing fairy tales one by one.</p>
+
+<p>"The mystic still holds his enthralling belief in
+the succession of peoples who have risen and died&mdash;the
+succeeding world-races, red, black, yellow, and
+white, which have in turn dominated this planet.
+Science with its hammer and chisel may lay bare evidence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+may collate material, date man's appearance,
+call him the most recent of placental mammals, trace
+his superstitions and his first conceptions of a god
+from the elemental fears of the savage. But the mystic
+turns aside with an assumption of superior knowledge;
+he waves away objective evidence; he has a certainty
+impressed upon his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"And the mystic is a power. He compels a multitude
+of followers, because he offers an attraction
+greater than the facts of science. He tells of a mystery
+profounder than any problem solved by patient
+investigation, because his mystery is incomprehensible
+even by himself; and in fear lest any should
+comprehend it, he disguises the approach with an
+array of lesser mysteries, man-made; with terminologies,
+symbologies and high talk of esotericism too
+fearful for any save the initiate.</p>
+
+<p>"But we must preserve our mystic in some form
+against the awful time when science shall have determined
+a limit; when the long history of evolution
+shall be written in full, and every stage of world-building
+shall be made plain. When the cycle of
+atomic dust to atomic dust is demonstrated, and
+the detail of the life-process is taught and understood,
+we shall have a fierce need for the mystic to
+save us from the futility of a world we understand,
+to lie to us if need be, to inspirit our material and
+regular minds with some breath of delicious madness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+We shall need the mystic then, or the completeness of
+our knowledge will drive us at last to complete the
+dusty circle in our eagerness to escape from a world
+we understand....</p>
+
+<p>"See how man clings to his old and useless traditions;
+see how he opposes at every step the awful
+force of progress. At each stage he protests that the
+thing that is, is good, or that the thing that was
+and has gone, was better. He despises new knowledge
+and fondly clings to the belief that once men
+were greater than they now are. He looks back to
+the more primitive, and endows it with that mystery
+he cannot find in his own times. So have men ever
+looked lingeringly behind them. It is an instinct,
+a great and wonderful inheritance that postpones
+the moment of disillusionment.</p>
+
+<p>"We are still mercifully surrounded with the
+countless mysteries of everyday experience, all the
+evidences of the unimaginable stimulus we call life.
+Would you take them away? Would you resolve
+life into a disease of the ether&mdash;a disease of which
+you and I, all life and all matter, are symptoms?
+Would you teach that to the child, and explain to him
+that the wonder of life and growth is no wonder, but
+a demonstrable result of impeded force, to be evaluated
+by the application of an adequate formula?</p>
+
+<p>"You and I," said Challis, "are children in the
+infancy of the world. Let us to our play in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+nursery of our own times. The day will come, perhaps,
+when humanity shall have grown and will have
+to take upon itself the heavy burden of knowledge.
+But you need not fear that that will be in our day,
+nor in a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile leave us our childish fancies, our little
+imaginings, our hope&mdash;children that we are&mdash;of
+those impossible mysteries beyond the hills...."</p>
+
+<div class="bk3"><p class="center">THE END</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wonder, by J. D. Beresford
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@@ -0,0 +1,8221 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wonder, by J. D. Beresford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wonder
+
+Author: J. D. Beresford
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2008 [EBook #27188]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WONDER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+       BY J. D. BERESFORD
+
+ THESE LYNNEKERS
+ THE EARLY HISTORY OF JACOB STAHL
+ A CANDIDATE FOR TRUTH
+ THE INVISIBLE EVENT
+ THE HOUSE IN DEMETRIUS ROAD
+
+    GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+            NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                              THE
+                            WONDER
+
+
+                              BY
+
+                        J. D. BERESFORD
+ AUTHOR OF "THESE LYNNEKERS," "THE STORY OF JACOB STAHL," ETC.
+
+
+                           [Device]
+
+
+                           NEW YORK
+                    GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+            COPYRIGHT, 1917,
+       BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect
+    and variant spellings have been retained. Greek text has been
+    transliterated and is shown between {braces}.
+
+
+
+
+          TO
+ MY FRIEND AND CRITIC
+     HUGH WALPOLE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                PART ONE
+
+                MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT
+
+ CHAPTER                                                  PAGE
+     I. THE MOTIVE                                          11
+
+    II. NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF GINGER STOTT               22
+
+   III. THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF GINGER STOTT                 58
+
+
+                                PART TWO
+
+                      THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER
+
+    IV. THE MANNER OF HIS BIRTH                             71
+
+     V. HIS DEPARTURE FROM STOKE-UNDERHILL                  92
+
+    VI. HIS FATHER'S DESERTION                             107
+
+   VII. HIS DEBT TO HENRY CHALLIS                          118
+
+  VIII. HIS FIRST VISIT TO CHALLIS COURT                   143
+
+        INTERLUDE                                          149
+
+
+                         THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS
+
+    IX. HIS PASSAGE THROUGH THE PRISON OF KNOWLEDGE        155
+
+     X. HIS PASTORS AND MASTERS                            179
+
+    XI. HIS EXAMINATION                                    193
+
+   XII. HIS INTERVIEW WITH HERR GROSSMANN                  217
+
+  XIII. FUGITIVE                                           229
+
+
+                               PART THREE
+
+                     MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER
+
+   XIV. HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK                  235
+
+    XV. THE INCIPIENCE OF MY SUBJECTION TO THE WONDER      247
+
+   XVI. THE PROGRESS AND RELAXATION OF MY SUBJECTION       267
+
+  XVII. RELEASE                                            284
+
+ XVIII. IMPLICATIONS                                       299
+
+   XIX. EPILOGUE: THE USES OF MYSTERY                      305
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE MOTIVE
+
+
+I
+
+I could not say at which station the woman and her baby entered the
+train.
+
+Since we had left London, I had been struggling with Baillie's
+translation of Hegel's "Phenomenology." It was not a book to read among
+such distracting circumstances as those of a railway journey, but I was
+eagerly planning a little dissertation of my own at that time, and my
+work as a journalist gave me little leisure for quiet study.
+
+I looked up when the woman entered my compartment, though I did not
+notice the name of the station. I caught sight of the baby she was
+carrying, and turned back to my book. I thought the child was a freak,
+an abnormality; and such things disgust me.
+
+I returned to the study of my Hegel and read: "For knowledge is not the
+divergence of the ray, but the ray itself by which the truth comes to
+us; and if this ray be removed, the bare direction or the empty place
+would alone be indicated."
+
+I kept my eyes on the book--the train had started again--but the next
+passage conveyed no meaning to my mind, and as I attempted to re-read it
+an impression was interposed between me and the work I was studying.
+
+I saw projected on the page before me an image which I mistook at first
+for the likeness of Richard Owen. It was the conformation of the head
+that gave rise to the mistake, a head domed and massive, white and
+smooth--it was a head that had always interested me. But as I looked, my
+mind already searching for the reason of this hallucination, I saw that
+the lower part of the face was that of an infant. My eyes wandered from
+the book, and my gaze fluttered along the four persons seated opposite
+to me, till it rested on the reality of my vision. And even as my
+attention was thus irresistibly dragged from my book, my mind clung with
+a feeble desperation to its task, and I murmured under my breath like a
+child repeating a mechanically learned lesson: "Knowledge is not the
+divergence of the ray but the ray itself...."
+
+For several seconds the eyes of the infant held mine. Its gaze was
+steady and clear as that of a normal child, but what differentiated it
+was the impression one received of calm intelligence. The head was
+completely bald, and there was no trace of eyebrows, but the eyes
+themselves were protected by thick, short lashes.
+
+The child turned its head, and I felt my muscles relax. Until then I had
+not been conscious that they had been stiffened. My gaze was released,
+pushed aside as it were, and I found myself watching the object of the
+child's next scrutiny.
+
+This object was a man of forty or so, inclined to corpulence, and
+untidy. He bore the evidences of failure in the process of becoming. He
+wore a beard that was scanty and ragged, there were bald patches of skin
+on the jaw; one inferred that he wore that beard only to save the
+trouble of shaving. He was sitting next to me, the middle passenger of
+the three on my side of the carriage, and he was absorbed in the pages
+of a half-penny paper--I think he was reading the police reports--which
+was interposed between him and the child in the corner diagonally
+opposite to that which I occupied.
+
+The man was hunched up, slouching, his legs crossed, his elbows seeking
+support against his body; he held his clumsily folded paper close to his
+eyes. He had the appearance of being very myopic, but he did not wear
+glasses.
+
+As I watched him, he began to fidget. He uncrossed his legs and hunched
+his body deeper into the back of his seat. Presently his eyes began to
+creep up the paper in front of him. When they reached the top, he
+hesitated a moment, making a survey under cover, then he dropped his
+hands and stared stupidly at the infant in the corner, his mouth
+slightly open, his feet pulled in under the seat of the carriage.
+
+As the child let him go, his head drooped, and then he turned and looked
+at me with a silly, vacuous smile. I looked away hurriedly; this was not
+a man with whom I cared to share experience.
+
+The process was repeated. The next victim was a big, rubicund,
+healthy-looking man, clean shaved, with light-blue eyes that were
+slightly magnified by the glasses of his gold-mounted spectacles. He,
+too, had been reading a newspaper--the _Evening Standard_--until the
+child's gaze claimed his attention, and he, too, was held motionless by
+that strange, appraising stare. But when he was released, his surprise
+found vent in words. "This," I thought, "is the man accustomed to act."
+
+"A very remarkable child, ma'am," he said, addressing the thin,
+ascetic-looking mother.
+
+
+II
+
+The mother's appearance did not convey the impression of poverty. She
+was, indeed, warmly, decently, and becomingly clad. She wore a long
+black coat, braided and frogged; it had the air of belonging to an older
+fashion, but the material of it was new. And her bonnet, trimmed with
+jet ornaments growing on stalks that waved tremulously--that, also, was
+a modern replica of an older mode. On her hands were black thread
+gloves, somewhat ill-fitting.
+
+Her face was not that of a country woman. The thin, high-bridged nose,
+the fallen cheeks, the shadows under eyes gloomy and retrospective--these
+were marks of the town; above all, perhaps, that sallow greyness of the
+skin which speaks of confinement....
+
+The child looked healthy enough. Its great bald head shone resplendently
+like a globe of alabaster.
+
+"A very remarkable child, ma'am," said the rubicund man who sat facing
+the woman.
+
+The woman twitched her untidy-looking black eyebrows, her head trembled
+slightly and set the jet fruit of her bonnet dancing and nodding.
+
+"Yes, sir," she replied.
+
+"Very remarkable," said the man, adjusting his spectacles and leaning
+forward. His action had an air of deliberate courage; he was justifying
+his fortitude after that temporary aberration.
+
+I watched him a little nervously. I remembered my feelings when, as a
+child, I had seen some magnificent enter the lion's den in a travelling
+circus. The failure on my right was, also, absorbed in the spectacle; he
+stared, open-mouthed, his eyes blinking and shifting.
+
+The other three occupants of the compartment, sitting on the same side
+as the woman, back to the engine, dropped papers and magazines and
+turned their heads, all interest. None of these three had, so far as I
+had observed, fallen under the spell of inspection by the infant, but I
+noticed that the man--an artisan apparently--who sat next to the woman
+had edged away from her, and that the three passengers opposite to me
+were huddled towards my end of the compartment.
+
+The child had abstracted its gaze, which was now directed down the aisle
+of the carriage, indefinitely focussed on some point outside the window.
+It seemed remote, entirely unconcerned with any human being.
+
+I speak of it asexually. I was still uncertain as to its sex. It is true
+that all babies look alike to me; but I should have known that this
+child was male, the conformation of the skull alone should have told me
+that. It was its dress that gave me cause to hesitate. It was dressed
+absurdly, not in "long-clothes," but in a long frock that hid its feet
+and was bunched about its body.
+
+
+III
+
+"Er--does it--er--can it--talk?" hesitated the rubicund man, and I grew
+hot at his boldness. There seemed to be something disrespectful in
+speaking before the child in this impersonal way.
+
+"No, sir, he's never made a sound," replied the woman, twitching and
+vibrating. Her heavy, dark eyebrows jerked spasmodically, nervously.
+
+"Never cried?" persisted the interrogator.
+
+"Never once, sir."
+
+"Dumb, eh?" He said it as an aside, half under his breath.
+
+"'E's never spoke, sir."
+
+"Hm!" The man cleared his throat and braced himself with a deliberate
+and obvious effort. "Is it--he--not water on the brain--what?"
+
+I felt that a rigour of breathless suspense held every occupant of the
+compartment. I wanted, and I know that every other person there wanted,
+to say, "Look out! Don't go too far." The child, however, seemed
+unconscious of the insult: he still stared out through the window, lost
+in profound contemplation.
+
+"No, sir, oh no!" replied the woman. "'E's got more sense than a
+ordinary child." She held the infant as if it were some priceless piece
+of earthenware, not nursing it as a woman nurses a baby, but balancing
+it with supreme attention in her lap.
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+We had been awaiting this question.
+
+"A year and nine munse, sir."
+
+"Ought to have spoken before that, oughtn't he?"
+
+"Never even cried, sir," said the woman. She regarded the child with a
+look into which I read something of apprehension. If it were
+apprehension it was a feeling that we all shared. But the rubicund man
+was magnificent, though, like the lion tamer of my youthful experience,
+he was doubtless conscious of the aspect his temerity wore in the eyes
+of beholders. He must have been showing off.
+
+"Have you taken opinion?" he asked; and then, seeing the woman's lack of
+comprehension, he translated the question--badly, for he conveyed a
+different meaning--thus,
+
+"I mean, have you had a doctor for him?"
+
+The train was slackening speed.
+
+"Oh! yes, sir."
+
+"And what do _they_ say?"
+
+The child turned its head and looked the rubicund man full in the eyes.
+Never in the face of any man or woman have I seen such an expression of
+sublime pity and contempt....
+
+I remembered a small urchin I had once seen at the Zoological Gardens.
+Urged on by a band of other urchins, he was throwing pebbles at a great
+lion that lolled, finely indifferent, on the floor of its playground.
+Closer crept the urchin; he grew splendidly bold; he threw larger and
+larger pebbles, until the lion rose suddenly with a roar, and dashed
+fiercely down to the bars of its cage.
+
+I thought of that urchin's scared, shrieking face now, as the rubicund
+man leant quickly back into his corner.
+
+Yet that was not all, for the infant, satisfied, perhaps, with its
+victim's ignominy, turned and looked at me with a cynical smile. I was,
+as it were, taken into its confidence. I felt flattered, undeservedly
+yet enormously flattered. I blushed, I may have simpered.
+
+The train drew up in Great Hittenden station.
+
+The woman gathered her priceless possession carefully into her arms, and
+the rubicund man adroitly opened the door for her.
+
+"Good day, sir," she said, as she got out.
+
+"Good day," echoed the rubicund man with relief, and we all drew a deep
+breath of relief with him in concert, as though we had just witnessed
+the safe descent of some over-daring aviator.
+
+
+IV
+
+As the train moved on, we six, who had been fellow-passengers for some
+thirty or forty minutes before the woman had entered our compartment, we
+who had not till then exchanged a word, broke suddenly into general
+conversation.
+
+"Water on the brain; I don't care what any one says," asserted the
+rubicund man.
+
+"My sister had one very similar," put in the failure, who was sitting
+next to me. "It died," he added, by way of giving point to his instance.
+
+"Ought not to exhibit freaks like that in public," said an old man
+opposite to me.
+
+"You're right, sir," was the verdict of the artisan, and he spat
+carefully and scraped his boot on the floor; "them things ought to be
+kep' private."
+
+"Mad, of course, that's to say imbecile," repeated the rubicund man.
+
+"Horrid head he'd got," said the failure, and shivered histrionically.
+
+They continued to demonstrate their contempt for the infant by many
+asseverations. The reaction grew. They were all bold now, and all wanted
+to speak. They spoke as the survivors from some common peril; they were
+increasingly anxious to demonstrate that they had never suffered
+intimidation, and in their relief they were anxious to laugh at the
+thing which had for a time subdued them. But they never named it as a
+cause for fear. Their speech was merely innuendo.
+
+At the last, however, I caught an echo of the true feeling.
+
+It was the rubicund man who, most daring during the crisis, was now bold
+enough to admit curiosity.
+
+"What's your opinion, sir?" he said to me. The train was running into
+Wenderby; he was preparing to get out; he leaned forward, his fingers on
+the handle of the door.
+
+I was embarrassed. Why had I been singled out by the child? I had taken
+no part in the recent interjectory conversation. Was this a consequence
+of the notice that had been paid to me?
+
+"I?" I stammered, and then reverted to the rubicund man's original
+phrase, "It--it was certainly a very remarkable child," I said.
+
+The rubicund man nodded and pursed his lips. "Very," he muttered as he
+alighted, "Very remarkable. Well, good day to you."
+
+I returned to my book, and was surprised to find that my index finger
+was still marking the place at which I had been interrupted some fifteen
+minutes before. My arm felt stiff and cramped.
+
+I read: "... and if this ray be removed, the bare direction or the empty
+place would alone be indicated."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF GINGER STOTT
+
+
+I
+
+Ginger Stott is a name that was once as well known as any in England.
+Stott has been the subject of leading articles in every daily paper; his
+life has been written by an able journalist who interviewed Stott
+himself, during ten crowded minutes, and filled three hundred pages with
+details, seventy per cent. of which were taken from the journals, and
+the remainder supplied by a brilliant imagination. Ten years ago Ginger
+Stott was on a pinnacle, there was a Stott vogue. You found his name at
+the bottom of signed articles written by members of the editorial staff;
+you bought Stott collars, although Stott himself did not wear collars;
+there was a Stott waltz, which is occasionally hummed by clerks, and
+whistled by errand-boys to this day; there was a periodical which lived
+for ten months, entitled _Ginger Stott's Weekly_; in brief, during one
+summer there was a Stott apotheosis.
+
+But that was ten years ago, and the rising generation has almost
+forgotten the once well-known name. One rarely sees him mentioned in the
+morning paper now, and then it is but the briefest reference; some such
+note as this "Pickering was at the top of his form, recalling the finest
+achievements of Ginger Stott at his best," or "Flack is a magnificent
+find for Kent: he promises to completely surpass the historic feats of
+Ginger Stott." These journalistic superlatives only irritate those who
+remember the performances referred to. We who watched the man's career
+know that Pickering and Flack are but tyros compared to Stott; we know
+that none of his successors has challenged comparison with him. He was a
+meteor that blazed across the sky, and if he ever has a true successor,
+such stars as Pickering and Flack will shine pale and dim in comparison.
+
+It makes one feel suddenly old to recall that great matinee at the
+Lyceum, given for Ginger Stott's benefit after he met with his accident.
+In ten years so many great figures in that world have died or fallen
+into obscurity. I can count on my fingers the number of those who were
+then, and are still, in the forefront of popularity. Of the others poor
+Captain Wallis, for instance, is dead--and no modern writer, in my
+opinion, can equal the brilliant descriptiveness of Wallis's articles in
+the _Daily Post_. Bobby Maisefield, again, Stott's colleague, is a
+martyr to rheumatism, and keeps a shop in Ailesworth, the scene of so
+many of his triumphs. What a list one might make, but how uselessly. It
+is enough to note how many names have dropped out, how many others are
+the names of those we now speak of as veterans. In ten years! It
+certainly makes one feel old.
+
+
+II
+
+No apology is needed for telling again the story of Stott's career.
+Certain details will still be familiar, it is true, the historic details
+that can never be forgotten while cricket holds place as our national
+game. But there are many facts of Stott's life familiar to me, which
+have never been made public property. If I must repeat that which is
+known, I can give the known a new setting; perhaps a new value.
+
+He came of mixed races. His mother was pure Welsh, his father a
+Yorkshire collier; but when Ginger was nine years old his father died,
+and Mrs. Stott came to live in Ailesworth where she had immigrant
+relations, and it was there that she set up the little paper-shop, the
+business by which she maintained herself and her boy. That shop is still
+in existence, and the name has not been altered. You may find it in the
+little street that runs off the market place, going down towards the
+Borstal Institution.
+
+There are many people alive in Ailesworth to-day who can remember the
+sturdy, freckled, sandy-haired boy who used to go round with the morning
+and evening papers; the boy who was to change the fortunes of a county.
+
+Ginger was phenomenally thorough in all he undertook. It was one of the
+secrets of his success. It was this thoroughness that kept him engaged
+in his mother's little business until he was seventeen. Up to that age
+he never found time for cricket--sufficient evidence of his remarkable
+and most unusual qualities.
+
+It was sheer chance, apparently, that determined his choice of a career.
+
+He had walked into Stoke-Underhill to deliver a parcel, and on his way
+back his attention was arrested by the sight of a line of vehicles drawn
+up to the boarded fencing that encloses the Ailesworth County Ground.
+The occupants of these vehicles were standing up, struggling to catch a
+sight of the match that was being played behind the screen erected to
+shut out non-paying sightseers. Among the horses' feet, squirming
+between the spokes of wheels, utterly regardless of all injury, small
+boys glued their eyes to knot-holes in the fence, while others climbed
+surreptitiously, and for the most part unobserved, on to the backs of
+tradesmen's carts. All these individuals were in a state of tremendous
+excitement, and even the policeman whose duty it was to move them on,
+was so engrossed in watching the game that he had disappeared inside the
+turnstile, and had given the outside spectators full opportunity for
+eleemosynary enjoyment.
+
+That tarred fence has since been raised some six feet, and now encloses
+a wider sweep of ground--alterations that may be classed among the minor
+revolutions effected by the genius of the thick-set, fair-haired youth
+of seventeen, who paused on that early September afternoon to wonder
+what all the fuss was about. The Ailesworth County Ground was not famous
+in those days; not then was accommodation needed for thirty thousand
+spectators, drawn from every county in England to witness the
+unparallelled.
+
+Ginger stopped. The interest of the spectacle pierced his absorption in
+the business he had in hand. Such a thing was almost unprecedented.
+
+"What's up?" he asked of Puggy Phillips.
+
+Puggy Phillips--hazarding his life by standing on the shiny, slightly
+curved top of his butcher's cart--made no appropriate answer.
+"Yah--_ah_--AH!" he screamed in ecstasy. "Oh! played! Pla-a-a-ayed!!"
+
+Ginger wasted no more breath, but laid hold of the little brass rail
+that encircled Puggy's platform, and with a sudden hoist that lifted the
+shafts and startled the pony, raised himself to the level of a
+spectator.
+
+"'Ere!" shouted the swaying, tottering Puggy. "What the ... are yer rup
+to?"
+
+The well-drilled pony, however, settled down again quietly to maintain
+his end of the see-saw, and, finding himself still able to preserve his
+equilibrium, Puggy instantly forgot the presence of the intruder.
+
+"What's up?" asked Ginger again.
+
+"Oh! Well _'it_, WELL 'IT!" yelled Puggy. "Oh! Gow on, gow on agen! Run
+it _aht_. Run it AH-T."
+
+Ginger gave it up, and turned his attention to the match.
+
+It was not any famous struggle that was being fought out on the old
+Ailesworth Ground; it was only second-class cricket, the deciding match
+of the Minor Counties championship. Hampdenshire and Oxfordshire, old
+rivals, had been neck-and-neck all through the season, and, as luck
+would have it, the engagement between them had been the last fixture on
+the card.
+
+When Ginger rose to the level of spectator, the match was anybody's
+game. Bobby Maisefield was batting. He was then a promising young colt
+who had not earned a fixed place in the Eleven. Ginger knew him
+socially, but they were not friends, they had no interests in common.
+Bobby had made twenty-seven. He was partnered by old Trigson, the
+bowler, (he has been dead these eight years,) whose characteristic score
+of "Not out ... 0," is sufficiently representative of his methods.
+
+It was the fourth innings, and Hampdenshire with only one more wicket to
+fall, still required nineteen runs to win. Trigson could be relied upon
+to keep his wicket up, but not to score. The hopes of Ailesworth centred
+in the ability of that almost untried colt Bobby Maisefield--and he
+seemed likely to justify the trust reposed in him. A beautiful late cut
+that eluded third man and hit the fence with a resounding bang, nearly
+drove Puggy wild with delight.
+
+"Only fifteen more," he shouted. "Oh! Played; pla-a-a-yed!"
+
+But as the score crept up, the tensity grew. As each ball was delivered,
+a chill, rigid silence held the onlookers in its grip. When Trigson,
+with the field collected round him, almost to be covered with a sheet,
+stonewalled the most tempting lob, the click of the ball on his bat was
+an intrusion on the stillness. And always it was followed by a deep
+breath of relief that sighed round the ring like a faint wind through a
+plantation of larches. When Bobby scored, the tumult broke out like a
+crash of thunder; but it subsided again, echoless, to that intense
+silence so soon as the ball was "dead."
+
+Curiously, it was not Bobby who made the winning hit but Trigson. "One
+to tie, two to win," breathed Puggy as the field changed over, and it
+was Trigson who had to face the bowling. The suspense was torture.
+Oxford had put on their fast bowler again, and Trigson, intimidated,
+perhaps, did not play him with quite so straight a bat as he had opposed
+to the lob-bowler. The ball hit Trigson's bat and glanced through the
+slips. The field was very close to the wicket, and the ball was
+travelling fast. No one seemed to make any attempt to stop it. For a
+moment the significance of the thing was not realised; for a moment
+only, then followed uproar, deafening, stupendous.
+
+Puggy was stamping fiercely on the top of his cart; the tears were
+streaming down his face; he was screaming and yelling incoherent words.
+And he was representative of the crowd. Thus men shouted and stamped and
+cried when news came of the relief of Kimberley, or when that false
+report of victory was brought to Paris in the August of 1870....
+
+The effect upon Ginger was a thing apart. He did not join in the fierce
+acclamation; he did not wait to see the chairing of Bobby and Trigson.
+The greatness of Stott's character, the fineness of his genius is
+displayed in his attitude towards the dramatic spectacle he had just
+witnessed.
+
+As he trudged home into Ailesworth, his thoughts found vent in a
+muttered sentence which is peculiarly typical of the effect that had
+been made upon him.
+
+"I believe I could have bowled that chap," he said.
+
+
+III
+
+In writing a history of this kind, a certain licence must be claimed. It
+will be understood that I am filling certain gaps in the narrative with
+imagined detail. But the facts are true. My added detail is only
+intended to give an appearance of life and reality to my history. Let
+me, therefore, insist upon one vital point. I have not been dependent on
+hearsay for one single fact in this story. Where my experience does not
+depend upon personal experience, it has been received from the
+principals themselves. Finally, it should be remembered that when I
+have, imaginatively, put words into the mouths of the persons of this
+story, they are never essential words which affect the issue. The
+essential speeches are reported from first-hand sources. For instance,
+Ginger Stott himself has told me on more than one occasion that the
+words with which I closed the last section, were the actual words spoken
+by him on the occasion in question. It was not until six years after the
+great Oxfordshire match that I myself first met the man, but what
+follows is literally true in all essentials.
+
+There was a long, narrow strip of yard, or alley, at the back of Mrs.
+Stott's paper-shop, a yard that, unfortunately, no longer exists. It has
+been partly built over, and another of England's memorials has thus been
+destroyed by the vandals of modern commerce....
+
+This yard was fifty-three feet long, measuring from Mrs. Stott's back
+door to the door of the coal-shed, which marked the alley's extreme
+limit. This measurement, an apparently negligible trifle, had an
+important effect upon Stott's career. For it was in this yard that he
+taught himself to bowl, and the shortness of the pitch precluded his
+taking any run. From those long studious hours of practice he emerged
+with a characteristic that was--and still remains--unique. Stott never
+took more than two steps before delivering the ball; frequently he
+bowled from a standing position, and batsmen have confessed that of all
+Stott's puzzling mannerisms, this was the one to which they never became
+accustomed. S. R. L. Maturin, the finest bat Australia ever sent to this
+country, has told me that to this peculiarity of delivery he attributed
+his failure ever to score freely against Stott. It completely upset
+one's habit of play, he said: one had no time to prepare for the flight
+of the ball; it came at one so suddenly. Other bowlers have since
+attempted some imitation of this method without success. They had not
+Stott's physical advantages.
+
+Nevertheless, the shortness of that alley threw Stott back for two
+years. When he first emerged to try conclusions on the field, he found
+his length on the longer pitch utterly unreliable, and the effort
+necessary to throw the ball another six yards, at first upset his slowly
+acquired methods.
+
+It was not until he was twenty years old that Ginger Stott played in his
+first Colts' match.
+
+The three years that had intervened had not been prosperous years for
+Hampdenshire. Their team was a one-man team. Bobby Maisefield was
+developing into a fine bat (and other counties were throwing out
+inducements to him, trying to persuade him to qualify for first-class
+cricket), but he found no support, and Hampdenshire was never looked
+upon as a coming county. The best of the minor counties in those years
+were Staffordshire and Norfolk.
+
+In the Colts' match Stott's analysis ran:
+
+    overs    maidens    runs    wickets
+    11.3        7        16        7
+
+and reference to the score-sheet, which is still preserved among the
+records of the County Club, shows that six of the seven wickets were
+clean bowled. The Eleven had no second innings; the match was drawn,
+owing to rain. Stott has told me that the Eleven had to bat on a dry
+wicket, but after making all allowances, the performance was certainly
+remarkable.
+
+After this match Stott was, of course, played regularly. That year
+Hampdenshire rose once more to their old position at the head of the
+minor counties, and Maisefield, who had been seriously considering
+Surrey's offer of a place in their Eleven after two years' qualification
+by residence, decided to remain with the county which had given him his
+first chance.
+
+During that season Stott did not record any performance so remarkable as
+his feat in the Colts' match, but his record for the year was
+eighty-seven wickets with an average of 9.31; and it is worthy of notice
+that Yorkshire made overtures to him, as he was qualified by birth to
+play for the northern county.
+
+I think there must have been a wonderful _esprit de corps_ among the
+members of that early Hampdenshire Eleven. There are other evidences
+beside this refusal of its two most prominent members to join the ranks
+of first-class cricket. Lord R----, the president of the H.C.C.C., has
+told me that this spirit was quite as marked as in the earlier case of
+Kent. He himself certainly did much to promote it, and his generosity in
+making good the deficits of the balance sheet, had a great influence on
+the acceleration of Hampdenshire's triumph.
+
+In his second year, though Hampdenshire were again champions of the
+second-class counties, Stott had not such a fine average as in the
+preceding season. Sixty-one wickets for eight hundred and sixty-eight
+(average 14.23) seems to show a decline in his powers, but that was a
+wonderful year for batsmen (Maisefield scored seven hundred and
+forty-two runs, with an average of forty-two) and, moreover, that was
+the year in which Stott was privately practising his new theory.
+
+It was in this year that three very promising recruits, all since become
+famous, joined the Eleven, viz.: P. H. Evans, St. John Townley, and
+Flower the fast bowler. With these five cricketers Hampdenshire fully
+deserved their elevation into the list of first-class counties.
+Curiously enough, they took the place of the old champions,
+Gloucestershire, who, with Somerset, fell back into the obscurity of the
+second-class that season.
+
+
+IV
+
+I must turn aside for a moment at this point in order to explain the
+"new theory" of Stott's, to which I have referred, a theory which became
+in practice one of the elements of his most astounding successes.
+
+Ginger Stott was not a tall man. He stood only 5 ft. 5-1/4 in. in his
+socks, but he was tremendously solid; he had what is known as a "stocky"
+figure, broad and deep-chested. That was where his muscular power lay,
+for his abnormally long arms were rather thin, though his huge hands
+were powerful enough.
+
+Even without his "new theory," Stott would have been an exceptional
+bowler. His thoroughness would have assured his success. He studied his
+art diligently, and practised regularly in a barn through the winter.
+His physique, too, was a magnificent instrument. That long, muscular
+body was superbly steady on the short, thick legs. It gave him a
+fulcrum, firm, apparently immovable. And those weirdly long, thin arms
+could move with lightning rapidity. He always stood with his hands
+behind him, and then--as often as not without even one preliminary
+step--the long arm would flash round and the ball be delivered, without
+giving the batsman any opportunity of watching his hand; you could never
+tell which way he was going to break. It was astonishing, too, the pace
+he could get without any run. Poor Wallis used to call him the "human
+catapult"; Wallis was always trying to find new phrases.
+
+The theory first came to Stott when he was practising at the nets. It
+was a windy morning, and he noticed that several times the balls he
+bowled swerved in the air. When those swerving balls came they were
+almost unplayable.
+
+Stott made no remark to any one--he was bowling to the groundsman--but
+the ambition to bowl "swerves,"[1] as they were afterwards called, took
+possession of him from that morning. It is true that he never mastered
+the theory completely; on a perfectly calm day he could never depend
+upon obtaining any swerve at all, but, within limits, he developed his
+theory until he had any batsman practically at his mercy.
+
+He might have mastered the theory completely, had it not been for his
+accident--we must remember that he had only three seasons of first-class
+cricket--and, personally, I believe he would have achieved that complete
+mastery. But I do not believe, as Stott did, that he could have taught
+his method to another man. That belief became an obsession with him, and
+will be dealt with later.
+
+My own reasons for doubting that Stott's "swerve" could have been
+taught, is that it would have been necessary for the pupil to have had
+Stott's peculiarities, not only of method, but of physique. He used to
+spin the ball with a twist of his middle finger and thumb, just as you
+may see a billiard professional spin a billiard ball. To do this in his
+manner, it is absolutely necessary not only to have a very large and
+muscular hand, but to have very lithe and flexible arm muscles, for the
+arm is moving rapidly while the twist is given, and there must be no
+antagonistic muscular action. Further, I believe that part of the secret
+was due to the fact that Stott bowled from a standing position. Given
+these things, the rest is merely a question of long and assiduous
+practice. The human mechanism is marvellously adaptable. I have seen
+Stott throw a cricket ball half across the room with sufficient spin on
+the ball to make it shoot back to him along the carpet.
+
+I have mentioned the wind as a factor in obtaining the swerve. It was a
+head-wind that Stott required. I have seen him, for sport, toss a
+cricket ball into the teeth of a gale, and make it describe the
+trajectory of a badly sliced golf-ball. This is why the big pavilion at
+Ailesworth is set at such a curious angle to the ground. It was built in
+the winter following Hampdenshire's second season of first-class
+cricket, and it was so placed that when the wickets were pitched in a
+line with it, they might lie south-west and north-east, or in the
+direction of the prevailing winds.
+
+
+V
+
+The first time I ever saw Ginger Stott, was on the occasion of the
+historic encounter with Surrey; Hampdenshire's second engagement in
+first-class cricket. The match with Notts, played at Trent Bridge a few
+days earlier, had not foreshadowed any startling results. The truth of
+the matter is that Stott had been kept, deliberately, in the background;
+and as matters turned out his services were only required to finish off
+Notts' second innings. Stott was even then a marked man, and the
+Hampdenshire captain did not wish to advertise his methods too freely
+before the Surrey match. Neither Archie Findlater, who was captaining
+the team that year, nor any other person, had the least conception of
+how unnecessary such a reservation was to prove. In his third year, when
+Stott had been studied by every English, Australian, and South African
+batsman of any note, he was still as unplayable as when he made his
+debut in first-class cricket.
+
+I was reporting the Surrey match for two papers, and in company with
+poor Wallis interviewed Stott before the first innings.
+
+His appearance made a great impression on me. I have, of course, met
+him, and talked with him many times since then, but my most vivid
+memory of him is the picture recorded in the inadequate professional
+dressing-room of the old Ailesworth pavilion.
+
+I have turned up the account of my interview in an old press-cutting
+book, and I do not know that I can do better than quote that part of it
+which describes Stott's personal appearance. I wrote the account on the
+off chance of being able to get it taken. It was one of my lucky hits.
+After that match, finished in a single day, my interview afforded copy
+that any paper would have paid heavily for, and gladly.
+
+Here is the description:
+
+    "Stott--he is known to every one in Ailesworth as 'Ginger' Stott--is
+    a short, thick-set young man, with abnormally long arms that are
+    tanned a rich red up to the elbow. The tan does not, however,
+    obliterate the golden freckles with which arm and face are richly
+    speckled. There is no need to speculate as to the _raison d'etre_ of
+    his nickname. The hair of his head, a close, short crop, is a pale
+    russet, and the hair on his hands and arms is a yellower shade of
+    the same colour. 'Ginger' is, indeed, a perfectly apt description.
+    He has a square chin and a thin-lipped, determined mouth. His eyes
+    are a clear, but rather light blue, his forehead is good, broad,
+    and high, and he has a well-proportioned head. One might have put
+    him down as an engineer, essentially intelligent, purposeful, and
+    reserved."
+
+The description is journalistic, but I do not know that I could improve
+upon the detail of it. I can see those queer, freckled, hairy arms of
+his as I write--the combination of colours in them produced an effect
+that was almost orange. It struck one as unusual....
+
+Surrey had the choice of innings, and decided to bat, despite the fact
+that the wicket was drying after rain, under the influence of a steady
+south-west wind and occasional bursts of sunshine. Would any captain in
+Stott's second year have dared to take first innings under such
+conditions? The question is farcical now, but not a single member of the
+Hampdenshire Eleven had the least conception that the Surrey captain was
+deliberately throwing away his chances on that eventful day.
+
+Wallis and I were sitting together in the reporters' box. There were
+only four of us; two specials,--Wallis and myself,--a news-agency
+reporter, and a local man.
+
+"Stott takes first over," remarked Wallis, sharpening his pencil and
+arranging his watch and score-sheet--he was very meticulous in his
+methods. "They've put him to bowl against the wind. He's medium right,
+isn't he?"
+
+"Haven't the least idea," I said. "He volunteered no information;
+Hampdenshire have been keeping him dark."
+
+Wallis sneered. "Think they've got a find, eh?" he said. "We'll wait and
+see what he can do against first-class batting."
+
+We did not have to wait long.
+
+As usual, Thorpe and Harrison were first wicket for Surrey, and Thorpe
+took the first ball.
+
+It bowled him. It made his wicket look as untidy as any wicket I have
+ever seen. The off stump was out of the ground, and the other two were
+markedly divergent.
+
+"Damn it, I wasn't ready for him," we heard Thorpe say in the
+professionals' room. Thorpe always had some excuse, but on this occasion
+it was justified.
+
+C. V. Punshon was the next comer, and he got his first ball through the
+slips for four, but Wallis looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
+
+"Punshon didn't know a lot about that," he said, and then he added, "I
+say, what a queer delivery the chap has. He stands and shoots 'em out.
+It's uncanny. He's a kind of human catapult." He made a note of the
+phrase on his pad.
+
+Punshon succeeded in hitting the next ball, also, but it simply ran up
+his bat into the hands of short slip.
+
+"Well, that's a sitter, if you like," said Wallis. "What's the matter
+with 'em?"
+
+I was beginning to grow enthusiastic.
+
+"Look here, Wallis," I said, "this chap's going to break records."
+
+Wallis was still doubtful.
+
+He was convinced before the innings was over.
+
+There must be many who remember the startling poster that heralded the
+early editions of the evening papers:
+
+       SURREY
+
+      ALL OUT
+
+    FOR 13 RUNS.
+
+For once sub-editors did not hesitate to give the score on the contents
+bill. That was a proclamation which would sell. Inside, the headlines
+were rich and varied. I have an old paper by me, yellow now, and
+brittle, that may serve as a type for the rest. The headlines are as
+follows:--
+
+      SURREY AND HAMPDENSHIRE.
+
+       EXTRAORDINARY BOWLING
+           PERFORMANCE.
+
+         DOUBLE HAT-TRICK.
+
+    SURREY ALL OUT IN 35 MINUTES
+           FOR 13 RUNS.
+
+    STOTT TAKES 10 WICKETS FOR 5.
+
+The "double hat-trick" was six consecutive wickets, the last six, all
+clean bowled.
+
+"Good God!" Wallis said, when the last wicket fell, and he looked at me
+with something like fear in his eyes. "This man will have to be barred;
+it means the end of cricket."
+
+
+VI
+
+Stott's accident came during the high flood of Hampdenshire success. For
+two years they held undisputed place as champion county, a place which
+could not be upset by the most ingenious methods of calculating points.
+They three times defeated Australia, and played four men in the test
+matches. As a team they were capable of beating any Eleven opposed to
+them. Not even the newspaper critics denied that.
+
+The accident appeared insignificant at the time. The match was against
+Notts on the Trent Bridge ground. I was reporting for three papers;
+Wallis was not there.
+
+Stott had been taken off. Notts were a poor lot that year and I think
+Findlater did not wish to make their defeat appear too ignominious.
+Flower was bowling; it was a fast, true wicket, and Stott, who was a
+safe field, was at cover-point.
+
+G. L. Mallinson was batting and making good use of his opportunity; he
+was, it will be remembered, a magnificent though erratic hitter. Flower
+bowled him a short-pitched, fast ball, rather wide of the off-stump.
+Many men might have left it alone, for the ball was rising, and the
+slips were crowded, but Mallinson timed the ball splendidly, and drove
+it with all his force. He could not keep it on the ground, however, and
+Stott had a possible chance. He leaped for it and just touched the ball
+with his right hand. The ball jumped the ring at its first bound, and
+Mallinson never even attempted to run. There was a big round of applause
+from the Trent Bridge crowd.
+
+I noticed that Stott had tied a handkerchief round his finger, but I
+forgot the incident until I saw Findlater beckon to his best bowler, a
+few overs later. Notts had made enough runs for decency; it was time to
+get them out.
+
+I saw Stott walk up to Findlater and shake his head, and through my
+glasses I saw him whip the handkerchief from his finger and display his
+hand. Findlater frowned, said something and looked towards the pavilion,
+but Stott shook his head. He evidently disagreed with Findlater's
+proposal. Then Mallinson came up, and the great bulk of his back hid the
+faces of the other two. The crowd was beginning to grow excited at the
+interruption. Every one had guessed that something was wrong. All round
+the ring men were standing up, trying to make out what was going on.
+
+I drew my inferences from Mallinson's face, for when he turned round and
+strolled back to his wicket, he was wearing a broad smile. Through my
+field glasses I could see that he was licking his lower lip with his
+tongue. His shoulders were humped and his whole expression one of barely
+controlled glee. (I always see that picture framed in a circle; a
+bioscopic presentation.) He could hardly refrain from dancing. Then
+little Beale, who was Mallinson's partner, came up and spoke to him, and
+I saw Mallinson hug himself with delight as he explained the situation.
+
+When Stott unwillingly came back to the pavilion, a low murmur ran round
+the ring, like the buzz of a great crowd of disturbed blue flies. In
+that murmur I could distinctly trace the signs of mixed feelings. No
+doubt the crowd had come there to witness the performances of the new
+phenomenon--the abnormal of every kind has a wonderful attraction for
+us--but, on the other hand, the majority wanted to see their own county
+win. Moreover, Mallinson was giving them a taste of his abnormal powers
+of hitting, and the batsman appeals to the spectacular, more than the
+bowler.
+
+I ran down hurriedly to meet Stott.
+
+"Only a split finger, sir," he said carelessly, in answer to my
+question; "but Mr. Findlater says I must see to it."
+
+I examined the finger, and it certainly did not seem to call for
+surgical aid. Evidently it had been caught by the seam of the new ball;
+there was a fairly clean cut about half an inch long on the fleshy
+underside of the second joint of the middle finger.
+
+"Better have it seen to," I said. "We can't afford to lose you, you
+know, Stott."
+
+Stott gave a laugh that was more nearly a snarl. "Ain't the first time
+I've 'ad a cut finger," he said scornfully.
+
+He had the finger bound up when I saw him again, but it had been done by
+an amateur. I learnt afterwards that no antiseptic had been used. That
+was at lunch time, and Notts had made a hundred and sixty-eight for one
+wicket; Mallinson was not out, a hundred and three. I saw that the Notts
+Eleven were in magnificent spirits.
+
+But after lunch Stott came out and took the first over. I don't know
+what had passed between him and Findlater, but the captain had evidently
+been over-persuaded.
+
+We must not blame Findlater. The cut certainly appeared trifling, it was
+not bad enough to prevent Stott from bowling, and Hampdenshire seemed
+powerless on that wicket without him. It is very easy to distribute
+blame after the event, but most people would have done what Findlater
+did in those circumstances.
+
+The cut did not appear to inconvenience Stott in the least degree. He
+bowled Mallinson with his second ball, and the innings was finished up
+in another fifty-seven minutes for the addition of thirty-eight runs.
+
+Hampdenshire made two hundred and thirty-seven for three wickets before
+the drawing of stumps, and that was the end of the match, for the
+weather changed during the night and rain prevented any further play.
+
+I, of course, stayed on in Nottingham to await results. I saw Stott on
+the next day, Friday, and asked him about his finger. He made light of
+it, but that evening Findlater told me over the bridge-table that he was
+not happy about it. He had seen the finger, and thought it showed a
+tendency to inflammation. "I shall take him to Gregory in the morning if
+it's not all right," he said. Gregory was a well-known surgeon in
+Nottingham.
+
+Again one sees, now, that the visit to Gregory should not have been
+postponed, but at the time one does not take extraordinary precautions
+in such a case as this. A split finger is such an everyday thing, and
+one is guided by the average of experience. After all, if one were
+constantly to make preparation for the abnormal; ordinary life could not
+go on....
+
+I heard that Gregory pursed his lips over that finger when he had
+learned the name of his famous patient. "You'll have to be very careful
+of this, young man," was Findlater's report of Gregory's advice. It was
+not sufficient. I often wonder now whether Gregory might not have saved
+the finger. If he had performed some small operation at once, cut away
+the poison, it seems to me that the tragedy might have been averted. I
+am, I admit, a mere layman in these matters, but it seems to me that
+something might have been done.
+
+I left Nottingham on Saturday after lunch--the weather was hopeless--and
+I did not make use of the information I had for the purposes of my
+paper. I was never a good journalist. But I went down to Ailesworth on
+Monday morning, and found that Findlater and Stott had already gone to
+Harley Street to see Graves, the King's surgeon.
+
+I followed them, and arrived at Graves's house while Stott was in the
+consulting-room. I hocussed the butler and waited with the patients.
+Among the papers, I came upon the famous caricature of Stott in the
+current number of _Punch_--the "Stand-and-Deliver" caricature, in which
+Stott is represented with an arm about ten feet long, and the batsman is
+looking wildly over his shoulder to square leg, bewildered, with no
+conception from what direction the ball is coming. Underneath is written
+"Stott's New Theory--the Ricochet. Real Ginger." While I was laughing
+over the cartoon, the butler came in and nodded to me. I followed him
+out of the room and met Findlater and Stott in the hall.
+
+Findlater was in a state of profanity. I could not get a sensible word
+out of him. He was in a white heat of pure rage. The butler, who seemed
+as anxious as I to learn the verdict, was positively frightened.
+
+"Well, for God's sake tell me what Graves said," I protested.
+
+Findlater's answer is unprintable, and told me nothing.
+
+Stott, however, quite calm and self-possessed, volunteered the
+information. "Finger's got to come off, sir," he said quietly. "Doctor
+says if it ain't off to-day or to-morrer, he won't answer for my 'and."
+
+This was the news I had to give to England. It was a great coup from the
+journalistic point of view, but I made up my three columns with a heavy
+heart, and the congratulations of my editor only sickened me. I had some
+luck, but I should never have become a good journalist.
+
+The operation was performed successfully that evening, and Stott's
+career was closed.
+
+
+VII
+
+I did not see Stott again till August, and then I had a long talk with
+him on the Ailesworth County Ground, as together we watched the progress
+of Hampdenshire's defeat by Lancashire.
+
+"Oh! I can't learn him _nothing_," he broke out, as Flower was hit to
+the four corners of the ground, "'alf vollies and long 'ops and then a
+full pitch--'e's a disgrace."
+
+"They've knocked him off his length," I protested. "On a wicket like
+this ..."
+
+Stott shook his head. "I've been trying to learn 'im," he said, "but he
+can't never learn. 'E's got 'abits what you can't break 'im of."
+
+"I suppose it _is_ difficult," I said vaguely.
+
+"Same with me," went on Stott, "I've been trying to learn myself to bowl
+without my finger"--he held up his mutilated hand--"or left-'anded; but
+I can't. If I'd started that way ... No! I'm always feeling for that
+finger as is gone. A second-class bowler I might be in time, not better
+nor that."
+
+"It's early days yet," I ventured, intending encouragement, but Stott
+frowned and shook his head.
+
+"I'm not going to kid myself," he said, "I know. But I'm going to find a
+youngster and learn 'im. On'y he must be young.
+
+"No 'abits, you know," he explained.
+
+The next time I met Stott was in November. I ran up against him,
+literally, one Friday afternoon in Ailesworth.
+
+When he recognised me he asked me if I would care to walk out to
+Stoke-Underhill with him. "I've took a cottage there," he explained,
+"I'm to be married in a fortnight's time."
+
+His circumstances certainly warranted such a venture. The proceeds of
+matinee and benefit, invested for him by the Committee of the County
+Club, produced an income of nearly two pounds a week, and in addition to
+this he had his salary as groundsman. I tendered my congratulations.
+
+"Oh! well, as to that, better wait a bit," said Stott.
+
+He walked with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground. He
+had the air of a man brooding over some project.
+
+"It _is_ a lottery, of course ..." I began, but he interrupted me.
+
+"Oh that!" he said, and kicked a stone into the ditch; "take my chances
+of that. It's the kid I'm thinking on."
+
+"The kid?" I repeated, doubtful whether he spoke of his fiancee, or
+whether his nuptials pointed an act of reparation.
+
+"What, else 'ud I tie myself up for?" asked Stott. "I must 'ave a kid of
+my own and learn 'im from his cradle. It's come to that."
+
+"Oh! I understand," I said; "teach him to bowl."
+
+"Ah!" replied Stott as an affirmative. "Learn 'im from his cradle;
+before 'e's got 'abits. When I started I'd never bowled a ball in my
+life, and by good luck I started right. But I can't find another kid
+over seven years old in England as ain't never bowled a ball o' some
+sort and started 'abits. I've tried ..."
+
+"And you hope with your own boys...?" I said.
+
+"Not 'ope, it's a cert," said Stott. "I'll see no boy of mine touches a
+ball afore he's fourteen, and then 'e'll learn from me; and learn
+right. From the first go off." He was silent for a few seconds, and then
+he broke out in a kind of ecstasy. "My Gawd, 'e'll be a bowler such as
+'as never been, never in this world. He'll start where I left orf.
+He'll ..." Words failed him, he fell back on the expletive he had used,
+repeating it with an awed fervour. "My Gawd!"
+
+I had never seen Stott in this mood before. It was a revelation to me of
+the latent potentialities of the man, the remarkable depth and quality
+of his ambitions....
+
+
+VIII
+
+I intended to be present at Stott's wedding, but I was not in England
+when it took place; indeed, for the next two years and a half I was
+never in England for more than a few days at a time. I sent him a
+wedding-present, an inkstand in the guise of a cricket ball, with a
+pen-rack that was built of little silver wickets. They were still
+advertised that Christmas as "Stott inkstands."
+
+Two years and a half of American life broke up many of my old habits of
+thought. When I first returned to London I found that the cricket news
+no longer held the same interest for me, and this may account for the
+fact that I did not trouble for some time to look up my old friend
+Stott.
+
+In July, however, affairs took me to Ailesworth, and the associations of
+the place naturally led me to wonder how Stott's marriage had turned
+out, and whether the much-desired son had been born to him. When my
+business in Ailesworth was done, I decided to walk out to
+Stoke-Underhill.
+
+The road passes the County Ground, and a match was in progress, but I
+walked by without stopping. I was wool-gathering. I was not thinking of
+the man I was going to see, or I should have turned in at the County
+Ground, where he would inevitably have been found. Instead, I was
+thinking of the abnormal child I had seen in the train that day;
+uselessly speculating and wondering.
+
+When I reached Stoke-Underhill I found the cottage which Stott had shown
+me. I had by then so far recovered my wits as to know that I should not
+find Stott himself there, but from the look of the cottage I judged that
+it was untenanted, so I made inquiries at the post-office.
+
+"No; he don't live here, now, sir," said the postmistress; "he lives at
+Pym, now, sir, and rides into Ailesworth on his bike." She was evidently
+about to furnish me with other particulars, but I did not care to hear
+them. I was moody and distrait. I was wondering why I should bother my
+head about so insignificant a person as this Stott.
+
+"You'll be sure to find Mr. Stott at the cricket ground," the
+postmistress called after me.
+
+Another two months of English life induced a return to my old habits of
+thought. I found myself reverting to old tastes and interests. The
+reversion was a pleasant one. In the States I had been forced out of my
+groove, compelled to work, to strive, to think desperately if I would
+maintain any standing among my contemporaries. But when the perpetual
+stimulus was removed, I soon fell back to the less strenuous methods of
+my own country. I had time, once more, for the calm reflection that is
+so unlike the urgent, forced, inventive thought of the American
+journalist. I was braced by that thirty months' experience, perhaps
+hardened a little, but by September my American life was fading into the
+background; I had begun to take an interest in cricket again.
+
+With the revival of my old interests, revived also my curiosity as to
+Ginger Stott, and one Sunday in late September I decided to go down to
+Pym.
+
+It was a perfect day, and I thoroughly enjoyed my four-mile walk from
+Great Hittenden Station.
+
+Pym is a tiny hamlet made up of three farms and a dozen scattered
+cottages. Perched on one of the highest summits of the Hampden Hills and
+lost in the thick cover of beech woods, without a post-office or a
+shop, Pym is the most perfectly isolated village within a reasonable
+distance of London. As I sauntered up the mile-long lane that climbs the
+steep hill, and is the only connection between Pym and anything
+approaching a decent road, I thought that this was the place to which I
+should like to retire for a year, in order to write the book I had so
+often contemplated, and never found time to begin. This, I reflected,
+was a place of peace, of freedom from all distraction, the place for
+calm, contemplative meditation.
+
+I met no one in the lane, and there was no sign of life when I reached
+what I must call the village, though the word conveys a wrong idea, for
+there is no street, merely a cottage here and there, dropped haphazard,
+and situated without regard to its aspect. These cottages lie all on
+one's left hand; to the right a stretch of grass soon merges into
+bracken and bush, and then the beech woods enclose both, and surge down
+into the valley and rise up again beyond, a great wave of green; as I
+saw it then, not yet touched with the first flame of autumn.
+
+I inquired at the first cottage and received my direction to Stott's
+dwelling. It lay up a little lane, the further of two cottages joined
+together.
+
+The door stood open, and after a moment's hesitation and a light knock,
+I peered in.
+
+Sitting in a rocking-chair was a woman with black, untidy eyebrows, and
+on her knee, held with rigid attention, was the remarkable baby I had
+seen in the train two months before. As I stood, doubtful and, I will
+confess it, intimidated, suddenly cold and nervous, the child opened his
+eyes and honoured me with a cold stare. Then he nodded, a reflective,
+recognisable nod.
+
+"'E remembers seein' you in the train, sir," said the woman, "'e never
+forgets any one. Did you want to see my 'usband? 'E's upstairs."
+
+So _this_ was the boy who was designed by Stott to become the greatest
+bowler the world had ever seen....
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] A relatively easy task for the baseball thrower, but one very
+difficult of accomplishment for the English bowler, who is not permitted
+by the laws of cricket to bend his elbow in delivering the ball.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF GINGER STOTT
+
+
+I
+
+Stott maintained an obstinate silence as we walked together up to the
+Common, a stretch of comparatively open ground on the plateau of the
+hill. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down, as he
+had walked out from Ailesworth with me nearly three years before, but
+his mood was changed. I was conscious that he was gloomy, depressed,
+perhaps a little unstrung. I was burning with curiosity. Now that I was
+released from the thrall of the child's presence, I was eager to hear
+all there was to tell of its history.
+
+Presently we sat down under an ash-tree, one of three that guarded a
+shallow, muddy pond skimmed with weed. Stott accepted my offer of a
+cigarette, but seemed disinclined to break the silence.
+
+I found nothing better to say than a repetition of the old phrase.
+"That's a very remarkable baby of yours, Stott," I said.
+
+"Ah!" he replied, his usual substitute for "yes," and he picked up a
+piece of dead wood and threw it into the little pond.
+
+"How old is he?" I asked.
+
+"Nearly two year."
+
+"Can he ..." I paused; my imagination was reconstructing the scene of
+the railway carriage, and I felt a reflex of the hesitation shown by the
+rubicund man when he had asked the same question. "Can he ... can he
+talk?" It seemed so absurd a question to ask, yet it was essentially a
+natural question in the circumstances.
+
+"He can, but he won't."
+
+This was startling enough, and I pressed my enquiry.
+
+"How do you know? Are you sure he can?"
+
+"Ah!" Only that irritating, monosyllabic assent.
+
+"Look here, Stott," I said, "don't you want to talk about the child?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and threw more wood into the pond with a
+strained attentiveness as though he were peculiarly anxious to hit some
+particular wafer of the vivid, floating weed. For a full five minutes we
+maintained silence. I was trying to subdue my impatience and my temper.
+I knew Stott well enough to know that if I displayed signs of either, I
+should get no information from him. My self-control was rewarded at
+last.
+
+"I've 'eard 'im speak," he said, "speak proper, too, not like a baby."
+
+He paused, and I grunted to show that I was listening, but as he
+volunteered no further remark, I said: "What did you hear him say?"
+
+"I dunno," replied Stott, "somethin' about learnin' and talkin'. I
+didn't get the rights of it, but the missus near fainted--_she_ thinks
+'e's Gawd A'mighty or suthing."
+
+"But why don't you make him speak?" I asked deliberately.
+
+"Make 'im!" said Stott, with a curl of his lip, "_make_ 'im! You try it
+on!"
+
+I knew I was acting a part, but I wanted to provoke more information.
+"Well! Why not?" I said.
+
+"'Cos 'e'd look at you--that's why not," replied Stott, "and you can't
+no more face 'im than a dog can face a man. I shan't stand it much
+longer."
+
+"Curious," I said, "very curious."
+
+"Oh! he's a blarsted freak, that's what 'e is," said Stott, getting to
+his feet and beginning to pace moodily up and down.
+
+I did not interrupt him. I was thinking of this man who had drawn huge
+crowds from every part of England, who had been a national hero, and
+who, now, was unable to face his own child. Presently Stott broke out
+again.
+
+"To think of all the trouble I took when 'e was comin'," he said,
+stopping in front of me. "There was nothin' the missus fancied as I
+wouldn't get. We was livin' in Stoke then." He made a movement of his
+head in the direction of Ailesworth. "Not as she was difficult," he went
+on thoughtfully. "She used to say 'I mussent get 'abits, George.' Caught
+that from me; I was always on about that--then. You know, thinkin' of
+learnin' 'im bowlin'. Things was different then; afore _'e_ came." He
+paused again, evidently thinking of his troubles.
+
+Sympathetically, I was wondering how far the child had separated husband
+and wife. There was the making of a tragedy here, I thought; but when
+Stott, after another period of pacing up and down, began to speak again
+I found that his tragedy was of another kind.
+
+"Learn _'im_ bowling!" he said, and laughed a mirthless laugh. "My Gawd!
+it 'ud take something. No fear; that little game's off. And I could a'
+done it if he'd been a decent or'nery child, 'stead of a blarsted freak.
+There won't never be another, neither. This one pretty near killed the
+missus. Doctor said it'd be 'er last.... With an 'ead like that, whacher
+expect?"
+
+"Can he walk?" I asked.
+
+"Ah! Gets about easy enough for all 'is body and legs is so small. When
+the missus tries to stop 'im--she's afraid 'e'll go over--'e just looks
+at 'er and she 'as to let 'im 'ave 'is own way."
+
+
+II
+
+Later, I reverted to that speech of the child's, that intelligent,
+illuminating speech that seemed to prove that there was indeed a
+powerful, thoughtful mind behind those profoundly speculative eyes.
+
+"That time he spoke, Stott," I said, "was he alone?"
+
+"Ah!" assented Stott. "In the garden, practisin' walkin' all by
+'imself."
+
+"Was that the only time?"
+
+"Only time _I've_ 'eard 'im."
+
+"Was it lately?"
+
+"'Bout six weeks ago."
+
+"And he has never made a sound otherwise, cried, laughed?"
+
+"'Ardly. 'E gives a sort o' grunt sometimes, when 'e wants anything--and
+points."
+
+"He's very intelligent."
+
+"Worse than that, 'e's a freak, I tell you."
+
+With the repetition of this damning description, Stott fell back into
+his moody pacing, and this time I failed to rouse him from his gloom.
+"Oh! forget it," he broke out once, when I asked him another question,
+and I saw that he was not likely to give me any more information that
+day.
+
+We walked back together, and I said good-bye to him at the end of the
+lane which led up to his cottage.
+
+"Not comin' up?" he asked, with a nod of his head towards his home.
+
+"Well! I have to catch that train ..." I prevaricated, looking at my
+watch. I did not wish to see that child again; my distaste was even
+stronger than my curiosity.
+
+Stott grinned. "We don't 'ave many visitors," he said. "Well, I'll come
+a bit farther with you."
+
+He came to the bottom of the hill, and after he left me he took the road
+that goes over the hill to Wenderby. It would be about seven miles back
+to Pym by that road....
+
+
+III
+
+I spent the next afternoon in the Reading Room of the British Museum. I
+was searching for a precedent, and at last I found one in the story of
+Christian Heinrich Heinecken,[2] who was born at Lubeck on February 6,
+1721. There were marked points of difference between the development of
+Heinecken and that of Stott's child. Heinecken was physically feeble; at
+the age of three he was still being fed at the breast. The Stott
+precocity appeared to be physically strong; his body looked small and
+undeveloped, it is true, but this was partly an illusion produced by the
+abnormal size of the head. Again Heinecken learned to speak very early;
+at ten months old he was asking intelligent questions, at eighteen
+months he was studying history, geography, Latin and anatomy; whereas
+the Stott child had only once been heard to speak at the age of two
+years, and had not, apparently, begun any study at all.
+
+From this comparison it might seem at first that the balance of
+precocity lay in the Heinecken scale. I drew another inference. I argued
+that the genius of the Stott child far outweighed the genius of
+Christian Heinecken.
+
+Little Heinecken in his four years of life suffered the mental
+experience--with certain necessary limitations--of a developed brain. He
+gathered knowledge as an ordinary child gathers knowledge, the only
+difference being that his rate of assimilation was as ten to one.
+
+But little Stott had gathered no knowledge from books. He had been born
+of ignorant parents, he was being brought up among uneducated people.
+Yet he had wonderful intellectual gifts; surely he must have one above
+all others--the gift of reason. His brain must be constructive, logical;
+he must have the power of deduction. He must even at an extraordinarily
+early age, say six months, have developed some theory of life. He must
+be withholding his energy, deliberately; declining to exhibit his
+powers, holding his marvellous faculties in reserve. Here was surely a
+case of genius which, comparable in some respects to the genius of
+Heinecken, yet far exceeded it.
+
+As I developed my theory, my eagerness grew. And then suddenly an
+inspiration came to me. In my excitement I spoke aloud and smacked the
+desk in front of me with my open hand. "Why, of course!" I said. "That
+is the key."
+
+An old man in the next seat scowled fiercely. The attendants in the
+central circular desk all looked up. Other readers turned round and
+stared at me. I had violated the sacred laws of the Reading Room. I saw
+one of the librarians make a sign to an attendant and point to me.
+
+I gathered up my books quickly and returned them at the central desk. My
+self-consciousness had returned, and I was anxious to be away from the
+observation of the many dilettante readers who found my appearance more
+engrossing than the books with which they were dallying on some pretext
+or another.
+
+Yet, curiously, when I reached the street, the theory which had come to
+me in the Museum with the force and vividness of an illuminating dream
+had lost some of its glamour. Nevertheless, I set it out as it then
+shaped itself in my mind.
+
+The great restraining force in the evolution of man, so I thought, has
+been the restriction imposed by habit. What we call instinct is a
+hereditary habit. This is the first guiding principle in the life of the
+human infant. Upon this instinct we immediately superimpose the habits
+of reason, all the bodily and intellectual conventions that have been
+handed down from generation to generation. We learn everything we know
+as children by the hereditary, simian habit of imitation. The child of
+intellectual, cultured parents, born into savage surroundings, becomes
+the slave of this inherited habit--call it tendency, if you will, the
+intention is the same. I elaborated the theory by instance and
+introspection, and found no flaw in it....
+
+And here, by some freak of nature, was a child born without these
+habits. During the period of gestation, one thought had dominated the
+minds of both parents--the desire to have a son born without habits. It
+does not seriously affect the theory that the desire had a peculiar end
+in view; the wish, the urgent, controlling, omnipotent will had been
+there, and the result included far more than the specific intention.
+
+Already some of my distaste for the Stott child had vanished. It was
+accountable, and therefore no longer fearful. The child was supernormal,
+a cause of fear to the normal man, as all truly supernormal things are
+to our primitive, animal instincts. This is the fear of the wild thing;
+when we can explain and give reasons, the horror vanishes. We are men
+again.
+
+I did not quite recover the glow of my first inspiration, but the theory
+remained with me; I decided to make a study of the child, to submit
+knowledge to his reason. I would stand between him and the delimiting
+training of the pedagogue, I thought.
+
+Then I reached home, and my life was changed.
+
+This story is not of my own life, and I have no wish to enter into the
+curious and saddening experiences which stood between me and the child
+of Ginger Stott for nearly six years. In that time my thoughts strayed
+now and again to that cottage in the little hamlet on those wooded
+hills. Often I thought "When I have time I will go and see that child
+again if he is alive." But as the years passed, the memory of him grew
+dim, even the memory of his father was blurred over by a thousand new
+impressions. So it chanced that for nearly six years I heard no word of
+Stott and his supernormal infant, and then chance again intervened. My
+long period of sorrow came to an end almost as suddenly as it had begun,
+and by a coincidence I was once more entangled in the strange web of the
+abnormal.
+
+In this story of Victor Stott I have bridged these six years in the
+pages that follow. In doing this I have been compelled to draw to a
+certain extent on my imagination, but the main facts are true. They have
+been gathered from first-hand authority only, from Henry Challis, from
+Mrs. Stott, and from her husband; though none, I must confess, has been
+checked by that soundest of all authorities, Victor Stott himself, who
+might have given me every particular in accurate detail, had it not been
+for those peculiarities of his which will be explained fully in the
+proper place.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] See the Teutsche Bibliothek and Schoneich's account of the child of
+Lubeck.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE MANNER OF HIS BIRTH
+
+
+I
+
+Stoke-Underhill lies in the flat of the valley that separates the
+Hampden from the Quainton Hills. The main road from London to Ailesworth
+does not pass through Stoke, but from the highway you can see the ascent
+of the bridge over the railway, down the vista of a straight mile of
+side road; and, beyond, a glimpse of scattered cottages. That is all,
+and as a matter of fact, no one who is not keeping a sharp look-out
+would ever notice the village, for the eye is drawn to admire the bluff
+of Deane Hill, the highest point of the Hampdens, which lowers over the
+little hamlet of Stoke and gives it a second name; and to the church
+tower of Chilborough Beacon, away to the right, another landmark.
+
+The attraction which Stoke-Underhill held for Stott, lay not in its
+seclusion or its picturesqueness but in its nearness to the County
+Ground. Stott could ride the two flat miles which separated him from the
+scene of his work in ten minutes, and Ailesworth station is only a mile
+beyond. So when he found that there was a suitable cottage to let in
+Stoke, he looked no farther for a home; he was completely satisfied.
+
+Stott's absorption in any matter that was occupying his mind made him
+exceedingly careless about the detail of his affairs. He took the first
+cottage that offered when he looked for a home, he took the first woman
+who offered when he looked for a wife.
+
+Stott was not an attractive man to women. He was short and plain, and he
+had an appearance of being slightly deformed, a "monkeyish" look, due to
+his build and his long arms. Still, he was famous, and might, doubtless,
+have been accepted by a dozen comely young women for that reason, even
+after his accident. But if Stott was unattractive to women, women were
+even more unattractive to Stott. "No opinion of women?" he used to say.
+"Ever seen a gel try to throw a cricket ball? You 'ave? Well, ain't that
+enough to put you off women?" That was Stott's intellectual standard;
+physically, he had never felt drawn to women.
+
+Ellen Mary Jakes exhibited no superiority over her sisters in the matter
+of throwing a cricket ball. She was a friend of Ginger's mother, and
+she was a woman of forty-two, who had long since been relegated to some
+remote shelf of the matrimonial exchange. But her physical disadvantages
+were outbalanced by her mental qualities. Ellen Mary was not a
+book-worm, she read nothing but the evening and Sunday papers, but she
+had a reasoning and intelligent mind.
+
+She had often contemplated the state of matrimony, and had made more
+than one tentative essay in that direction. She had walked out with
+three or four sprigs of the Ailesworth bourgeoisie in her time, and the
+shadow of middle-age had crept upon her before she realised that however
+pliant her disposition, her lack of physical charm put her at the mercy
+of the first bright-eyed rival. At thirty-five Ellen had decided, with
+admirable philosophy, that marriage was not for her, and had assumed,
+with apparent complacency, the outward evidences of a dignified
+spinsterhood. She had discarded gay hats and ribbons, imitation
+jewellery, unreliable cheap shoes, and chill diaphanous stockings, and
+had found some solace for her singleness in more comfortable and
+suitable apparel.
+
+When Ellen, a declared spinster of seven years' standing, was first
+taken into the confidence of Ginger Stott's mother, the scheme which she
+afterwards elaborated immediately presented itself to her mind. This
+fact is a curious instance of Ellen Mary's mobility of intellect, and
+the student of heredity may here find matter for careful thought.[3]
+
+The confidence in question was Ginger's declared intention of becoming
+the father of the world's greatest bowler. Mrs. Stott was a dark,
+garrulous, rather deaf little woman, with a keen eye for the main
+chance; she might have become a successful woman of business if she had
+not been by nature both stingy and a cheat. When her son presented his
+determination, her first thought was to find some woman who would not
+dissipate her son's substance, and in her opinion--not expressed to
+Ginger--the advertised purpose of the contemplated marriage evidenced a
+wasteful disposition.
+
+Mrs. Stott did not think of Ellen Mary as a possible daughter-in-law,
+but she did hold forth for an hour and three-quarters on the
+contemptible qualities of the young maidens, first of Ailesworth, and
+then with a wider swoop that was not justified by her limited
+experience, of the girls of England, Scotland, and Ireland at large.
+
+It required the flexible reasoning powers of Ellen Mary to find a
+solution of the problem. Any ordinary, average woman of forty-two, a
+declared spinster of seven years' standing, who had lived all her life
+in a provincial town, would have been mentally unable to realise the
+possibilities of the situation. Such a representative of the decaying
+sexual instinct would have needed the stimulus of courtship, at the
+least of some hint of preference displayed by the suitor. Ruled by the
+conventions which hold her sex in bondage, she would have deemed it
+unwomanly to make advances by any means other than innuendo, the subtle
+suggestions which are the instruments of her sex, but which are often
+too delicate to pierce the understanding of the obtuse and slow-witted
+male.
+
+Ellen Mary stood outside the ruck that determines the destinies of all
+such typical representatives. She considered the idea presented to her
+by Mrs. Stott with an open and mobile intelligence. She weighed the
+character of Ginger, the possibilities of rejection, and the influence
+of Mrs. Stott; and she gave no thought to the conventions, nor to the
+criticisms of Ailesworth society. When she had decided that such chances
+as she could calculate were in her favour, Ellen made up her mind,
+walked out to the County Ground one windy October forenoon, and
+discovered Ginger experimenting with grass seed in a shed off the
+pavilion.
+
+In this shed she offered herself, while Ginger worked on, attentive but
+unresponsive. Perhaps she did not make an offer so much as state a case.
+A masterly case, without question; for who can doubt that Stott, however
+procrastinating and unwilling to make a definite overture, must already
+have had some type of womanhood in his mind; some conception, the seed
+of an ideal.
+
+I find a quality of romance in this courageous and unusual wooing of
+Ellen Mary's; but more, I find evidences of the remarkable quality of
+her intelligence. In other circumstances the name of Ellen Mary Jakes
+might have stood for individual achievement; instead of that, she is
+remembered as a common woman who _happened_ to be the mother of Victor
+Stott. But when the facts are examined, can we say that chance entered?
+If ever the birth of a child was deliberately designed by both parents,
+it was in the case under consideration. And in what a strange setting
+was the inception first displayed.
+
+Ellen Mary, a gaunt, tall, somewhat untidy woman, stood at the narrow
+door of the little shed off the Ailesworth pavilion; with one hand,
+shoulder-high, she steadied herself against the door frame, with the
+other she continually pushed forward the rusty bonnet which had been
+loosened during her walk by the equinoctial gale that now tore at the
+door of the shed, and necessitated the employment of a wary foot to keep
+the door from slamming. With all these distractions she still made good
+her case, though she had to raise her voice above the multitudinous
+sounds of the wind, and though she had to address the unresponsive
+shoulders of a man who bent over shallow trays of earth set on a trestle
+table under the small and dirty window. It is heroic, but she had her
+reward in full measure. Presently her voice ceased, and she waited in
+silence for the answer that should decide her destiny. There was an
+interval broken only by the tireless passion of the wind, and then
+Ginger Stott, the best-known man in England, looked up and stared
+through the incrusted pane of glass before him at the dim vision of
+stooping grass and swaying hedge. Unconsciously his hand strayed to his
+pockets, and then he said in a low, thoughtful voice: "Well! I dunno why
+not."
+
+
+II
+
+Dr. O'Connell's face was white and drawn, and the redness of his eyelids
+more pronounced than ever as he faced Stott in the pale October dawn. He
+clutched at his beard with a nervous, combing movement, as he shook his
+head decidedly in answer to the question put to him.
+
+"If it's not dead, now, 'twill be in very few hours," he said.
+
+Stott was shaken by the feeble passion of a man who has spent many weary
+hours of suspense. His anger thrilled out in a feeble stream of
+hackneyed profanities.
+
+O'Connell looked down on him with contempt. At sunrise, after a
+sleepless night, a man is a creature of unrealised emotions.
+
+"Damn it, control yourself, man!" growled O'Connell, himself
+uncontrolled, "your wife'll pull through with care, though she'll never
+have another child." O'Connell did not understand; he was an Irishman,
+and no cricketer; he had been called in because he had a reputation for
+his skill in obstetrics.
+
+Stott stared at him fiercely. The two men seemed as if about to grapple
+desperately for life in the windy, grey twilight.
+
+O'Connell recovered his self-control first, and began again to claw
+nervously at his beard. "Don't be a fool," he said, "it's only what you
+could expect. Her first child, and her a woman of near fifty." He
+returned to the upstairs room; Stott seized his cap and went out into
+the chill world of sunrise.
+
+"She'll do, if there are no complications," said O'Connell to the
+nurse, as he bent over the still, exhausted figure of Mrs. Stott. "She's
+a wonderful woman to have delivered such a child alive."
+
+The nurse shivered, and avoiding any glance at the huddle that lay on an
+improvised sofa-bed, she said: "It can't live, can it?"
+
+O'Connell, still intent on his first patient, shook his head. "Never
+cried after delivery," he muttered--"the worst sign." He was silent for
+a moment and then he added: "But, to be sure, it's a freak of some
+kind." His scientific curiosity led him to make a further investigation.
+He left the bed and began to examine the huddle on the sofa-couch.
+Victor Stott owed his life, in the first instance, to this scientific
+curiosity of O'Connell's.
+
+The nurse, a capable, but sentimental woman, turned to the window and
+looked out at the watery trickle of feeble sunlight that now illumined
+the wilderness of Stott's garden.
+
+"Nurse!" The imperative call startled her; she turned nervously.
+
+"Yes, doctor?" she said, making no movement towards him.
+
+"Come here!" O'Connell was kneeling by the sofa. "There seems to be
+complete paralysis of all the motor centres," he went on; "but the
+child's not dead. We'll try artificial respiration."
+
+The nurse overcame her repugnance by a visible effort. "Is it ... is it
+worth while?" she asked, regarding the flaccid, tumbled, wax-like thing,
+with its bloated, white globe of a skull. Every muscle of it was relaxed
+and limp, its eyes shut, its tiny jaw hanging. "Wouldn't it be better to
+let it die...?"
+
+O'Connell did not seem to hear her. He waved an impatient hand for her
+assistance. "Outside my experience," he muttered, "no heart-beat
+discernible, no breath ... yet it is indubitably alive." He depressed
+the soft, plastic ribs and gave the feeble heart a gentle squeeze.
+
+"It's beating," he ejaculated, after a pause, with an ear close to the
+little chest, "but still no breath! Come!"
+
+The diminutive lungs were as readily open to suggestion as the wee
+heart: a few movements of the twigs they called arms, and the breath
+came. O'Connell closed the mouth and it remained closed, adjusted the
+limbs, and they stayed in the positions in which they were placed. At
+last he gently lifted the lids of the eyes.
+
+The nurse shivered and drew back. Even O'Connell was startled, for the
+eyes that stared into his own seemed to be heavy with a brooding
+intelligence....
+
+Stott came back at ten o'clock, after a morose trudge through the misty
+rain. He found the nurse in the sitting-room.
+
+"Doctor gone?" he asked.
+
+The nurse nodded.
+
+"Dead, I suppose?" Stott gave an upward twist of his head towards the
+room above.
+
+The nurse shook her head.
+
+"Can't live though?" There was a note of faint hope in his voice.
+
+The nurse drew herself together and sighed deeply. "Yes! we believe
+it'll live, Mr. Stott," she said. "But ... it's a very remarkable baby."
+
+How that phrase always recurred!
+
+
+III
+
+There were no complications, but Mrs. Stott's recovery was not rapid. It
+was considered advisable that she should not see the child. She thought
+that they were lying to her, that the child was dead and, so, resigned
+herself. But her husband saw it.
+
+He had never seen so young an infant before, and, just for one moment,
+he believed that it was a normal child.
+
+"What an 'ead!" was his first ejaculation, and then he realised the
+significance of that sign. Fear came into his eyes, and his mouth fell
+open. "'Ere, I say, nurse, it's ... it's a wrong 'un, ain't it?" he
+gasped.
+
+"I'm _sure_ I can't tell you, Mr. Stott," broke out the nurse
+hysterically. She had been tending that curious baby for three hours,
+and she was on the verge of a break-down. There was no wet-nurse to be
+had, but a woman from the village had been sent for. She was expected
+every moment.
+
+"More like a tadpole than anything," mused the unhappy father.
+
+"Oh! Mr. Stott, for goodness' sake, _don't_," cried the nurse. "If you
+only knew...."
+
+"Knew what?" questioned Stott, still staring at the motionless figure of
+his son, who lay with closed eyes, apparently unconscious.
+
+"There's something--I don't know," began the nurse, and then after a
+pause, during which she seemed to struggle for some means of expression,
+she continued with a sigh of utter weariness, "You'll know when it opens
+its eyes. Oh! Why doesn't that woman come, the woman you sent for?"
+
+"She'll be 'ere directly," replied Stott. "What d'you mean about there
+bein' something ... something what?"
+
+"Uncanny," said the nurse without conviction. "I do wish that woman
+would come. I've been up the best part of the night, and now ..."
+
+"Uncanny? As how?" persisted Stott.
+
+"Not normal," explained the nurse. "I can't tell you more than that."
+
+"But 'ow? What way?"
+
+He did not receive an answer then, for the long expected relief came at
+last, a great hulk of a woman, who became voluble when she saw the child
+she had come to nurse.
+
+"Oh! dear, oh! dear," the stream began. "How unforchnit, and 'er first,
+too. It'll be a idjit, I'm afraid. Mrs. 'Arrison's third was the very
+spit of it...."
+
+The stream ran on, but Stott heard no more. An idiot! He had fathered an
+idiot! That was the end of his dreams and ambitions! He had had an
+hour's sleep on the sitting-room sofa. He went out to his work at the
+County Ground with a heart full of blasphemy.
+
+When he returned at four o'clock he met the stout woman on the doorstep.
+She put up a hand to her rolling breast, closed her eyes tightly, and
+gasped as though completely overcome by this trifling rencounter.
+
+"'Ow is it?" questioned the obsessed Stott.
+
+"Oh dear! Oh dear!" panted the stout woman, "the leas' thing upsets me
+this afternoon...." She wandered away into irrelevant fluency, but Stott
+was autocratic; his insistent questions overcame the inertia of even
+Mrs. Reade at last. The substance of her information, freed from
+extraneous matter, was as follows:
+
+"Oh! 'ealthy? It'll live, I've no doubt, if that's what you mean; but
+'elpless...! There, 'elpless is no word.... Learn 'im to open his mouth,
+learn 'im to close 'is 'ands, learn 'im to go to sleep, learn 'im
+everythink. I've never seen nothink like it, never in all my days, and
+I've 'elped to bring a few into the world.... I can't begin to tell you
+about it, Mr. Stott, and that's the solemn truth. When 'e first looked
+at me, I near 'ad a faint. A old-fashioned, wise sort of look as 'e
+might 'a been a 'undred. 'Lord 'elp us, nurse,' I says, 'Lord 'elp us.'
+I was that opset, I didn't rightly know what I was a-saying...."
+
+Stott pushed past the agitated Mrs. Reade, and went into the
+sitting-room. He had had neither breakfast nor lunch; there was no sign
+of any preparation for his tea, and the fireplace was grey with the
+cinders of last night's fire. For some minutes he sat in deep
+despondency, a hero faced with the uncompromising detail of domestic
+neglect. Then he rose and called to the nurse.
+
+She appeared at the head of the steep, narrow staircase. "Sh!" she
+warned, with a finger to her lips.
+
+"I'm goin' out again," said Stott in a slightly modulated voice.
+
+"Mrs. Reade's coming back presently," replied the nurse, and looked over
+her shoulder.
+
+"Want me to wait?" asked Stott.
+
+The nurse came down a few steps. "It's only in case any one was wanted,"
+she began, "I've got two of 'em on my hands, you see. They're both doing
+well as far as that goes. Only ..." She broke off and drifted into small
+talk. Ever and again she stopped and listened intently, and looked back
+towards the half-open door of the upstairs room.
+
+Stott fidgeted, and then, as the flow of conversation gave no sign of
+running dry, he dammed it abruptly. "Look 'ere, miss," he said, "I've
+'ad nothing to eat since last night."
+
+"Oh! dear!" ejaculated the nurse. "If--perhaps, if you'd just stay here
+and listen, I could get you something." She seemed relieved to have some
+excuse for coming down.
+
+While she bustled about the kitchen, Stott, half-way upstairs, stayed
+and listened. The house was very silent, the only sound was the hushed
+clatter made by the nurse in the kitchen. There was an atmosphere of
+wariness about the place that affected even so callous a person as
+Stott. He listened with strained attention, his eyes fixed on the
+half-open door. He was not an imaginative man, but he was beset with
+apprehension as to what lay behind that door. He looked for something
+inhuman that might come crawling through the aperture, something
+grotesque, preternaturally wise and threatening--something horribly
+unnatural.
+
+The window of the upstairs room was evidently open, and now and again
+the door creaked faintly. When that happened Stott gripped the handrail,
+and grew damp and hot. He looked always at the shadows under the door.
+If it crawled ...
+
+The nurse stood at the door of the sitting-room while Stott ate, and
+presently Mrs. Reade came grunting and panting up the brick path.
+
+"I'm going out, now," said Stott resolutely, and he rose to his feet,
+though his meal was barely finished.
+
+"You'll be back before Mrs. Reade goes?" asked the nurse, and passed a
+hand over her tired eyes. "She'll be here till ten o'clock. I'm going to
+lie down."
+
+"I'll be back by ten," Stott assured her as he went out.
+
+He did come back at ten o'clock, but he was stupidly drunk.
+
+
+IV
+
+The Stotts' cottage was no place to live in during the next few days,
+but the nurse made one stipulation: Mr. Stott must come home to sleep.
+He slept on an improvised bed in the sitting-room, and during the night
+the nurse came down many times and listened to the sound of his snores.
+She would put her ear against the door, and rest her nerves with the
+thought of human companionship. Sometimes she opened the door quietly
+and watched him as he slept. Except at night, when he was rarely quite
+sober, Stott only visited his cottage once a day, at lunch time; from
+seven in the morning till ten at night he remained in Ailesworth save
+for this one call of inquiry.
+
+It was such a still house. Ellen Mary only spoke when speech was
+absolutely required, and then her words were the fewest possible, and
+were spoken in a whisper. The child made no sound of any kind. Even Mrs.
+Reade tried to subdue her stertorous breathing, to move with less
+ponderous quakings. The neighbours told her she looked thinner.
+
+Little wonder that during the long night vigil the nurse, moving
+silently between the two upstairs rooms, should pause on the landing and
+lean over the handrail; little wonder that she should give a long sigh
+of relief when she heard the music of Stott's snore ascend from the
+sitting-room.
+
+O'Connell called twice every day during the first week, not because it
+was necessary for him to visit his two patients, but because the infant
+fascinated him. He would wait for it to open its eyes, and then he
+would get up and leave the room hurriedly. Always he intended to return
+the infant's stare, but when the opportunity was given to him, he always
+rose and left the room--no matter how long and deliberately he had
+braced himself to another course of action.
+
+It was on a Thursday that the baby was born, and it was on the following
+Thursday that the circumstance of the household was reshaped.
+
+O'Connell came in the morning, full of resolution. After he had
+pronounced Mrs. Stott well on the way to recovery, he paid the usual
+visit to his younger patient. The child lay, relaxed, at full length, in
+the little cot which had been provided for him. His eyes were, as usual,
+closed, and he had all the appearance of the ordinary hydrocephalic
+idiot.
+
+O'Connell sat down by the cot, listened to the child's breathing and
+heart-beat, lifted and let fall again the lax wrist, turned back the
+eyelid, revealing only the white of the upturned eyeball, and then
+composed himself to await the natural waking of the child, if it were
+asleep--always a matter of uncertainty.
+
+The nurse stood near him, silent, but she looked away from the cot.
+
+"Hydrocephalus!" murmured O'Connell, staring at his tiny patient,
+"hydrocephalus, without a doubt. Eh? nurse!"
+
+"Yes, perhaps! I don't know, doctor."
+
+"Oh, not a doubt of it, not a doubt," repeated O'Connell, and then came
+a flicker of the child's eyelids and a weak crumpling of the tiny hand.
+
+O'Connell caught his breath and clawed at his beard. "Hydrocephalus," he
+muttered with set jaw and drawn eyebrows.
+
+The tiny hand straightened with a movement that suggested the recovery
+of crushed grass, the mouth opened in a microscopic yawn, and then the
+eyelids were slowly raised and a steady unwavering stare of profoundest
+intelligence met O'Connell's gaze.
+
+He clenched his hands, shifted in his chair, and then rose abruptly and
+turned to the window.
+
+"I--it won't be necessary for me to come again, nurse," he said curtly;
+"they are both doing perfectly well."
+
+"Not come again?" There was dismay in the nurse's question.
+
+"No! No! It's unnecessary ..." He broke off, and made for the door
+without another glance in the direction of the cot.
+
+Nurse followed him downstairs.
+
+"If I'm wanted--you can easily send for me," said O'Connell, as he went
+out. As he moved away he dragged at his beard and murmured:
+"Hydrocephalus, not a doubt of it."
+
+Following his departure, Mrs. Reade heard curious and most unwonted
+laughter, and cautiously blundered downstairs to investigate. She found
+the nurse in an advanced condition of hysteria, laughing, gurgling,
+weeping, and intermittently crying in a shrill voice: "Oh! Lord have
+mercy; Lord ha' mercy!"
+
+"Now, see you 'ere, my dear," said Mrs. Reade, when nurse had been
+recovered to a red-eyed sanity, "it's time she was told. I've never 'eld
+with keepin' it from 'er, myself, and I've 'ad more experience than
+many...." Mrs. Reade argued with abundant recourse to parenthesis.
+
+"Is she strog edough?" asked the nurse, still with tears in her voice;
+"cad she bear the sight of hib?" She blew her nose vigorously, and then
+continued with greater clearness: "I'm afraid it may turn her head."
+
+Out of her deep store of wisdom, Mrs. Reade produced a fact which she
+elaborated and confirmed by apt illustration, adducing more particularly
+the instance of Mrs. Harrison's third. "She's 'is mother," was the
+essence of her argument, a fact of deep and strange significance.
+
+The nurse yielded, and so the circumstance of Stott's household was
+changed, and Stott himself was once more able to come home to meals.
+
+The nurse, wisely, left all diplomacy to the capable Mrs. Reade, a woman
+specially fitted by nature for the breaking of news. She delivered a
+long, a record-breaking circumlocution, and it seemed that Ellen Mary,
+who lay with closed eyes, gathered no hint of its import. But when the
+impressive harangue was slowly rustling to collapse like an exhausted
+balloon, she opened her eyes and said quite clearly,
+
+"What's wrong with 'im, then?"
+
+The question had the effect of reinflation, but at last the child itself
+was brought, and it was open-eyed.
+
+The supreme ambition of all great women--and have not all women the
+potentialities of greatness?--is to give birth to a god. That ambition
+it is which is marred by the disappointing birth of a female child--when
+the man-child is born, there is always hope, and slow is the realisation
+of failure. That realisation never came to Ellen Mary. She accepted her
+child with the fear that is adoration. When she dropped her eyes before
+her god's searching glance, she did it in reverence. She hid her faith
+from the world, but in her heart she believed that she was blessed above
+all women. In secret, she worshipped the inscrutable wonder that had
+used her as the instrument of his incarnation. Perhaps she was
+right....
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] A study of genius shows that in a percentage of cases so large as to
+exclude the possibility of coincidence, the exceptional man, whether in
+the world of action, of art, or of letters, seems to inherit his
+magnificent powers through the female line. Sir Francis Galton, it is
+true, did not make a great point of this curious observation, but the
+tendency of more recent analyses is all in the direction of confirming
+the hypothesis; and it would seem to hold good in the converse
+proposition, namely, that the exceptional woman inherits her qualities
+from her father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HIS DEPARTURE FROM STOKE-UNDERHILL
+
+
+I
+
+The village of Stoke was no whit intimidated by the news that Mrs. Reade
+sowed abroad. The women exclaimed and chattered, the men gaped and shook
+their heads, the children hung about the ruinous gate that shut them out
+from the twenty-yard strip of garden which led up to Stott's cottage.
+Curiosity was the dominant emotion. Any excuse was good enough to make
+friendly overtures, but the baby remained invisible to all save Mrs.
+Reade; and the village community kept open ears while the lust of its
+eyes remained, perforce, unsatisfied. If Stott's gate slammed in the
+wind, every door that commanded a view of that gate was opened, and
+heads appeared, and bare arms--the indications of women who nodded to
+each other, shook their heads, pursed their lips and withdrew for the
+time to attend the pressure of household duty. Later, even that gate
+slamming would reinvigorate the gossip of backyards and front doorways.
+
+The first stranger to force an entry was the rector. He was an Oxford
+man who, in his youth, had been an ardent disciple of the school that
+attempts the reconciliation of Religion and Science. He had been
+ambitious, but nature had predetermined his career by giving him a head
+of the wrong shape. At Oxford his limitations had not been clearly
+defined, and on the strength of a certain speech at the Union, he crept
+into a London west-end curacy. There he attempted to demonstrate the
+principle of reconciliation from the pulpit, but his vicar and his
+bishop soon recognised that excellent as were his intentions, he was
+doing better service to agnosticism than to his own religion. As a
+result of this clerical intrigue he was vilely marooned on the savage
+island of Stoke-Underhill, where he might preach as much science as he
+would to the natives, for there was no fear of their comprehending him.
+Fifteen years of Stoke had brought about a reaction. Nature had made him
+a feeble fanatic, and he was now as ardent an opponent of science as he
+had once been a defender. In his little mind he believed that his early
+reading had enabled him to understand all the weaknesses of the
+scientific position. His name was Percy Crashaw.
+
+Mrs. Stott could not deny her rector the right of entry, and he insisted
+on seeing the infant, who was not yet baptised--a shameful neglect,
+according to Crashaw, for the child was nearly six weeks old. Nor had
+Mrs. Stott been "churched." Crashaw had good excuse for pressing his
+call.
+
+Mrs. Stott refused to face the village. She knew that the place was all
+agape, eager to stare at what they considered some "new kind of idiot."
+Let them wait, was Ellen Mary's attitude. Her pride was a later
+development. In those early weeks she feared criticism.
+
+But she granted Crashaw's request to see the child, and after the
+interview (the term is precise) the rector gave way on the question of a
+private ceremony, though he had indignantly opposed the scheme when it
+was first mooted. It may be that he conceived an image of himself with
+that child in his arms, the cynosure of a packed congregation....
+
+Crashaw was one of the influences that hastened the Stotts' departure
+from Stoke. He was so indiscreet. After the christening he would talk.
+His attitude is quite comprehensible. He, the lawgiver of Stoke, had
+been thwarted. He had to find apology for the private baptism he had
+denied to many a sickly infant. Moreover, the Stotts had broken another
+of his ordinances, for father and mother had stood as godparents to
+their own child, and Crashaw himself had been the second godfather
+ordained as necessary by the rubric. He had given way on these important
+points so weakly; he had to find excuse, and he talked himself into a
+false belief with regard to the child he had baptised.
+
+He began with his wife. "I would allow more latitude to medical men," he
+said. "In such a case as this child of the Stotts, for instance; it
+becomes a burden on the community, I might say a danger, yes, a positive
+danger. I am not sure whether I was right in administering the holy
+sacrament of baptism...."
+
+"Oh! Percy! Surely ..." began Mrs. Crashaw.
+
+"One moment, my dear," protested the rector, "I have not fully explained
+the circumstances of the case." And as he warmed to his theme the image
+of Victor Stott grew to a fearful grotesqueness. It loomed as a threat
+over the community and the church. Crashaw quoted, inaccurately,
+statistics of the growth of lunacy, and then went off at a tangent into
+the theory of possession by evil spirits. Since his rejection of
+science, he had lapsed into certain forms of mediaevalism, and he now
+began to dally with the theory of a malign incarnation which he
+elaborated until it became an article of his faith.
+
+To his poorer parishioners he spoke in vague terms, but he changed their
+attitude; he filled them with overawed terror. They were intensely
+curious still, but, now, when the gate was slammed, one saw a face
+pressed to the window, the door remained fast; and the children no
+longer clustered round that gate, but dared each other to run past it;
+which they did, the girls with a scream, the boys with a jeering
+"Yah--ah!" a boast of intrepidity.
+
+This change of temper was soon understood by the persons most concerned.
+Stott grumbled and grew more morose. He had never been intimate with the
+villagers, and now he avoided any intercourse with them. His wife kept
+herself aloof, and her child sheltered from profane observation.
+Naturally, this attitude of the Stotts fostered suspicion. Even the
+hardiest sceptic in the taproom of the Challis Arms began to shake his
+head, to concede that there "moight be soomething in it."
+
+Yet the departure from Stoke might have been postponed indefinitely, if
+it had not been for another intrusion. Both Stott and his wife were
+ready to take up a new idea, but they were slow to conceive it.
+
+
+II
+
+The intruder was the local magnate, the landlord of Stoke, Wenderby,
+Chilborough, a greater part of Ailesworth, two or three minor parishes,
+and, incidentally, of Pym.
+
+This magnate, Henry Challis, was a man of some scholarship, whose
+ambition had been crushed by the weight of his possessions. He had a
+remarkably fine library at Challis Court, but he made little use of it,
+for he spent the greater part of his time in travel. In appearance he
+was rather an ungainly man; his great head and the bulk of his big
+shoulders were something too heavy for his legs.
+
+Crashaw regarded his patron with mixed feelings. For Challis, the man of
+property, the man of high connections, of intimate associations with the
+world of science and letters, Crashaw had a feeling of awed respect; but
+in private he inveighed against the wickedness of Challis, the agnostic,
+the decadent.
+
+When Victor Stott was nearly three months old, the rector met his patron
+one day on the road between Chilborough and Stoke. It was three years
+since their last meeting, and Crashaw noticed that in the interval
+Challis's pointed beard had become streaked with grey.
+
+"Hallo! How d'ye do, Crashaw?" was the squire's casual greeting. "How is
+the Stoke microcosm?"
+
+Crashaw smiled subserviently; he was never quite at his ease in
+Challis's presence. "Rari nantes in gurgite vasto," was the tag he found
+in answer to the question put. However great his contempt for Challis's
+way of life, in his presence Crashaw was often oppressed with a feeling
+of inferiority, a feeling which he fought against but could not subdue.
+The Latin tag was an attempt to win appreciation, it represented a boast
+of equality.
+
+Challis correctly evaluated the rector's attitude; it was with something
+of pity in his mind that he turned and walked beside him.
+
+There was but one item of news from Stoke, and it soon came to the
+surface. Crashaw phrased his description of Victor Stott in terms other
+than those he used in speaking to his wife or to his parishioners; but
+the undercurrent of his virulent superstition did not escape Challis,
+and the attitude of the villagers was made perfectly plain.
+
+"Hm!" was Challis's comment, when the flow of words ceased, "nigroque
+simillima cygno, eh?"
+
+"Ah! of course, you sneer at our petty affairs," said Crashaw.
+
+"By no means. I should like to see this black swan of Stoke," replied
+Challis. "Anything so exceptional interests me."
+
+"No doubt Mrs. Stott would be proud to exhibit the horror," said
+Crashaw. He had a gleam of satisfaction in the thought that even the
+great Henry Challis might be scared. That would, indeed, be a triumph.
+
+"If Mrs. Stott has no objection, of course," said Challis. "Shall we go
+there, now?"
+
+
+III
+
+The visit of Henry Challis marked the first advent of Ellen Mary's pride
+in the exhibition of her wonder. After the King and the Royal
+Family--superhuman beings, infinitely remote--the great landlord of the
+neighbourhood stood as a symbol of temporal power to the whole district.
+The budding socialist of the taproom might sneer, and make threat that
+the time was coming when he, the boaster, and Challis, the landlord,
+would have equal rights; but in public the socialist kow-towed to his
+master with a submission no less obsequious than that of the humblest
+conservative on the estate.
+
+Mrs. Stott dropped a deep curtsy when, opening the door to the
+autocratic summons of Crashaw's rat-a-tat, she saw the great man of the
+district at her threshold. Challis raised his hat. Crashaw did not
+imitate his example; he was all officiousness, he had the air of a chief
+superintendent of police.
+
+"Oh! Mrs. Stott, we should like to come in for a few minutes. Mr.
+Challis would like to see your child."
+
+"Damn the fool!" was Challis's thought, but he gave it less abrupt
+expression. "That is, of course, if it is quite convenient to you, Mrs.
+Stott. I can come at some other time...."
+
+"Please walk in, sir," replied Mrs. Stott, and curtsied again as she
+stood aside.
+
+Superintendent Crashaw led the way....
+
+Challis called again next day, by himself this time; and the day after
+he dropped in at six o'clock while Mr. and Mrs. Stott were at tea. He
+put them at their ease by some magic of his personality, and insisted
+that they should continue their meal while he sat among the collapsed
+springs of the horsehair armchair. He leaned forward, swinging his stick
+as a pendulum between his knees, and shot out questions as to the
+Stotts' relations with the neighbours. And always he had an attentive
+eye on the cradle that stood near the fire.
+
+"The neighbours are not highly intelligent, I suspect," said Challis.
+"Even Mr. Crashaw, I fancy, does not appreciate the--peculiarities of
+the situation."
+
+"He's worse than any," interpolated Stott. Ellen Mary sat in the shadow;
+there was a new light in her eyes, a foretaste of glory.
+
+"Ah! a little narrow, a little dogmatic, no doubt," replied Challis. "I
+was going to propose that you might prefer to live at Pym."
+
+"Much farther for me," muttered Stott. He had mixed with nobility on the
+cricket field, and was not overawed.
+
+"No doubt; but you have other interests to consider, interests of far
+greater importance." Challis shifted his gaze from the cradle, and
+looked Stott in the face. "I understand that Mrs. Stott does not care to
+take her child out in the village. Isn't that so?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Ellen, to whom this question was addressed. "I don't
+care to make an exhibition of 'im."
+
+"Quite right, quite right," went on Challis, "but it is very necessary
+that the child should have air. I consider it very necessary, a matter
+of the first importance that the child should have air," he repeated.
+His gaze had shifted back to the cradle again. The child lay with open
+eyes, staring up at the ceiling.
+
+"Now, there is an excellent cottage at Pym which I will have put in
+repair for you at once," continued Challis. "It is one of two together,
+but next door there are only old Metcalfe and his wife and daughter, who
+will give you no trouble. And really, Mrs. Stott," he tore his regard
+from the cradle for a moment, "there is no reason in the world why you
+should fear the attention of your neighbours. Here, in Stoke, I admit,
+they have been under a complete misapprehension, but I fancy that there
+were special reasons for that. In Pym you will have few neighbours, and
+you need not, I'm sure, fear their criticism."
+
+"They got one idiot there, already," Stott remarked somewhat sulkily.
+
+"You surely do not regard your own child as likely to develop into an
+idiot, Stott!" Challis's tone was one of rebuke.
+
+Stott shifted in his chair and his eyes flickered uncertainly in the
+direction of the cradle. "Dr. O'Connell says 'twill," he said.
+
+"When did he see the child last?" asked Challis.
+
+"Not since 'twere a week old, sir," replied Ellen.
+
+"In that case his authority goes for nothing, and, then, by the way, I
+suppose the child has not been vaccinated?"
+
+"Not yet, sir."
+
+"Better have that done. Get Walters. I'll make myself responsible. I'll
+get him to come."
+
+Before Challis left, it was decided that the Stotts should move to Pym
+in February.
+
+When the great landowner had gone, Mrs. Stott looked wistfully at her
+husband.
+
+"You ain't fair to the child, George," she said. "There's more than you
+or any one sees, more than Mr. Challis, even."
+
+Stott stared moodily into the fire.
+
+"And it won't be so out of the way far for you, at Pym, with your bike,"
+she continued; "and we _can't_ stop 'ere."
+
+"We might 'a took a place in Ailesworth," said Stott.
+
+"But it'll be so much 'ealthier for 'im up at Pym," protested Ellen.
+"It'll be fine air up there for 'im."
+
+"Oh! _'im_. Yes, all right for _'im_," said Stott, and spat into the
+fire. Then he took his cap and went out. He kept his eyes away from the
+cradle.
+
+
+IV
+
+Harvey Walters lived in Wenderby, but his consulting-rooms were in
+Harley Street, and he did not practise in his own neighbourhood;
+nevertheless he vaccinated Victor Stott to oblige Challis.
+
+"Well?" asked Challis a few days later, "what do you make of him,
+Walters? No cliches, now, and no professional jargon."
+
+"Candidly, I don't know," replied Walters, after a thoughtful interval.
+
+"How many times have you seen him?"
+
+"Four, altogether."
+
+"Good patient? Healthy flesh and that sort of thing?"
+
+"Splendid."
+
+"Did he look you in the eyes?"
+
+"Once, only once, the first time I visited the house."
+
+Challis nodded. "My own experience, exactly. And did you return that
+look of his?"
+
+"Not willingly. It was, I confess, not altogether a pleasant
+experience."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Challis was silent for a few moments, and it was Walters who took up the
+interrogatory.
+
+"Challis!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Have you, now, some feeling of, shall I say, distaste for the child? Do
+you feel that you have no wish to see it again?"
+
+"Is it that exactly?" parried Challis.
+
+"If not, what is it?" asked Walters.
+
+"In my own case," said Challis, "I can find an analogy only in my
+attitude towards my 'head' at school. In his presence I was always
+intimidated by my consciousness of his superior learning. I felt
+unpleasantly ignorant, small, negligible. Curiously enough, I see
+something of the same expression of feeling in the attitude of that
+feeble Crashaw to myself. Well, one makes an attempt at self-assertion,
+a kind of futile bragging; and one knows the futility of it--at the
+time. But, afterwards, one finds excuse and seeks to belittle the
+personality and attainment of the person one feared. At school we did
+not love the 'head,' and, as schoolboys will, we were always trying to
+run him down. 'Next time he rags me, I'll cheek him,' was our usual
+boast--but we never did. Let's be honest, Walters, are not you and I
+exhibiting much the same attitude towards this extraordinary child?
+Didn't he produce the effect upon you that I've described? Didn't you
+have a little of the 'fifth form' feeling,--a boy under examination?"
+
+Walters smiled and screwed his mouth on one side. "The thing is so
+absurd," he said.
+
+"That is what we used to say at school," replied Challis.
+
+
+V
+
+The Stotts' move to Pym was not marked by any incident. Mrs. Stott and
+her boy were not unduly stared upon as they left Stoke--the children
+were in school--and their entry into the new cottage was uneventful.
+
+They moved on a Thursday. On Sunday morning they had their first
+visitor.
+
+He came mooning round the fence that guarded the Stotts' garden from the
+little lane--it was hardly more than a footpath. He had a great
+shapeless head that waggled heavily on his shoulders, his eyes were
+lustreless, and his mouth hung open, frequently his tongue lagged out.
+He made strange, inhuman noises. "A-ba-ba," was his nearest approach to
+speech.
+
+"Now, George," called Mrs. Stott, "look at that. It's Mrs. 'Arrison's
+boy what Mrs. Reade's spoke about. Now, is 'e anythink like ..." she
+paused, "anythink like 'im?" and she indicated the cradle in the
+sitting-room.
+
+"What's 'e want, 'angin' round 'ere?" replied Stott, disregarding the
+comparison. "'Ere, get off," he called, and he went into the garden and
+picked up a stick.
+
+The idiot shambled away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HIS FATHER'S DESERTION
+
+
+I
+
+The strongest of all habits is that of acquiescence. It is this habit of
+submission that explains the admired patience and long-suffering of the
+abjectly poor. The lower the individual falls, the more unconquerable
+becomes the inertia of mind which interferes between him and revolt
+against his condition. All the miseries of the flesh, even starvation,
+seem preferable to the making of an effort great enough to break this
+habit of submission.
+
+Ginger Stott was not poor. For a man in his station of life he was
+unusually well provided for, but in him the habit of acquiescence was
+strongly rooted. Before his son was a year old, Stott had grown to
+loathe his home, to dread his return to it, yet it did not occur to him
+until another year had passed that he could, if he would, set up another
+establishment on his own account; that he could, for instance, take a
+room in Ailesworth, and leave his wife and child in the cottage. For two
+years he did not begin to think of this idea, and then it was suddenly
+forced upon him.
+
+Ever since they had overheard those strangely intelligent
+self-communings, the Stotts had been perfectly aware that their
+wonderful child could talk if he would. Ellen Mary, pondering that
+single expression, had read a world of meaning into her son's murmurs of
+"learning." In her simple mind she understood that his deliberate
+withholding of speech was a reserve against some strange manifestation.
+
+The manifestation, when it came, was as remarkable as it was unexpected.
+
+The armchair in which Henry Challis had once sat was a valued
+possession, dedicated by custom to the sole use of George Stott. Ever
+since he had been married, Stott had enjoyed the full and undisputed use
+of that chair. Except at his meals, he never sat in any other, and he
+had formed a fixed habit of throwing himself into that chair immediately
+on his return from his work at the County Ground.
+
+One evening in November, however, when his son was just over two years
+old, Stott found his sacred chair occupied. He hesitated a moment, and
+then went in to the kitchen to find his wife.
+
+"That child's in my chair," he said.
+
+Ellen was setting the tray for her husband's tea. "Yes ... I know," she
+replied. "I--I did mention it, but 'e 'asn't moved."
+
+"Well, take 'im out," ordered Stott, but he dropped his voice.
+
+"Does it matter?" asked his wife. "Tea's just ready. Time that's done
+'e'll be ready for 'is bath."
+
+"Why can't you move 'im?" persisted Stott gloomily. "'E knows it's my
+chair."
+
+"There! kettle's boilin', come in and 'ave your tea," equivocated the
+diplomatic Ellen.
+
+During the progress of the meal, the child still sat quietly in his
+father's chair, his little hands resting on his knees, his eyes wide
+open, their gaze abstracted, as usual, from all earthly concerns.
+
+But after tea Stott was heroic. He had reached the limit of his
+endurance. One of his deep-seated habits was being broken, and with it
+snapped his habit of acquiescence. He rose to his feet and faced his son
+with determination, and Stott had a bull-dog quality about him that was
+not easily defeated.
+
+"Look 'ere! Get out!" he said. "That's _my_ chair!"
+
+The child very deliberately withdrew his attention from infinity and
+regarded the dogged face and set jaw of his father. Stott returned the
+stare for the fraction of a second, and then his eyes wavered and
+dropped, but he maintained his resolution.
+
+"You got to get out," he said, "or I'll make you."
+
+Ellen Mary gripped the edge of the table, but she made no attempt to
+interfere.
+
+There was a tense, strained silence. Then Stott began to breathe
+heavily. He lifted his long arms for a moment and raised his eyes, he
+even made a tentative step towards the usurped throne.
+
+The child sat calm, motionless; his eyes were fixed upon his father's
+face with a sublime, undeviating confidence.
+
+Stott's arms fell to his sides again, he shuffled his feet. One more
+effort he made, a sudden, vicious jerk, as though he would do the thing
+quickly and be finished with it; then he shivered, his resolution broke,
+and he shambled evasively to the door.
+
+"God damn," he muttered. At the door he turned for an instant, swore
+again in the same words, and went out into the night.
+
+To Stott, moodily pacing the Common, this thing was incomprehensible,
+some horrible infraction of the law of normal life, something to be
+condemned; altered, if possible. It was unprecedented, and it was,
+therefore, wrong, unnatural, diabolic, a violation of the sound
+principles which uphold human society.
+
+To Ellen Mary it was merely a miracle, the foreshadowing of greater
+miracles to come. And to her was manifested, also, a minor miracle, for
+when his father had gone, the child looked at his mother and gave out
+his first recorded utterance.
+
+"'Oo _is_ God?" he said.
+
+Ellen Mary tried to explain, but before she had stammered out many
+words, her son abstracted his gaze, climbed down out of the chair, and
+intimated with his usual grunt that he desired his bath and his bed.
+
+
+II
+
+The depths of Stott were stirred that night. He had often said that "he
+wouldn't stand it much longer," but the words were a mere formula: he
+had never even weighed their intention. As he paced the Common, he
+muttered them again to the night, with new meaning; he saw new
+possibilities, and saw that they were practicable. "I've 'ad enough,"
+was his new phrase, and he added another that gave evidence of a new
+attitude. "Why not?" he said again and again. "And why not?"
+
+Stott's mind was not analytical. He did not examine his problem, weigh
+this and that and draw a balanced deduction. He merely saw a picture of
+peace and quiet, in a room at Ailesworth, in convenient proximity to his
+work (he made an admirable groundsman and umpire, his work absorbed him)
+and, perhaps, he conceived some dim ideal of pleasant evenings spent in
+the companionship of those who thought in the same terms as himself;
+who shared in his one interest; whose speech was of form, averages, the
+preparation of wickets, and all the detail of cricket.
+
+Stott's ambition to have a son and to teach him the mysteries of his
+father's success had been dwindling for some time past. On this night it
+was finally put aside. Stott's "I've 'ad enough" may be taken to include
+that frustrated ideal. No more experiments for him, was the
+pronouncement that summed up his decision.
+
+Still there were difficulties. Economically he was free, he could allow
+his wife thirty shillings a week, more than enough for her support and
+that of her child; but--what would she say, how would she take his
+determination? A determination it was, not a proposal. And the
+neighbours, what would they say? Stott anticipated a fuss. "She'll say
+I've married 'er, and it's my duty to stay by 'er," was his anticipation
+of his wife's attitude. He did not profess to understand the ways of the
+sex, but some rumours of misunderstandings between husbands and wives of
+his own class had filtered through his absorption in cricket.
+
+He stumbled home with a mind prepared for dissension.
+
+He found his wife stitching by the fire. The door at the foot of the
+stairs was closed. The room presented an aspect of cleanly, cheerful
+comfort; but Stott entered with dread, not because he feared to meet his
+wife, but because there was a terror sleeping in that house.
+
+His armchair was empty now, but he hesitated before he sat down in it.
+He took off his cap and rubbed the seat and back of the chair
+vigorously: a child of evil had polluted it, the chair might still hold
+enchantment....
+
+"I've 'ad enough," was his preface, and there was no need for any
+further explanation.
+
+Ellen Mary let her hands fall into her lap, and stared dreamily at the
+fire.
+
+"I'm sorry it's come to this, George," she said, "but it 'asn't been my
+fault no more'n it's been your'n. Of course I've seen it a-comin', and I
+knowed it _'ad_ to be, some time; but I don't think there need be any
+'ard words over it. I don't expec' you to understand 'im, no more'n I do
+myself--it isn't in nature as you should, but all said and done, there's
+no bones broke, and if we 'ave to part, there's no reason as we
+shouldn't part peaceable."
+
+That speech said nearly everything. Afterwards it was only a question of
+making arrangements, and in that there was no difficulty.
+
+Another man might have felt a little hurt, a little neglected by the
+absence of any show of feeling on his wife's part, but Stott passed it
+by. He was singularly free from all sentimentality; certain primitive,
+human emotions seem to have played no part in his character. At this
+moment he certainly had no thought that he was being carelessly treated;
+he wanted to be free from the oppression of that horror upstairs--so he
+figured it--and the way was made easy for him.
+
+He nodded approval, and made no sign of any feeling.
+
+"I shall go to-morrer," he said, and then, "I'll sleep down 'ere
+to-night." He indicated the sofa upon which he had slept for so many
+nights at Stoke, after his tragedy had been born to him.
+
+Ellen Mary had said nearly everything, but when she had made up a bed
+for her husband in the sitting-room, she paused, candle in hand, before
+she bade him good-night.
+
+"Don't wish 'im 'arm, George," she said. "'E's different from us, and we
+don't understand 'im proper, but some day----"
+
+"I don't wish 'im no 'arm," replied Stott, and shuddered. "I don't wish
+'im no 'arm," he repeated, as he kicked off the boot he had been
+unlacing.
+
+"You mayn't never see 'im again," added Ellen Mary.
+
+Stott stood upright. In his socks, he looked noticeably shorter than his
+wife. "I suppose not," he said, and gave a deep sigh of relief. "Well,
+thank Gawd for that, anyway."
+
+Ellen Mary drew her lips together. For some dim, unrealised reason, she
+wished her husband to leave the cottage with a feeling of goodwill
+towards the child, but she saw that her wish was little likely to be
+fulfilled.
+
+"Well, good-night, George," she said, after a few seconds of silence,
+and she added pathetically, as she turned at the foot of the stairs:
+"Don't wish 'im no harm."
+
+"I won't," was all the assurance she received.
+
+When she had gone, and the door was closed behind her, Stott padded
+silently to the window and looked out. A young moon was dipping into a
+bank of cloud, and against the feeble brightness he could see an
+uncertain outline of bare trees. He pulled the curtain across the
+window, and turned back to the warm cheerfulness of the room.
+
+"Shan't never see 'im again," he murmured, "thank Gawd!" He undressed
+quietly, blew out the lamp and got between the sheets of his improvised
+bed. For some minutes he stared at the leaping shadows on the ceiling.
+He was wondering why he had ever been afraid of the child. "After all,
+'e's only a blarsted freak," was the last thought in his mind before he
+fell asleep.
+
+And with that pronouncement Stott passes out of the history of the
+Hampdenshire Wonder. He was in many ways an exceptional man, and his
+name will always be associated with the splendid successes of
+Hampdenshire cricket, both before and after the accident that destroyed
+his career as a bowler. He was not spoiled by his triumphs: those two
+years of celebrity never made Stott conceited, and there are undoubtedly
+many traits in his character which call for our admiration. He is still
+in his prime, an active agent in finding talent for his county, and in
+developing that talent when found. Hampdenshire has never come into the
+field with weak bowling, and all the credit belongs to Ginger Stott.
+
+One sees that he was not able to appreciate the wonderful gifts of his
+own son, but Stott was an ignorant man, and men of intellectual
+attainment failed even as Stott failed in this respect. Ginger Stott was
+a success in his own walk of life, and that fact should command our
+admiration. It is not for us to judge whether his attainments were more
+or less noble than the attainments of his son.
+
+
+III
+
+One morning, two days after Stott had left the cottage, Ellen Mary was
+startled by the sudden entrance of her child into the sitting-room. He
+toddled in hastily from the garden, and pointed with excitement through
+the window.
+
+Ellen Mary was frightened; she had never seen her child other than
+deliberate, calm, judicial, in all his movements. In a sudden spasm of
+motherly love she bent to pick him up, to caress him.
+
+"No," said the Wonder, with something that approached disgust in his
+tone and attitude. "No," he repeated. "What's 'e want 'angin' round
+'ere? Send 'im off." He pointed again to the window.
+
+Ellen Mary looked out and saw a grinning, slobbering obscenity at the
+gate. Stott had scared the idiot away, but in some curious, inexplicable
+manner he had learned that his persecutor and enemy had gone, and he had
+returned, and had made overtures to the child that walked so sedately up
+and down the path of the little garden.
+
+Ellen Mary went out. "You be off," she said.
+
+"A-ba, a-ba-ba," bleated the idiot, and pointed at the house.
+
+"Be off, I tell you!" said Ellen Mary fiercely. But still the idiot
+babbled and pointed.
+
+Ellen Mary stooped to pick up a stick. The idiot blenched; he understood
+that movement well enough, though it was a stone he anticipated, not a
+stick; with a foolish cry he dropped his arms and slouched away down the
+lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HIS DEBT TO HENRY CHALLIS
+
+
+I
+
+Challis was out of England for more than three years after that one
+brief intrusion of his into the affairs of Mr. and Mrs. Stott. During
+the interval he was engaged upon those investigations, the results of
+which are embodied in his monograph on the primitive peoples of the
+Melanesian Archipelago. It may be remembered that he followed Dr. W. H.
+R. Rivers' and Dr. C. G. Seligmann's inquiry into the practice and
+theory of native customs. Challis developed his study more particularly
+with reference to the earlier evolution of Totemism, and he was able by
+his patient work among the Polynesians of Tikopia and Ontong Java, and
+his comparisons of those sporadic tribes with the Papuasians of Eastern
+New Guinea, to correct some of the inferences with regard to the origins
+of exogamy made by Dr. J. G. Frazer in his great work on that subject,
+published some years before. A summary of Challis's argument may be
+found in vol. li. of the _Journal of the Royal Anthropological
+Institute_.
+
+When he returned to England, Challis shut himself up at Chilborough. He
+had engaged a young Cambridge man, Gregory Lewes, as his secretary and
+librarian, and the two devoted all their time to planning, writing, and
+preparing the monograph referred to.
+
+In such circumstances it is hardly remarkable that Challis should have
+completely forgotten the existence of the curious child which had
+intrigued his interest nearly four years earlier, and it was not until
+he had been back at Challis Court for more than eight months, that the
+incursion of Percy Crashaw revived his memory of the phenomenon.
+
+The library at Challis Court occupies a suite of three rooms. The first
+and largest of the three is part of the original structure of the house.
+Its primitive use had been that of a chapel, a one-storey building
+jutting out from the west wing. This Challis had converted into a very
+practicable library with a continuous gallery running round at a height
+of seven feet from the floor, and in it he had succeeded in arranging
+some 20,000 volumes. But as his store of books grew--and at one period
+it had grown very rapidly--he had been forced to build, and so he had
+added first one and then the other of the two additional rooms which
+became necessary. Outside, the wing had the appearance of an unduly
+elongated chapel, as he had continued the original roof over his
+addition, and copied the style of the old chapel architecture. The only
+external alteration he had made had been the lowering of the sills of
+the windows.
+
+It was in the furthest of these three rooms that Challis and his
+secretary worked, and it was from here that they saw the gloomy figure
+of the Rev. Percy Crashaw coming up the drive.
+
+This was the third time he had called. His two former visits had been
+unrewarded, but that morning a letter had come from him, couched in
+careful phrases, the purport of which had been a request for an
+interview on a "matter of some moment."
+
+Challis frowned, and rose from among an ordered litter of manuscripts.
+
+"I shall have to see this man," he said to Lewes, and strode hastily out
+of the library.
+
+Crashaw was perfunctorily apologetic, and Challis, looking somewhat out
+of place, smoking a heavy wooden pipe in the disused, bleak
+drawing-room, waited, almost silent, until his visitor should come to
+the point.
+
+"... and the--er--matter of some moment, I mentioned," Crashaw mumbled
+on, "is, I should say, not altogether irrelevant to the work you are at
+present engaged upon."
+
+"Indeed!" commented Challis, with a lift of his thick eyebrows, "no
+Polynesians come to settle in Stoke, I trust?"
+
+"On broad lines, relevant on broad, anthropological lines, I mean," said
+Crashaw.
+
+Challis grunted. "Go on!" he said.
+
+"You may remember that curious--er--abnormal child of the Stotts?" asked
+Crashaw.
+
+"Stotts? Wait a minute. Yes! Curious infant with an abnormally
+intelligent expression and the head of a hydrocephalic?"
+
+Crashaw nodded. "Its development has upset me in a most unusual way," he
+continued. "I must confess that I am entirely at a loss, and I really
+believe that you are the only person who can give me any intelligent
+assistance in the matter."
+
+"Very good of you," murmured Challis.
+
+"You see," said Crashaw, warming to his subject and interlacing his
+fingers, "I happen, by the merest accident, I may say, to be the child's
+godfather."
+
+"Ah! you have responsibilities!" commented Challis, with the first glint
+of amusement in his eyes.
+
+"I have," said Crashaw, "undoubtedly I have." He leaned forward with his
+hands still clasped together, and rested his forearms on his thighs. As
+he talked he worked his hands up and down from the wrists, by way of
+emphasis. "I am aware," he went on, "that on one point I can expect
+little sympathy from you, but I make an appeal to you, nevertheless, as
+a man of science and--and a magistrate; for ... for assistance."
+
+He paused and looked up at Challis, received a nod of encouragement and
+developed his grievance.
+
+"I want to have the child certified as an idiot, and sent to an asylum."
+
+"On what grounds?"
+
+"He is undoubtedly lacking mentally," said Crashaw, "and his influence
+is, or may be, malignant."
+
+"Explain," suggested Challis.
+
+For a few seconds Crashaw paused, intent on the pattern of the carpet,
+and worked his hands slowly. Challis saw that the man's knuckles were
+white, that he was straining his hands together.
+
+"He has denied God," he said at last with great solemnity.
+
+Challis rose abruptly, and went over to the window; the next words were
+spoken to his back.
+
+"I have, myself, heard this infant of four years use the most abhorrent
+blasphemy."
+
+Challis had composed himself. "Oh! I say; that's bad," he said as he
+turned towards the room again.
+
+Crashaw's head was still bowed. "And whatever may be your own
+philosophic doubts," he said, "I think you will agree with me that in
+such a case as this, something should be done. To me it is horrible,
+most horrible."
+
+"Couldn't you give me any details?" asked Challis.
+
+"They are most repugnant to me," answered Crashaw.
+
+"Quite, quite! I understand. But if you want any assistance.... Or do
+you expect me to investigate?"
+
+"I thought it my duty, as his godfather, to see to the child's spiritual
+welfare," said Crashaw, ignoring the question put to him, "although he
+is not, now, one of my parishioners. I first went to Pym some few months
+ago, but the mother interposed between me and the child. I was not
+permitted to see him. It was not until a few weeks back that I met
+him--on the Common, alone. Of course, I recognised him at once. He is
+quite unmistakable."
+
+"And then?" prompted Challis.
+
+"I spoke to him, and he replied with, with--an abstracted air, without
+looking at me. He has not the appearance in any way of a normal child. I
+made a few ordinary remarks to him, and then I asked him if he knew his
+catechism. He replied that he did not know the word 'catechism.' I may
+mention that he speaks the dialect of the common people, but he has a
+much larger vocabulary. His mother has taught him to read, it appears."
+
+"He seems to have a curiously apt intelligence," interpolated Challis.
+
+Crashaw wrung his clasped hands and put the comment on one side. "I
+then spoke to him of some of the broad principles of the Church's
+teaching," he continued. "He listened quietly, without interruption, and
+when I stopped, he prompted me with questions."
+
+"One minute!" said Challis. "Tell me; what sort of questions? That is
+most important."
+
+"I do not remember precisely," returned Crashaw, "but one, I think, was
+as to the sources of the Bible. I did not read anything beyond simple
+and somewhat unusual curiosity into those questions, I may say.... I
+talked to him for some considerable time--I dare say for more than an
+hour...."
+
+"No signs of idiocy, apparently, during all this?"
+
+"I consider it less a case of idiocy than one of possession, maleficent
+possession," replied Crashaw. He did not see his host's grim smile.
+
+"Well, and the blasphemy?" prompted Challis.
+
+"At the end of my instruction, the child, still looking away from me,
+shook his head and said that what I had told him was not true. I confess
+that I was staggered. Possibly I lost my temper, somewhat. I may have
+grown rather warm in my speech. And at last ..." Crashaw clenched his
+hands and spoke in such a low voice that Challis could hardly hear him.
+"At last he turned to me and said things which I could not possibly
+repeat, which I pray that I may never hear again from the mouth of any
+living being."
+
+"Profanities, obscenities, er--swear-words," suggested Challis.
+
+"Blasphemy, _blasphemy_," cried Crashaw. "Oh! I wonder that I did not
+injure the child."
+
+Challis moved over to the window again. For more than a minute there was
+silence in that big, neglected-looking room. Then Crashaw's feelings
+began to find vent in words, in a long stream of insistent
+asseverations, pitched on a rising note that swelled into a diapason of
+indignation. He spoke of the position and power of his Church, of its
+influence for good among the uneducated, agricultural population among
+which he worked. He enlarged on the profound necessity for a living
+religion among the poorer classes; and on the revolutionary tendency
+towards socialism, which would be encouraged if the great restraining
+power of a creed that enforced subservience to temporal power was once
+shaken. And, at last, he brought his arguments to a head by saying that
+the example of a child of four years old, openly defying a minister of
+the Church, and repudiating the very conception of the Deity, was an
+example which might produce a profound effect upon the minds of a
+slow-thinking people; that such an example might be the leaven which
+would leaven the whole lump; and that for the welfare of the whole
+neighbourhood it was an instant necessity that the child should be put
+under restraint, his tongue bridled, and any opportunity to proclaim his
+blasphemous doctrines forcibly denied to him. Long before he had
+concluded, Crashaw was on his feet, pacing the room, declaiming, waving
+his arms.
+
+Challis stood, unanswering, by the window. He did not seem to hear; he
+did not even shrug his shoulders. Not till Crashaw had brought his
+argument to a culmination, and boomed into a dramatic silence, did
+Challis turn and look at him.
+
+"But you cannot confine a child in an asylum on those grounds," he said;
+"the law does not permit it."
+
+"The Church is above the law," replied Crashaw.
+
+"Not in these days," said Challis; "it is by law established!"
+
+Crashaw began to speak again, but Challis waved him down. "Quite, quite.
+I see your point," he said, "but I must see this child myself. Believe
+me, I will see what can be done. I will, at least, try to prevent his
+spreading his opinions among the yokels." He smiled grimly. "I quite
+agree with you that that is a consummation which is not to be desired."
+
+"You will see him soon?" asked Crashaw.
+
+"To-day," returned Challis.
+
+"And you will let me see you again, afterwards?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Crashaw still hesitated for a moment. "I might, perhaps, come with you,"
+he ventured.
+
+"On no account," said Challis.
+
+
+II
+
+Gregory Lewes was astonished at the long absence of his chief; he was
+more astonished when his chief returned.
+
+"I want you to come up with me to Pym, Lewes," said Challis; "one of my
+tenants has been confounding the rector of Stoke. It is a matter that
+must be attended to."
+
+Lewes was a fair-haired, hard-working young man, with a bent for science
+in general that had not yet crystallised into any special study. He had
+a curious sense of humour, that proved something of an obstacle in the
+way of specialisation. He did not take Challis's speech seriously.
+
+"Are you going as a magistrate?" he asked; "or is it a matter for
+scientific investigation?"
+
+"Both," said Challis. "Come along!"
+
+"Are you serious, sir?" Lewes still doubted.
+
+"Intensely. I'll explain as we go," said Challis.
+
+It is not more than a mile and a half from Challis Court to Pym. The
+nearest way is by a cart track through the beech woods, that winds up
+the hill to the Common. In winter this track is almost impassable, over
+boot-top in heavy mud; but the early spring had been fairly dry, and
+Challis chose this route.
+
+As they walked, Challis went through the early history of Victor Stott,
+so far as it was known to him. "I had forgotten the child," he said; "I
+thought it would die. You see, it is by way of being an extraordinary
+freak of nature. It has, or had, a curious look of intelligence. You
+must remember that when I saw it, it was only a few months old. But even
+then it conveyed in some inexplicable way a sense of power. Every one
+felt it. There was Harvey Walters, for instance--he vaccinated it; I
+made him confess that the child made him feel like a school-boy. Only,
+you understand, it had not spoken then----"
+
+"What conveyed that sense of power?" asked Lewes.
+
+"The way it had of looking at you, staring you out of countenance,
+sizing you up and rejecting you. It did that, I give you my word; it did
+all that at a few months old, and without the power of speech. Only, you
+see, I thought it was merely a freak of some kind, some abnormality that
+disgusted one in an unanalysed way. And I thought it would die. I
+certainly thought it would die. I am most eager to see this new
+development."
+
+"I haven't heard. It confounded Crashaw, you say? And it cannot be more
+than four or five years old now?"
+
+"Four; four and a half," returned Challis, and then the conversation was
+interrupted by the necessity of skirting a tiny morass of wet leaf-mould
+that lay in a hollow.
+
+"Confounded Crashaw? I should think so," Challis went on, when they had
+found firm going again. "The good man would not soil his devoted tongue
+by any condescension to oratio recta, but I gathered that the child had
+made light of his divine authority."
+
+"Great Caesar!" ejaculated Lewes; "but that is immense. What did Crashaw
+do--shake him?"
+
+"No; he certainly did not lay hands on him at all. His own expression
+was that he did not know how it was he did not do the child an injury.
+That is one of the things that interest me enormously. That power I
+spoke of must have been retained. Crashaw must have been blue with
+anger; he could hardly repeat the story to me, he was so agitated. It
+would have surprised me less if he had told me he had murdered the
+child. That I could have understood, perfectly."
+
+"It is, of course, quite incomprehensible to me, as yet," commented
+Lewes.
+
+When they came out of the woods on to the stretch of common from which
+you can see the great swelling undulations of the Hampden Hills, Challis
+stopped. A spear of April sunshine had pierced the load of cloud towards
+the west, and the bank of wood behind them gave shelter from the cold
+wind that had blown fiercely all the afternoon.
+
+"It is a fine prospect," said Challis, with a sweep of his hand. "I
+sometimes feel, Lewes, that we are over-intent on our own little narrow
+interests. Here are you and I, busying ourselves in an attempt to throw
+some little light--a very little it must be--on some petty problems of
+the origin of our race. We are looking downwards, downwards always;
+digging in old muck-heaps; raking up all kinds of unsavoury rubbish to
+prove that we are born out of the dirt. And we have never a thought for
+the future in all our work,--a future that may be glorious, who knows?
+Here, perhaps in this village, insignificant from most points of view,
+but set in a country that should teach us to raise our eyes from the
+ground; here, in this tiny hamlet, is living a child who may become a
+greater than Socrates or Shakespeare, a child who may revolutionise our
+conceptions of time and space. There have been great men in the past who
+have done that, Lewes; there is no reason for us to doubt that still
+greater men may succeed them."
+
+"No; there is no reason for us to doubt that," said Lewes, and they
+walked on in silence towards the Stotts' cottage.
+
+
+III
+
+Challis knocked and walked in. They found Ellen Mary and her son at the
+tea-table.
+
+The mother rose to her feet and dropped a respectful curtsy. The boy
+glanced once at Gregory Lewes and then continued his meal as if he were
+unaware of any strange presence in the room.
+
+"I'm sorry. I am afraid we are interrupting you," Challis apologised.
+"Pray sit down, Mrs. Stott, and go on with your tea."
+
+"Thank you, sir. I'd just finished, sir," said Ellen Mary, and remained
+standing with an air of quiet deference.
+
+Challis took the celebrated armchair, and motioned Lewes to the
+window-sill, the nearest available seat for him. "Please sit down, Mrs.
+Stott," he said, and Ellen Mary sat, apologetically.
+
+The boy pushed his cup towards his mother, and pointed to the teapot; he
+made a grunting sound to attract her attention.
+
+"You'll excuse me, sir," murmured Ellen Mary, and she refilled the cup
+and passed it back to her son, who received it without any
+acknowledgment. Challis and Lewes were observing the boy intently, but
+he took not the least notice of their scrutiny. He discovered no trace
+of self-consciousness; Henry Challis and Gregory Lewes appeared to have
+no place in the world of his abstraction.
+
+The figure the child presented to his two observers was worthy of
+careful scrutiny.
+
+At the age of four and a half years, the Wonder was bald, save for a few
+straggling wisps of reddish hair above the ears and at the base of the
+skull, and a weak, sparse down, of the same colour, on the top of his
+head. The eyebrows, too, were not marked by any line of hair, but the
+eyelashes were thick, though short, and several shades darker than the
+hair on the skull.
+
+The face is not so easily described. The mouth and chin were relatively
+small, overshadowed by that broad cliff of forehead, but they were firm,
+the chin well moulded, the lips thin and compressed. The nose was
+unusual when seen in profile. There was no sign of a bony bridge, but it
+was markedly curved and jutted out at a curious angle from the line of
+the face. The nostrils were wide and open. None of these features
+produced any effect of childishness; but this effect was partly achieved
+by the contours of the cheeks, and by the fact that there was no
+indication of any lines on the face.
+
+The eyes nearly always wore their usual expression of abstraction. It
+was very rarely that the Wonder allowed his intelligence to be exhibited
+by that medium. When he did, the effect was strangely disconcerting,
+blinding. One received an impression of extraordinary concentration: it
+was as though for an instant the boy was able to give one a glimpse of
+the wonderful force of his intellect. When he looked one in the face
+with intention, and suddenly allowed one to realise, as it were, all the
+dominating power of his brain, one shrank into insignificance, one felt
+as an ignorant, intelligent man may feel when confronted with some
+elaborate theorem of the higher mathematics. "Is it possible that any
+one can really understand these things?" such a man might think with
+awe, and in the same way one apprehended some vast, inconceivable
+possibilities of mind-function when the Wonder looked at one with, as I
+have said, intention.
+
+He was dressed in a little jacket-suit, and wore a linen collar; the
+knickerbockers, loose and badly cut, fell a little below the knees. His
+stockings were of worsted, his boots clumsy and thick-soled, though
+relatively tiny. One had the impression always that his body was fragile
+and small, but as a matter of fact the body and limbs were, if anything,
+slightly better developed than those of the average child of four and a
+half years.
+
+Challis had ample opportunity to make these observations at various
+periods. He began them as he sat in the Stotts' cottage. At first he did
+not address the boy directly.
+
+"I hear your son has been having a religious controversy with Mr.
+Crashaw," was his introduction to the object of his visit.
+
+"Indeed, sir!" Plainly this was not news to Mrs. Stott.
+
+"Your son told you?" suggested Challis.
+
+"Oh! no, sir, 'e never told me," replied Mrs. Stott, "'twas Mr. Crashaw.
+'E's been 'ere several times lately."
+
+Challis looked sharply at the boy, but he gave no sign that he heard
+what was passing.
+
+"Yes; Mr. Crashaw seems rather upset about it."
+
+"I'm sorry, sir, but----"
+
+"Yes; speak plainly," prompted Challis. "I assure you that you will have
+no cause to regret any confidence you may make to me."
+
+"I can't see as it's any business of Mr. Crashaw's, sir, if you'll
+forgive me for sayin' so."
+
+"He has been worrying you?"
+
+"'E 'as, sir, but 'e ..." she glanced at her son--she laid a stress on
+the pronoun always when she spoke of him that differentiated its
+significance--"'e 'asn't seen Mr. Crashaw again, sir."
+
+Challis turned to the boy. "You are not interested in Mr. Crashaw, I
+suppose?" he asked.
+
+The boy took no notice of the question.
+
+Challis was piqued. If this extraordinary child really had an
+intelligence, surely it must be possible to appeal to that intelligence
+in some way. He made another effort, addressing Mrs. Stott.
+
+"I think we must forgive Mr. Crashaw, you know, Mrs. Stott. As I
+understand it, your boy at the age of four years and a half has
+defied--his cloth, if I may say so." He paused, and as he received no
+answer, continued: "But I hope that matter may be easily arranged."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Mrs. Stott. "It's very kind of you. I'm sure, I'm
+greatly obliged to you, sir."
+
+"That's only one reason of my visit to you, however," Challis hesitated.
+"I've been wondering whether I might not be able to help you and your
+son in some other way. I understand that he has unusual power of--of
+intelligence."
+
+"Indeed 'e 'as, sir," responded Mrs. Stott.
+
+"And he can read, can't he?"
+
+"I've learned 'im what I could, sir: it isn't much."
+
+"Well, perhaps I could lend him a few books."
+
+Challis made a significant pause, and again he looked at the boy; but as
+there was no response, he continued: "Tell me what he has read."
+
+"We've no books, sir, and we never 'ardly see a paper now. All we 'ave
+in the 'ouse is a Bible and two copies of Lillywhite's cricket annual as
+my 'usband left be'ind."
+
+Challis smiled. "Has he read those?" he asked.
+
+"The Bible 'e 'as, I believe," replied Mrs. Stott.
+
+It was a conversation curious in its impersonality. Challis was
+conscious of the anomaly that he was speaking in the boy's presence,
+crediting him with a remarkable intelligence, and yet addressing a
+frankly ignorant woman as though the boy was not in the room. Yet how
+could he break that deliberate silence? It seemed to him as though there
+must, after all, be some mistake; yet how account for Crashaw's story if
+the boy were indeed an idiot?
+
+With a slight show of temper he turned to the Wonder.
+
+"Do you want to read?" he asked. "I have between forty and fifty
+thousand books in my library. I think it possible that you might find
+one or two which would interest you."
+
+The Wonder lifted his hand as though to ask for silence. For a minute,
+perhaps, no one spoke. All waited, expectant; Challis and Lewes with
+intent eyes fixed on the detached expression of the child's face, Ellen
+Mary with bent head. It was a strange, yet very logical question that
+came at last:
+
+"What should I learn out of all them books?" asked the Wonder. He did
+not look at Challis as he spoke.
+
+
+IV
+
+Challis drew a deep breath and turned towards Lewes. "A difficult
+question, that, Lewes," he said.
+
+Lewes lifted his eyebrows and pulled at his fair moustache. "If you take
+the question literally," he muttered.
+
+"You might learn--the essential part ... of all the knowledge that has
+been ... discovered by mankind," said Challis. He phrased his sentence
+carefully, as though he were afraid of being trapped.
+
+"Should I learn what I am?" asked the Wonder.
+
+Challis understood the question in its metaphysical acceptation. He had
+the sense of a powerful but undirected intelligence working from the
+simple premisses of experience; of a cloistered mind that had functioned
+profoundly; a mind unbound by the tradition of all the speculations and
+discoveries of man, the essential conclusions of which were contained in
+that library at Challis Court.
+
+"No!" said Challis, after a perceptible interval, "that you will not
+learn from any books in my possession, but you will find grounds for
+speculation."
+
+"Grounds for speculation?" questioned the Wonder. He repeated the words
+quite clearly.
+
+"Material--matter from which you can--er--formulate theories of your
+own," explained Challis.
+
+The Wonder shook his head. It was evident that Challis's sentence
+conveyed little or no meaning to him.
+
+He got down from his chair and took up an old cricket cap of his
+father's, a cap which his mother had let out by the addition of another
+gore of cloth that did not match the original material. He pulled this
+cap carefully over his bald head, and then made for the door.
+
+At the threshold the strange child paused, and without looking at any
+one present said: "I'll coom to your library," and went out.
+
+Challis joined Lewes at the window, and they watched the boy make his
+deliberate way along the garden path and up the lane towards the fields
+beyond.
+
+"You let him go out by himself?" asked Challis.
+
+"He likes to be in the air, sir," replied Ellen Mary.
+
+"I suppose you have to let him go his own way?"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir."
+
+"I will send the governess cart up for him to-morrow morning," said
+Challis, "at ten o'clock. That is, of course, if you have no objection
+to his coming."
+
+"'E said 'e'd coom, sir," replied Ellen Mary. Her tone implied that
+there was no appeal possible against her son's statement of his wishes.
+
+
+V
+
+"His methods do not lack terseness," remarked Lewes, when he and Challis
+were out of earshot of the cottage.
+
+"His methods and manners are damnable," said Challis, "but----"
+
+"You were going to say?" prompted Lewes.
+
+"Well, what is your opinion?"
+
+"I am not convinced, as yet," said Lewes.
+
+"Oh, surely," expostulated Challis.
+
+"Not from objective, personal evidence. Let us put Crashaw out of our
+minds for the moment."
+
+"Very well; go on, state your case."
+
+"He has, so far, made four remarks in our presence," said Lewes,
+gesticulating with his walking stick. "Two of them can be neglected; his
+repetition of your words, which he did not understand, and his
+condescending promise to study your library."
+
+"Yes; I'm with you, so far."
+
+"Now, putting aside the preconception with which we entered the cottage,
+was there really anything in the other two remarks? Were they not the
+type of simple, unreasoning questions which one may often hear from the
+mouth of a child of that age? 'What shall I learn from your books?'
+Well, it is the natural question of the ignorant child, who has no
+conception of the contents of books, no experience which would furnish
+material for his imagination."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The second remark is more explicable still. It is a remark we all make
+in childhood, in some form or another. I remember quite well at the age
+of six or seven asking my mother: 'Which is me, my soul or my body?' I
+was brought up on the Church catechism. But you at once accepted these
+questions--which, I maintain, were questions possible in the mouth of a
+simple, ignorant child--in some deep, metaphysical acceptation. Don't
+you think, sir, we should wait for further evidence before we attribute
+any phenomenal intelligence to this child?"
+
+"Quite the right attitude to take, Lewes--the scientific attitude,"
+replied Challis. "Let's go by the lane," he added, as they reached the
+entrance to the wood.
+
+For some few minutes they walked in silence; Challis with his head down,
+his heavy shoulders humped. His hands were clasped behind him, dragging
+his stick as it were a tail, which he occasionally cocked. He walked
+with a little stumble now and again, his eyes on the ground. Lewes
+strode with a sure foot, his head up, and he slashed at the tangle of
+last year's growth on the bank whenever he passed some tempting butt for
+the sword-play of his stick.
+
+"Do you think, then," said Challis at last, "that much of the
+atmosphere--you must have marked the atmosphere--of the child's
+personality, was a creation of our own minds, due to our
+preconceptions?"
+
+"Yes, I think so," Lewes replied, a touch of defiance in his tone.
+
+"Isn't that what you _want_ to believe?" asked Challis.
+
+Lewes hit at a flag of dead bracken and missed. "You mean...?" he
+prevaricated.
+
+"I mean that that is a much stronger influence than any preconception,
+my dear Lewes. I'm no pragmatist, as you know; but there can be no doubt
+that with the majority of us the wish to believe a thing is true
+constitutes the truth of that thing for us. And that is, in my opinion,
+the wrong attitude for either scientist or philosopher. Now, in the case
+we are discussing, I suppose at bottom I should like to agree with you.
+One does not like to feel that a child of four and a half has greater
+intellectual powers than oneself. Candidly, I do not like it at all."
+
+"Of course not! But I can't think that----"
+
+"You can if you try; you would at once if you wished to," returned
+Challis, anticipating the completion of Lewes's sentence.
+
+"I'll admit that there are some remarkable facts in the case of this
+child," said Lewes, "but I do not see why we should, as yet, take the
+whole proposition for granted."
+
+"No! I am with you there," returned Challis. And no more was said until
+they were nearly home.
+
+Just before they turned into the drive, however, Challis stopped. "Do
+you know, Lewes," he said, "I am not sure that I am doing a wise thing
+in bringing that child here!"
+
+Lewes did not understand. "No, sir? Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Why, think of the possibilities of that child, if he has all the powers
+I credit him with," said Challis. "Think of his possibilities for
+original thought if he is kept away from all the traditions of this
+futile learning." He waved an arm in the direction of the elongated
+chapel.
+
+"Oh! but surely," remonstrated Lewes, "that is a necessary groundwork.
+Knowledge is built up step by step."
+
+"Is it? I wonder. I sometimes doubt," said Challis. "Yes, I sometimes
+doubt whether we have ever learned anything at all that is worth
+knowing. And, perhaps, this child, if he were kept away from books....
+However, the thing is done now, and in any case he would never have been
+able to dodge the School attendance officer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HIS FIRST VISIT TO CHALLIS COURT
+
+
+I
+
+"Shall you be able to help me in collating your notes of the Tikopia
+observations to-day, sir?" Lewes asked next morning. He rose from the
+breakfast-table and lit a cigarette. There was no ceremony between
+Challis and his secretary.
+
+"You forget our engagement for ten o'clock," said Challis.
+
+"Need that distract us?"
+
+"It need not, but doesn't it seem to you that it may furnish us with
+valuable material?"
+
+"Hardly pertinent, sir, is it?"
+
+"What line do you think of taking up, Lewes?" asked Challis with
+apparent irrelevance.
+
+"With regard to this--this phenomenon?"
+
+"No, no. I was speaking of your own ambitions." Challis had sauntered
+over to the window; he stood, with his back to Lewes, looking out at the
+blue and white of the April sky.
+
+Lewes frowned. He did not understand the gist of the question. "I
+suppose there is a year's work on this book before me yet," he said.
+
+"Quite, quite," replied Challis, watching a cloud shadow swarm up the
+slope of Deane Hill. "Yes, certainly a year's work. I was thinking of
+the future."
+
+"I have thought of laboratory work in connection with psychology," said
+Lewes, still puzzled.
+
+"I thought I remembered your saying something of the kind," murmured
+Challis absently. "We are going to have more rain. It will be a late
+spring this year."
+
+"Had the question any bearing on our engagement of this morning?" Lewes
+was a little anxious, uncertain whether this inquiry as to his future
+had not some particular significance; a hint, perhaps, that his services
+would not be required much longer.
+
+"Yes; I think it had," said Challis. "I saw the governess cart go up the
+road a few minutes since."
+
+"I suppose the boy will be here in a quarter of an hour?" said Lewes by
+way of keeping up the conversation. He was puzzled; he did not know
+Challis in this mood. He did not conceive it possible that Challis could
+be nervous about the arrival of so insignificant a person as this Stott
+child.
+
+"It's all very ridiculous," broke out Challis suddenly; and he turned
+away from the window, and joined Lewes by the fire. "Don't you think
+so?"
+
+"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
+
+Challis laughed. "I'm not surprised," he said; "I was a trifle
+inconsecutive. But I wish you were more interested in this child, Lewes.
+The thought of him engrosses me, and yet I don't want to meet him. I
+should be relieved to hear that he wasn't coming. Surely you, as a
+student of psychology ..." he broke off with a lift of his heavy
+shoulders.
+
+"Oh! Yes! I _am_ interested, certainly, as you say, as a student of
+psychology. We ought to take some measurements. The configuration of the
+skull is not abnormal otherwise than in its relation to the development
+of the rest of his body, but ..." Lewes meandered off into somewhat
+abstruse speculation with regard to the significance of craniology.
+
+Challis nodded his head and murmured: "Quite, quite," occasionally. He
+seemed glad that Lewes should continue to talk.
+
+The lecture was interrupted by the appearance of the governess cart.
+
+"By Jove, he _has_ come," ejaculated Challis in the middle of one of
+Lewes's periods. "You'll have to see me through this, my boy. I'm damned
+if I know how to take the child."
+
+Lewes flushed, annoyed at the interruption of his lecture. He had
+believed that he had been interesting. "Curse the kid," was the thought
+in his mind as he followed Challis to the window.
+
+
+II
+
+Jessop, the groom deputed to fetch the Wonder from Pym, looked a little
+uneasy, perhaps a little scared. When he drew up at the porch, the child
+pointed to the door of the cart and indicated that it was to be opened
+for him. He was evidently used to being waited upon. When this command
+had been obeyed, he descended deliberately and then pointed to the front
+door.
+
+"Open!" he said clearly, as Jessop hesitated. The Wonder knew nothing of
+bells or ceremony.
+
+Jessop came down from the cart and rang.
+
+The butler opened the door. He was an old servant and accustomed to his
+master's eccentricities, but he was not prepared for the vision of that
+strange little figure, with a large head in a parti-coloured
+cricket-cap, an apparition that immediately walked straight by him into
+the hall, and pointed to the first door he came to.
+
+"Oh, dear! Well, to be sure," gasped Heathcote. "Why, whatever----"
+
+"Open!" commanded the Wonder, and Heathcote obeyed, weak-kneed.
+
+The door chanced to be the right one, the door of the breakfast-room,
+and the Wonder walked in, still wearing his cap.
+
+Challis came forward to meet him with a conventional greeting. "I'm
+glad you were able to come ..." he began, but the child took no notice;
+he looked rapidly round the room, and not finding what he wanted,
+signified his desire by a single word.
+
+"Books," he said, and looked at Challis.
+
+Heathcote stood at the door, hesitating between amazement and
+disapproval. "I've never seen the like," was how he phrased his
+astonishment later, in the servants' hall, "never in all my born days.
+To see that melon-'eaded himp in a cricket-cap hordering the master
+about. Well, there----"
+
+"Jessop says he fair got the creeps drivin' 'im over," said the cook.
+"'E says the child's not right in 'is 'ead."
+
+Much embroidery followed in the servants' hall.
+
+
+
+
+INTERLUDE
+
+
+This brief history of the Hampdenshire Wonder is marked by a stereotyped
+division into three parts, an arbitrary arrangement dependent on the
+experience of the writer. The true division becomes manifest at this
+point. The life of Victor Stott was cut into two distinct sections,
+between which there is no correlation. The first part should tell the
+story of his mind during the life of experience, the time occupied in
+observation of the phenomena of life presented to him in fact, without
+any specific teaching on the theories of existence and progress, or on
+the speculation as to ultimate destiny. The second part should deal with
+his entry into the world of books; into that account of a long series of
+collated experiments and partly verified hypotheses we call science;
+into the imperfectly developed system of inductive and deductive logic
+which determines mathematics and philosophy; into the long, inaccurate
+and largely unverifiable account of human blindness and error known as
+history; and into the realm of idealism, symbol, and pitiful pride we
+find in the story of poetry, letters, and religion.
+
+I will confess that I once contemplated the writing of such a history.
+It was Challis who, in his courtly, gentle way, pointed out to me that
+no man living had the intellectual capacity to undertake so profound a
+work.
+
+For some three months before I had this conversation with Challis, I had
+been wrapped in solitude, dreaming, speculating. I had been uplifted in
+thought, I had come to believe myself inspired as a result of my
+separation from the world of men, and of the deep introspection and
+meditation in which I had been plunged. I had arrived at a point,
+perhaps not far removed from madness, at which I thought myself capable
+of setting out the true history of Victor Stott.
+
+Challis broke the spell. He cleared away the false glamour which was
+blinding and intoxicating me and brought me back to a condition of
+open-eyed sanity. To Challis I owe a great debt.
+
+Yet at the moment I was sunk in depression. All the glory of my vision
+had faded; the afterglow was quenched in the blackness of a night that
+drew out of the east and fell from the zenith as a curtain of utter
+darkness.
+
+Again Challis came to my rescue. He brought me a great sheaf of notes.
+
+"Look here," he said, "if you can't write a true history of that strange
+child, I see no reason why you should not write his story as it is
+known to you, as it impinges on your own life. After all, you, in many
+ways, know more of him than any one. You came nearest to receiving his
+confidence."
+
+"But only during the last few months," I said.
+
+"Does that matter?" said Challis with an upheaval of his
+shoulders--"shrug" is far too insignificant a word for that mountainous
+humping. "Is any biography founded on better material than you have at
+command?"
+
+He unfolded his bundle of notes. "See here," he said, "here is some
+magnificent material for you--first-hand observations made at the time.
+Can't you construct a story from that?"
+
+Even then I began to cast my story in a slightly biographical form. I
+wrote half a dozen chapters, and read them to Challis.
+
+"Magnificent, my dear fellow," was his comment, "magnificent; but no one
+will believe it."
+
+I had been carried away by my own prose, and with the natural vanity of
+the author, I resented intensely his criticism.
+
+For some weeks I did not see Challis again, and I persisted in my futile
+endeavour, but always as I wrote that killing suggestion insinuated
+itself: "No one will believe you." At times I felt as a man may feel who
+has spent many years in a lunatic asylum; and after his release is for
+ever engaged in a struggle to allay the doubts of a leering suspicion.
+
+I gave up the hopeless task at last, and sought out Challis again.
+
+"Write it as a story," he suggested, "and give up the attempt to carry
+conviction."
+
+And in that spirit, adopting the form of a story, I did begin, and in
+that form I hope to finish.
+
+But here as I reach the great division, the determining factor of Victor
+Stott's life, I am constrained to pause and apologise. I have become
+uncomfortably conscious of my own limitations, and the feeble, ephemeral
+methods I am using. I am trifling with a wonderful story, embroidering
+my facts with the tawdry detail of my own imagining.
+
+I saw--I see--no other way.
+
+This is, indeed, a preface, yet I prefer to put it in this place, since
+it was at this time I wrote it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the Common a faint green is coming again like a mist among the
+ash-trees, while the oak is still dead and bare. Last year the oak came
+first.
+
+They say we shall have a wet summer.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO (_Continued_)
+
+THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO (_Continued_)
+
+THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+HIS PASSAGE THROUGH THE PRISON OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+
+I
+
+Challis led the way to the library; Lewes, petulant and mutinous, hung
+in the rear.
+
+The Wonder toddled forward, unabashed, to enter his new world. On the
+threshold, however, he paused. His comprehensive stare took in a
+sweeping picture of enclosing walls of books, and beyond was a vista of
+further rooms, of more walls all lined from floor to ceiling with
+records of human discovery, endeavour, doubt, and hope.
+
+The Wonder stayed and stared. Then he took two faltering steps into the
+room and stopped again, and, finally, he looked up at Challis with doubt
+and question; his gaze no longer quelling and authoritative, but
+hesitating, compliant, perhaps a little child-like.
+
+"'Ave you read all these?" he asked.
+
+It was a curious picture. The tall figure of Challis, stooping, as
+always, slightly forward; Challis, with his seaman's eyes and scholar's
+head, his hands loosely clasped together behind his back, paying such
+scrupulous attention to that grotesque representative of a higher
+intellectuality, clothed in the dress of a villager, a patched
+cricket-cap drawn down over his globular skull, his little arms hanging
+loosely at his sides; who, nevertheless, even in this new, strange
+aspect of unwonted humility bore on his face the promise of some
+ultimate development which differentiated him from all other humanity,
+as the face of humanity is differentiated from the face of its
+prognathous ancestor.
+
+The scene is set in a world of books, and in the background lingers the
+athletic figure and fair head of Lewes, the young Cambridge
+undergraduate, the disciple of science, hardly yet across the threshold
+which divides him from the knowledge of his own ignorance.
+
+"'Ave you read all these?" asked the Wonder.
+
+"A greater part of them--in effect," replied Challis. "There is much
+repetition, you understand, and much record of experiment which becomes,
+in a sense, worthless when the conclusions are either finally accepted
+or rejected."
+
+The eyes of the Wonder shifted and their expression became abstracted;
+he seemed to lose consciousness of the outer world; he wore the look
+which you may see in the eyes of Jakob Schlesinger's portrait of the
+mature Hegel, a look of profound introspection and analysis.
+
+There was an interval of silence, and then the Wonder unknowingly gave
+expression to a quotation from Hamlet. "Words," he whispered
+reflectively, and then again "words."
+
+
+II
+
+Challis understood him. "You have not yet learned the meaning of words?"
+he asked.
+
+The brief period--the only one recorded--of amazement and submission was
+over. It may be that he had doubted during those few minutes of time
+whether he was well advised to enter into that world of books, whether
+he would not by so doing stunt his own mental growth. It may be that the
+decision of so momentous a question should have been postponed for a
+year--two years; to a time when his mind should have had further
+possibilities for unlettered expansion. However that may be, he decided
+now and finally. He walked to the table and climbed up on a chair.
+
+"Books about words," he commanded, and pointed at Challis and Lewes.
+
+They brought him the latest production of the twentieth century in many
+volumes, the work of a dozen eminent authorities on the etymology of the
+English language, and they seated him on eight volumes of the
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (India paper edition) in order that he might
+reach the level of the table.
+
+At first they tried to show him how his wonderful dictionary should be
+used, but he pushed them on one side, neither then nor at any future
+time would he consent to be taught--the process was too tedious for him,
+his mind worked more fluently, rapidly, and comprehensively than the
+mind of the most gifted teacher that could have been found for him.
+
+So Challis and Lewes stood on one side and watched him, and he was no
+more embarrassed by their presence than if they had been in another
+world, as, possibly, they were.
+
+He began with volume one, and he read the title page and the
+introduction, the list of abbreviations, and all the preliminary matter
+in due order.
+
+Challis noted that when the Wonder began to read, he read no faster than
+the average educated man, but that he acquired facility at a most
+astounding rate, and that when he had been reading for a few days his
+eye swept down the column, as it were at a single glance.
+
+Challis and Lewes watched him for, perhaps, half an hour, and then,
+seeing that their presence was of an entirely negligible value to the
+Wonder, they left him and went into the farther room.
+
+"Well?" asked Challis, "what do you make of him?"
+
+"Is he reading or pretending to read?" parried Lewes. "Do you think it
+possible that he could read so fast? Moreover, remember that he has
+admitted that he knows few words of the English language, yet he does
+not refer from volume to volume; he does not look up the meanings of the
+many unknown words which must occur even in the introduction."
+
+"I know. I had noticed that."
+
+"Then you think he _is_ humbugging--pretending to read?"
+
+"No; that solution seems to me altogether unlikely. He could not, for
+one thing, simulate that look of attention. Remember, Lewes, the child
+is not yet five years old."
+
+"What is your explanation, then?"
+
+"I am wondering whether the child has not a memory beside which the
+memory of a Macaulay would appear insignificant."
+
+Lewes did not grasp Challis's intention. "Even so ..." he began.
+
+"And," continued Challis, "I am wondering whether, if that is the case,
+he is, in effect, prepared to learn the whole dictionary by heart, and,
+so to speak, collate its contents later, in his mind."
+
+"Oh! Sir!" Lewes smiled. The supposition was too outrageous to be taken
+seriously. "Surely, you can't mean that." There was something in Lewes's
+tone which carried a hint of contempt for so far-fetched a hypothesis.
+
+Challis was pacing up and down the library, his hands clasped behind
+him. "Yes, I mean it," he said, without looking up. "I put it forward as
+a serious theory, worthy of full consideration."
+
+Lewes sneered. "Oh, surely not, sir," he said.
+
+Challis stopped and faced him. "Why not, Lewes; why not?" he asked, with
+a kindly smile. "Think of the gap which separates your intellectual
+powers from those of a Polynesian savage. Why, after all, should it be
+impossible that this child's powers should equally transcend our own? A
+freak, if you will, an abnormality, a curious effect of nature's, like
+the giant puff-ball--but still----"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir, I grant you the thing is not impossible from a
+theoretical point of view," argued Lewes, "but I think you are
+theorising on altogether insufficient evidence. I am willing to admit
+that such a freak is theoretically possible, but I have not yet found
+the indications of such a power in the child."
+
+Challis resumed his pacing. "Quite, quite," he assented; "your method
+is perfectly correct--perfectly correct. We must wait."
+
+At twelve o'clock Challis brought a glass of milk and some biscuits, and
+set them beside the Wonder--he was apparently making excellent progress
+with the letter "A."
+
+"Well, how are you getting on?" asked Challis.
+
+The Wonder took not the least notice of the question, but he stretched
+out a little hand and took a biscuit and ate it, without looking up from
+his reading.
+
+"I wish he'd answer questions," Challis remarked to Lewes, later.
+
+"I should prescribe a sound shaking," returned Lewes.
+
+Challis smiled. "Well, see here, Lewes," he said, "I'll take the
+responsibility; you go and experiment; go and shake him."
+
+Lewes looked through the folding doors at the picture of the Wonder,
+intent on his study of the great dictionary. "Since you've franked me,"
+he said, "I'll do it--but not now. I'll wait till he gives me some
+occasion."
+
+"Good," replied Challis, "my offer holds ... and, by the way, I have no
+doubt that an occasion will present itself. Doesn't it strike you as
+likely, Lewes, that we shall see a good deal of the child here?"
+
+They stood for some minutes, watching the picture of that intent
+student, framed in the written thoughts of his predecessors.
+
+
+III
+
+The Wonder ignored an invitation to lunch; he ignored, also, the tray
+that was sent in to him. He read on steadily till a quarter to six, by
+which time he was at the end of "B," and then he climbed down from his
+Encyclopaedia, and made for the door. Challis, working in the farther
+room, saw him and came out to open the door.
+
+"Are you going now?" he asked.
+
+The child nodded.
+
+"I will order the cart for you, if you will wait ten minutes," said
+Challis.
+
+The child shook his head. "It's very necessary to have air," he said.
+
+Something in the tone and pronunciation struck Challis, and awoke a long
+dormant memory. The sentence spoken, suddenly conjured up a vision of
+the Stotts' cottage at Stoke, of the Stotts at tea, of a cradle in the
+shadow, and of himself, sitting in an uncomfortable armchair and
+swinging his stick between his knees. When the child had gone--walking
+deliberately, and evidently regarding the mile-and-a-half walk through
+the twilight wood and over the deserted Common as a trivial incident in
+the day's business--Challis set himself to analyse that curious
+association.
+
+As he strolled back across the hall to the library, he tried to
+reconstruct the scene of the cottage at Stoke, and to recall the outline
+of the conversation he had had with the Stotts.
+
+"Lewes!" he said, when he reached the room in which his secretary was
+working. "Lewes, this is curious," and he described the associations
+called up by the child's speech. "The curious thing is," he continued,
+"that I had gone to advise Mrs. Stott to take a cottage at Pym, because
+the Stoke villagers were hostile, in some way, and she did not care to
+take the child out in the street. It is more than probable that I used
+just those words, 'It is very necessary to have air,' very probable.
+Now, what about my memory theory? The child was only six months old at
+that time."
+
+Lewes appeared unconvinced. "There is nothing very unusual in the
+sentence," he said.
+
+"Forgive me," replied Challis, "I don't agree with you. It is not
+phrased as a villager would phrase it, and, as I tell you, it was not
+spoken with the local accent."
+
+"You may have spoken the sentence to-day," suggested Lewes.
+
+"I may, of course, though I don't remember saying anything of the sort,
+but that would not account for the curiously vivid association which was
+conjured up."
+
+Lewes pursed his lips. "No, no, no," he said. "But that is hardly ground
+for argument, is it?"
+
+"I suppose not," returned Challis thoughtfully; "but when you take up
+psychology, Lewes, I should much like you to specialise on a careful
+inquiry into association in connection with memory. I feel certain that
+if one can reproduce, as nearly as may be, any complex sensation one has
+experienced, no matter how long ago, one will stimulate what I may call
+an abnormal memory of all the associations connected with that
+experience. Just now I saw the interior of that room in the Stotts'
+cottage so clearly that I had an image of a dreadful oleograph of
+Disraeli hanging on the wall. But, now, I cannot for the life of me
+remember whether there was such an oleograph or not. I do not remember
+noticing it at the time."
+
+"Yes, that's very interesting," replied Lewes. "There is certainly a
+wide field for research in that direction."
+
+"You might throw much light on our mental processes," replied Challis.
+
+(It was as the outcome of this conversation that Gregory Lewes did, two
+years afterwards, take up this line of study. The only result up to the
+present time is his little brochure _Reflexive Associations_, which has
+added little to our knowledge of the subject.)
+
+
+IV
+
+Challis's anticipation that he and Lewes would be greatly favoured by
+the Wonder's company was fully realised.
+
+The child put in an appearance at half-past nine the next morning, just
+as the governess cart was starting out to fetch him. When he was
+admitted he went straight to the library, climbed on to the chair, upon
+which the volumes of the Encyclopaedia still remained, and continued his
+reading where he had left off on the previous evening.
+
+He read steadily throughout the day without giving utterance to speech
+of any kind.
+
+Challis and Lewes went out in the afternoon, and left the child deep in
+study. They came in at six o'clock, and went to the library. The Wonder,
+however, was not there.
+
+Challis rang the bell.
+
+"Has little Stott gone?" he asked when Heathcote came.
+
+"I 'aven't seen 'im, sir," said Heathcote.
+
+"Just find out if any one opened the door for him, will you?" said
+Challis. "He couldn't possibly have opened that door for himself."
+
+"No one 'asn't let Master Stott hout, sir," Heathcote reported on his
+return.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Quite sure, sir. I've made full hinquiries," said Heathcote with
+dignity.
+
+"Well, we'd better find him," said Challis.
+
+"The window is open," suggested Lewes.
+
+"He would hardly ..." began Challis, walking over to the low sill of the
+open window, but he broke off in his sentence and continued, "By Jove,
+he did, though; look here!"
+
+It was, indeed, quite obvious that the Wonder had made his exit by the
+window; the tiny prints of his feet were clearly marked in the mould of
+the flower-bed; he had, moreover, disregarded all results of early
+spring floriculture.
+
+"See how he has smashed those daffodils," said Lewes. "What an
+infernally cheeky little brute he is!"
+
+"What interests me is the logic of the child," returned Challis. "I
+would venture to guess that he wasted no time in trying to attract
+attention. The door was closed, so he just got out of the window. I
+rather admire the spirit; there is something Napoleonic about him. Don't
+you think so?"
+
+Lewes shrugged his shoulders. Heathcote's expression was quite
+non-committal.
+
+"You'd better send Jessop up to Pym, Heathcote," said Challis. "Let him
+find out whether the child is safe at home."
+
+Jessop reported an hour afterwards that Master Stott had arrived home
+quite safely, and Mrs. Stott was much obliged.
+
+
+V
+
+Altogether the Wonder spent five days, or about forty hours, on his
+study of the dictionary, and in the evening of his last day's work he
+left again by the open window. Challis, however, had been keeping him
+under fairly close observation, and knew that the preliminary task was
+finished.
+
+"What can I give that child to read to-day?" he asked at breakfast next
+morning.
+
+"I should reverse the arrangement; let him sit on the Dictionary and
+read the Encyclopaedia." Lewes always approached the subject of the
+Wonder with a certain supercilious contempt.
+
+"You are not convinced yet that he isn't humbugging?"
+
+"No! Frankly, I'm not."
+
+"Well, well, we must wait for more evidence, before we argue about it,"
+said Challis, but they sat on over the breakfast-table, waiting for the
+child to put in an appearance, and their conversation hovered over the
+topic of his intelligence.
+
+"Half-past ten?" Challis ejaculated at last, with surprise. "We are
+getting into slack habits, Lewes." He rose and rang the bell.
+
+"Apparently the Stott infant has had enough of it," suggested Lewes.
+"Perhaps he has exhausted the interest of dictionary illustrations."
+
+"We shall see," replied Challis, and then to a deferentially appearing
+Heathcote he said: "Has Master Stott come this morning?"
+
+"No, sir. Leastways, no one 'asn't let 'im in, sir."
+
+"It may be that he is mentally collating the results of the past two
+days' reading," said Challis, as he and Lewes made their way to the
+library.
+
+"Oh!" was all Lewes's reply, but it conveyed much of impatient contempt
+for his employer's attitude.
+
+Challis only smiled.
+
+When they entered the library they found the Wonder hard at work, and he
+had, of his own initiative, adopted the plan ironically suggested by
+Lewes, for he had succeeded in transferring the Dictionary volumes to
+the chair, and he was deep in volume one, of the eleventh edition of the
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
+
+The library was never cleared up by any one except Challis or his
+deputy, but an early housemaid had been sent to dust, and she had left
+the casement of one of the lower lights of the window open. The means
+of the Wonder's entrance was thus clearly in evidence.
+
+"It's Napoleonic," murmured Challis.
+
+"It's most infernal cheek," returned Lewes in a loud voice, "I should
+not be at all surprised if that promised shaking were not administered
+to-day."
+
+The Wonder took no notice. Challis says that on that morning his eyes
+were travelling down the page at about the rate at which one could count
+the lines.
+
+"He isn't reading," said Lewes. "No one could read as fast as that, and
+most certainly not a child of four and a half."
+
+"If he would only answer questions ..." hesitated Challis.
+
+"Oh! of course he won't do that," said Lewes. "He's clever enough not to
+give himself away."
+
+The two men went over to the table and looked down over the child's
+shoulder. He was in the middle of the article on "Aberration"--a
+technical treatise on optical physics.
+
+Lewes made a gesture. "Now do you believe he's humbugging?" he asked
+confidently, and made no effort to modulate his voice.
+
+Challis drew his eyebrows together. "My boy," he said, and laid his hand
+lightly on Victor Stott's shoulder, "can you understand what you are
+reading there?"
+
+But no answer was vouchsafed. Challis sighed. "Come along, Lewes," he
+said; "we must waste no more time."
+
+Lewes wore a look of smug triumph as they went to the farther room, but
+he was clever enough to refrain from expressing his triumph in speech.
+
+
+VI
+
+Challis gave directions that the window which the Wonder had found to be
+his most convenient method of entry and exit should be kept open, except
+at night; and a stool was placed under the sill inside the room, and a
+low bench was fixed outside to facilitate the child's goings and
+comings. Also, a little path was made across the flower-bed.
+
+The Wonder gave no trouble. He arrived at nine o'clock every morning,
+Sunday included, and left at a quarter to six in the evening. On wet
+days he was provided with a waterproof which had evidently been made by
+his mother out of a larger garment. This he took off when he entered the
+room and left on the stool under the window.
+
+He was given a glass of milk and a plate of bread-and-butter at twelve
+o'clock; and except for this he demanded and received no attention.
+
+For three weeks he devoted himself exclusively to the study of the
+Encyclopaedia.
+
+Lewes was puzzled.
+
+Challis spoke little of the child during these three weeks, but he often
+stood at the entrance to the farther rooms and watched the Wonder's eyes
+travelling so rapidly yet so intently down the page. That sight had a
+curious fascination for him; he returned to his own work by an effort,
+and an hour afterwards he would be back again at the door of the larger
+room. Sometimes Lewes would hear him mutter: "If he would only answer a
+few questions...." There was always one hope in Challis's mind. He hoped
+that some sort of climax might be reached when the Encyclopaedia was
+finished. The child must, at least, ask then for another book. Even if
+he chose one for himself, his choice might furnish some sort of a test.
+
+So Challis waited and said little; and Lewes was puzzled, because he was
+beginning to doubt whether it were possible that the child could sustain
+a pose so long. That, in itself, would be evidence of extraordinary
+abnormality. Lewes fumbled in his mind for another hypothesis.
+
+This reading craze may be symptomatic of some form of idiocy, he
+thought; "and I don't believe he does read," was his illogical
+deduction.
+
+Mrs. Stott usually came to meet her son, and sometimes she would come
+early in the afternoon and stand at the window watching him at his work;
+but neither Challis nor Lewes ever saw the Wonder display by any sign
+that he was aware of his mother's presence.
+
+During those three weeks the Wonder held himself completely detached
+from any intercourse with the world of men. At the end of that period he
+once more manifested his awareness of the human factor in existence.
+
+Challis, if he spoke little to Lewes of the Wonder during this time,
+maintained a strict observation of the child's doings.
+
+The Wonder began his last volume of the Encyclopaedia one Wednesday
+afternoon soon after lunch, and on Thursday morning, Challis was
+continually in and out of the room watching the child's progress, and
+noting his nearness to the end of the colossal task he had undertaken.
+
+At a quarter to twelve he took up his old position in the doorway, and
+with his hands clasped behind his back he watched the reading of the
+last forty pages.
+
+There was no slackening and no quickening in the Wonder's rate of
+progress. He read the articles under "Z" with the same attention he had
+given to the remainder of the work, and then, arrived at the last page,
+he closed the volume and took up the Index.
+
+Challis suffered a qualm; not so much on account of the possible
+postponement of the crisis he was awaiting, as because he saw that the
+reading of the Index could only be taken as a sign that the whole study
+had been unintelligent. No one could conceivably have any purpose in
+reading through an index.
+
+And at this moment Lewes joined him in the doorway.
+
+"What volume has he got to now?" asked Lewes.
+
+"The Index," returned Challis.
+
+Lewes was no less quick in drawing his inference than Challis had been.
+
+"Well, that settles it, I should think," was Lewes's comment.
+
+"Wait, wait," returned Challis.
+
+The Wonder turned a dozen pages at once, glanced at the new opening,
+made a further brief examination of two or three headings near the end
+of the volume, closed the book, and looked up.
+
+"Have you finished?" asked Challis.
+
+The Wonder shook his head. "All this," he said--he indicated with a
+small and dirty hand the pile of volumes that were massed round
+him--"all this ..." he repeated, hesitated for a word, and again shook
+his head with that solemn, deliberate impressiveness which marked all
+his actions.
+
+Challis came towards the child, leaned over the table for a moment, and
+then sat down opposite to him. Between the two protagonists hovered
+Lewes, sceptical, inclined towards aggression.
+
+"I am most interested," said Challis. "Will you try to tell me, my boy,
+what you think of--all this?"
+
+"So elementary ... inchoate ... a disjunctive ... patchwork," replied
+the Wonder. His abstracted eyes were blind to the objective world of our
+reality; he seemed to be profoundly analysing the very elements of
+thought.
+
+
+VII
+
+Then that almost voiceless child found words. Heathcote's announcement
+of lunch was waved aside, the long afternoon waned, and still that thin
+trickle of sound flowed on.
+
+The Wonder spoke in odd, pedantic phrases; he used the technicalities of
+every science; he constructed his sentences in unusual ways, and often
+he paused for a word and gave up the search, admitting that his meaning
+could not be expressed through the medium of any language known to him.
+
+Occasionally Challis would interrupt him fiercely, would even rise from
+his chair and pace the room, arguing, stating a point of view, combating
+some suggestion that underlay the trend of that pitiless wisdom which in
+the end bore him down with its unanswerable insistence.
+
+During those long hours much was stated by that small, thin voice which
+was utterly beyond the comprehension of the two listeners; indeed, it is
+doubtful whether even Challis understood a tithe of the theory that was
+actually expressed in words.
+
+As for Lewes, though he was at the time non-plussed, quelled, he was in
+the outcome impressed rather by the marvellous powers of memory
+exhibited than by the far finer powers shown in the superhuman logic of
+the synthesis.
+
+One sees that Lewes entered upon the interview with a mind predisposed
+to criticise, to destroy. There can be no doubt that as he listened his
+uninformed mind was endeavouring to analyse, to weigh, and to oppose;
+and this antagonism and his own thoughts continually interposed between
+him and the thought of the speaker. Lewes's account of what was spoken
+on that afternoon is utterly worthless.
+
+Challis's failure to comprehend was not, at the outset, due to his
+antagonistic attitude. He began with an earnest wish to understand: he
+failed only because the thing spoken was beyond the scope of his
+intellectual powers. But he did, nevertheless, understand the trend of
+that analysis of progress; he did in some half-realised way apprehend
+the gist of that terrible deduction of a final adjustment.
+
+He must have apprehended, in part, for he fiercely combated the
+argument, only to quaver, at last, into a silence which permitted again
+that trickle of hesitating, pedantic speech, which was yet so
+overwhelming, so conclusive.
+
+As the afternoon wore on, however, Challis's attitude must have changed;
+he must have assumed an armour of mental resistance not unlike the
+resistance of Lewes. Challis perceived, however dimly, that life would
+hold no further pleasure for him if he accepted that theory of origin,
+evolution, and final adjustment; he found in this cosmogony no place for
+his own idealism; and he feared to be convinced even by that fraction of
+the whole argument which he could understand.
+
+We see that Challis, with all his apparent devotion to science, was
+never more than a dilettante. He had another stake in the world which,
+at the last analysis, he valued more highly than the acquisition of
+knowledge. Those means of ease, of comfort, of liberty, of opportunity
+to choose his work among various interests, were the ruling influence of
+his life. With it all Challis was an idealist, and unpractical. His
+genial charity, his refinement of mind, his unthinking generosity,
+indicate the bias of a character which inclined always towards a
+picturesque optimism. It is not difficult to understand that he dared
+not allow himself to be convinced by Victor Stott's appalling
+synthesis.
+
+At last, when the twilight was deepening into night, the voice ceased,
+the child's story had been told, and it had not been understood. The
+Wonder never again spoke of his theory of life. He realised from that
+time that no one could comprehend him.
+
+As he rose to go, he asked one question that, simple as was its
+expression, had a deep and wonderful significance.
+
+"Is there none of my kind?" he said. "Is this," and he laid a hand on
+the pile of books before him, "is this all?"
+
+"There is none of your kind," replied Challis; and the little figure
+born into a world that could not understand him, that was not ready to
+receive him, walked to the window and climbed out into the darkness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+(Henry Challis is the only man who could ever have given any account of
+that extraordinary analysis of life, and he made no effort to recall the
+fundamental basis of the argument, and so allowed his memory of the
+essential part to fade. Moreover, he had a marked disinclination to
+speak of that afternoon or of anything that was said by Victor Stott
+during those six momentous hours of expression. It is evident that
+Challis's attitude to Victor Stott was not unlike the attitude of
+Captain Wallis to Victor Stott's father on the occasion of
+Hampdenshire's historic match with Surrey. "This man will have to be
+barred," Wallis said. "It means the end of cricket." Challis, in effect,
+thought that if Victor Stott were encouraged, it would mean the end of
+research, philosophy, all the mystery, idealism, and joy of life. Once,
+and once only, did Challis give me any idea of what he had learned
+during that afternoon's colloquy, and the substance of what Challis then
+told me will be found at the end of this volume.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HIS PASTORS AND MASTERS
+
+
+I
+
+For many months after that long afternoon in the library, Challis was
+affected with a fever of restlessness, and his work on the book stood
+still. He was in Rome during May, and in June he was seized by a sudden
+whim and went to China by the Trans-Siberian railway. Lewes did not
+accompany him. Challis preferred, one imagines, to have no intercourse
+with Lewes while the memory of certain pronouncements was still fresh.
+He might have been tempted to discuss that interview, and if, as was
+practically certain, Lewes attempted to pour contempt on the whole
+affair, Challis might have been drawn into a defence which would have
+revived many memories he wished to obliterate.
+
+He came back to London in September--he made the return journey by
+steamer--and found his secretary still working at the monograph on the
+primitive peoples of Melanesia.
+
+Lewes had spent the whole summer in Challis's town house in Eaton
+Square, whither all the material had been removed two days after that
+momentous afternoon in the library of Challis Court.
+
+"I have been wanting your help badly for some time, sir," Lewes said on
+the evening of Challis's return. "Are you proposing to take up the work
+again? If not ..." Gregory Lewes thought he was wasting valuable time.
+
+"Yes, yes, of course; I am ready to begin again now, if you care to go
+on with me," said Challis. He talked for a few minutes of the book
+without any great show of interest. Presently they came to a pause, and
+Lewes suggested that he should give some account of how his time had
+been spent.
+
+"To-morrow," replied Challis, "to-morrow will be time enough. I shall
+settle down again in a few days." He hesitated a moment, and then said:
+"Any news from Chilborough?"
+
+"N-no, I don't think so," returned Lewes. He was occupied with his own
+interests; he doubted Challis's intention to continue his work on the
+book--the announcement had been so half-hearted.
+
+"What about that child?" asked Challis.
+
+"That child?" Lewes appeared to have forgotten the existence of Victor
+Stott.
+
+"That abnormal child of Stott's?" prompted Challis.
+
+"Oh! Of course, yes. I believe he still goes nearly every day to the
+library. I have been down there two or three times, and found him
+reading. He has learned the use of the index-catalogue. He can get any
+book he wants. He uses the steps."
+
+"Do you know what he reads?"
+
+"No; I can't say I do."
+
+"What do you think will become of him?"
+
+"Oh! these infant prodigies, you know," said Lewes with a large air of
+authority, "they all go the same way. Most of them die young, of course,
+the others develop into ordinary commonplace men rather under than over
+the normal ability. After all, it is what one would expect. Nature
+always maintains her average by some means or another. If a child like
+this with his abnormal memory were to go on developing, there would be
+no place for him in the world's economy. The idea is inconceivable."
+
+"Quite, quite," murmured Challis, and after a short silence he added:
+"You think he will deteriorate, that his faculties will decay
+prematurely?"
+
+"I should say there could be no doubt of it," replied Lewes.
+
+"Ah! well. I'll go down and have a look at him, one day next week," said
+Challis; but he did not go till the middle of October.
+
+The immediate cause of his going was a letter from Crashaw, who offered
+to come up to town, as the matter was one of "really peculiar urgency."
+
+"I wonder if young Stott has been blaspheming again," Challis remarked
+to Lewes. "Wire the man that I'll go down and see him this afternoon. I
+shall motor. Say I'll be at Stoke about half-past three."
+
+
+II
+
+Challis was ushered into Crashaw's study on his arrival, and found the
+rector in company with another man--introduced as Mr. Forman--a
+jolly-looking, high-complexioned man of sixty or so, with a great
+quantity of white hair on his head and face; he was wearing an
+old-fashioned morning-coat and grey trousers that were noticeably too
+short for him.
+
+Crashaw lost no time in introducing the subject of "really peculiar
+urgency," but he rambled in his introduction.
+
+"You have probably forgotten," he said, "that last spring I had to bring
+a most horrible charge against a child called Victor Stott, who has
+since been living, practically, as I may say, under your aegis, that is,
+he has, at least, spent a greater part of his day, er--playing in your
+library at Challis Court."
+
+"Quite, quite; I remember perfectly," said Challis. "I made myself
+responsible for him up to a certain point. I gave him an occupation. It
+was intended, was it not, to divert his mind from speaking against
+religion to the yokels?"
+
+"Quite a character, if I may say so," put in Mr. Forman cheerfully.
+
+Crashaw was seated at his study table; the affair had something the
+effect of an examining magistrate taking the evidence of witnesses.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said testily; "I did ask your help, Mr. Challis, and I
+did, in a way, receive some assistance from you. That is, the child has
+to some extent been isolated by spending so much of his time at your
+house."
+
+"Has he broken out again?" asked Challis.
+
+"If I understand you to mean has the child been speaking openly on any
+subject connected with religion, I must say 'No,'" said Crashaw. "But he
+never attends any Sunday school, or place of worship; he has received no
+instruction in--er--any sacred subject, though I understand he is able
+to read; and his time is spent among books which, pardon me, would not,
+I suppose, be likely to give a serious turn to his thoughts."
+
+"Serious?" questioned Challis.
+
+"Perhaps I should say 'religious,'" replied Crashaw. "To me the two
+words are synonymous."
+
+Mr. Forman bowed his head slightly with an air of reverence, and nodded
+two or three times to express his perfect approval of the rector's
+sentiments.
+
+"You think the child's mind is being perverted by his intercourse with
+the books in the library where he--he--'plays' was your word, I
+believe?"
+
+"No, not altogether," replied Crashaw, drawing his eyebrows together.
+"We can hardly suppose that he is able at so tender an age to read, much
+less to understand, those works of philosophy and science which would
+produce an evil effect on his mind. I am willing to admit, since I, too,
+have had some training in scientific reading, that writers on those
+subjects are not easily understood even by the mature intelligence."
+
+"Then why, exactly, do you wish me to prohibit the child from coming to
+Challis Court?"
+
+"Possibly you have not realised that the child is now five years old?"
+said Crashaw with an air of conferring illumination.
+
+"Indeed! Yes. An age of some discretion, no doubt," returned Challis.
+
+"An age at which the State requires that he should receive the elements
+of education," continued Crashaw.
+
+"Eh?" said Challis.
+
+"Time he went to school," explained Mr. Forman. "I've been after him,
+you know. I'm the attendance officer for this district."
+
+Challis for once committed a breach of good manners. The import of the
+thing suddenly appealed to his sense of humour: he began to chuckle and
+then he laughed out a great, hearty laugh, such as had not been stirred
+in him for twenty years.
+
+"Oh! forgive me, forgive me," he said, when he had recovered his
+self-control. "But you don't know; you can't conceive the utter,
+childish absurdity of setting that child to recite the multiplication
+table with village infants of his own age. Oh! believe me, if you could
+only guess, you would laugh with me. It's so funny, so inimitably
+funny."
+
+"I fail to see, Mr. Challis," said Crashaw, "that there is anything in
+any way absurd or--or unusual in the proposition."
+
+"Five is the age fixed by the State," said Mr. Forman. He had relaxed
+into a broad smile in sympathy with Challis's laugh, but he had now
+relapsed into a fair imitation of Crashaw's intense seriousness.
+
+"Oh! How can I explain?" said Challis. "Let me take an instance. You
+propose to teach him, among other things, the elements of arithmetic?"
+
+"It is a part of the curriculum," replied Mr. Forman.
+
+"I have only had one conversation with this child," went on Challis--and
+at the mention of that conversation his brows drew together and he
+became very grave again; "but in the course of that conversation this
+child had occasion to refer, by way of illustration, to some abstruse
+theorem of the differential calculus. He did it, you will understand, by
+way of making his meaning clear--though the illustration was utterly
+beyond me: that reference represented an act of intellectual
+condescension."
+
+"God bless me, you don't say so?" said Mr. Forman.
+
+"I cannot see," said Crashaw, "that this instance of yours, Mr. Challis,
+has any real bearing on the situation. If the child is a mathematical
+genius--there have been instances in history, such as Blaise Pascal--he
+would not, of course, receive elementary instruction in a subject with
+which he was already acquainted."
+
+"You could not find any subject, believe me, Crashaw, in which he could
+be instructed by any teacher in a Council school."
+
+"Forgive me, I don't agree with you," returned Crashaw. "He is sadly in
+need of some religious training."
+
+"He would not get that at a Council school," said Challis, and Mr.
+Forman shook his head sadly, as though he greatly deprecated the fact.
+
+"He must learn to recognise authority," said Crashaw. "When he has been
+taught the necessity of submitting himself to all his governors,
+teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters: ordering himself lowly and
+reverently to all his betters; when, I say, he has learnt that lesson,
+he may be in a fit and proper condition to receive the teachings of the
+Holy Church."
+
+Mr. Forman appeared to think he was attending divine service. If the
+rector had said "Let us pray," there can be no doubt that he would
+immediately have fallen on his knees.
+
+Challis shook his head. "You can't understand, Crashaw," he said.
+
+"I _do_ understand," said Crashaw, rising to his feet, "and I intend to
+see that the statute is not disobeyed in the case of this child, Victor
+Stott."
+
+Challis shrugged his shoulders; Mr. Forman assumed an expression of
+stern determination.
+
+"In any case, why drag me into it?" asked Challis.
+
+Crashaw sat down again. The flush which had warmed his sallow skin
+subsided as his passion died out. He had worked himself into a condition
+of righteous indignation, but the calm politeness of Challis rebuked
+him. If Crashaw prided himself on his devotion to the Church, he did not
+wish that attitude to overshadow the pride he also took in the belief
+that he was Challis's social equal. Crashaw's father had been a lawyer,
+with a fair practice in Derby, but he had worked his way up to a
+partnership from the position of office-boy, and Percy Crashaw seldom
+forgot to be conscious that he was a gentleman by education and
+profession.
+
+"I did not wish to _drag_ you into this business," he said quietly,
+putting his elbows on the writing-table in front of him, and reassuming
+the judicial attitude he had adopted earlier; "but I regard this child
+as, in some sense, your protege." Crashaw put the tips of his fingers
+together, and Mr. Forman watched him warily, waiting for his cue. If
+this was to be a case for prayer, Mr. Forman was ready, with a clean
+white handkerchief to kneel upon.
+
+"In some sense, perhaps," returned Challis. "I haven't seen him for some
+months."
+
+"Cannot you see the necessity of his attending school?" asked Crashaw,
+this time with an insinuating suavity; he believed that Challis was
+coming round.
+
+"Oh!" Challis sighed with a note of expostulation. "Oh! the thing's
+grotesque, ridiculous."
+
+"If that's so," put in Mr. Forman, who had been struck by a brilliant
+idea, "why not bring the child here, and let the Reverend Mr. Crashaw,
+or myself, put a few general questions to 'im?"
+
+"Ye-es," hesitated Crashaw, "that might be done; but, of course, the
+decision does not rest with us."
+
+"It rests with the Local Authority," mused Challis. He was running over
+three or four names of members of that body who were known to him.
+
+"Certainly," said Crashaw, "the Local Education Authority alone has the
+right to prosecute, but----" He did not state his antithesis. They had
+come to the crux which Crashaw had wished to avoid. He had no influence
+with the committee of the L.E.A., and Challis's recommendation would
+have much weight. Crashaw intended that Victor Stott should attend
+school, but he had bungled his preliminaries; he had rested on his own
+authority, and forgotten that Challis had little respect for that
+influence. Conciliation was the only card to play now.
+
+"If I brought him, he wouldn't answer your questions," sighed Challis.
+"He's very difficult to deal with."
+
+"Is he, indeed?" sympathised Mr. Forman. "I've 'ardly seen 'im myself;
+not to speak to, that is."
+
+"He might come with his mother," suggested Crashaw.
+
+Challis shook his head. "By the way, it is the mother whom you would
+proceed against?" he asked.
+
+"The parent is responsible," said Mr. Forman. "She will be brought
+before a magistrate and fined for the first offence."
+
+"I shan't fine her if she comes before me," replied Challis.
+
+Crashaw smiled. He meant to avoid that eventuality.
+
+The little meeting lapsed into a brief silence. There seemed to be
+nothing more to say.
+
+"Well," said Crashaw, at last, with a rising inflexion that had a
+conciliatory, encouraging, now-my-little-man kind of air, "We-ll, of
+course, no one wishes to proceed to extremes. I think, Mr. Challis, I
+think I may say that you are the person who has most influence in this
+matter, and I cannot believe that you will go against the established
+authority both of the Church and the State. If it were only for the sake
+of example."
+
+Challis rose deliberately. He shook his head, and unconsciously his
+hands went behind his back. There was hardly room for him to pace up and
+down, but he took two steps towards Mr. Forman, who immediately rose to
+his feet; and then turned and went over to the window. It was from there
+that he pronounced his ultimatum.
+
+"Regulations, laws, religious and lay authorities," he said, "come into
+existence in order to deal with the rule, the average. That must be so.
+But if we are a reasoning, intellectual people we must have some means
+of dealing with the exception. That means rests with a consensus of
+intelligent opinion strong enough to set the rule upon one side. In an
+overwhelming majority of cases there _is_ no such consensus of opinion,
+and the exceptional individual suffers by coming within the rule of a
+law which should not apply to him. Now, I put it to you, as reasoning,
+intelligent men" ('ear, 'ear, murmured Mr. Forman automatically), "are
+we, now that we have the power to perform a common act of justice, to
+exempt an unfortunate individual exception who has come within the rule
+of a law that holds no application for him, or are we to exhibit a crass
+stupidity by enforcing that law? Is it not better to take the case into
+our own hands, and act according to the dictates of common sense?"
+
+"Very forcibly put," murmured Mr. Forman.
+
+"I'm not finding any fault with the law or the principle of the law,"
+continued Challis; "but it is, it must be, framed for the average. We
+must use our discretion in dealing with the exception--and this is an
+exception such as has never occurred since we have had an Education
+Act."
+
+"I don't agree with you," said Crashaw, stubbornly. "I do not consider
+this an exception."
+
+"But you _must_ agree with me, Crashaw. I have a certain amount of
+influence and I shall use it."
+
+"In that case," replied Crashaw, rising to his feet, "I shall fight you
+to the bitter end. I am _determined_"--he raised his voice and struck
+the writing-table with his fist--"I am _determined_ that this infidel
+child shall go to school. I am prepared, if necessary, to spend all my
+leisure in seeing that the law is carried out."
+
+Mr. Forman had also risen. "Very right, very right, indeed," he said,
+and he knitted his mild brows and stroked his patriarchal white beard
+with an appearance of stern determination.
+
+"I think you would be better advised to let the matter rest," said
+Challis.
+
+Mr. Forman looked inquiringly at the representative of the Church.
+
+"I shall fight," replied Crashaw, stubbornly, fiercely.
+
+"Ha!" said Mr. Forman.
+
+"Very well, as you think best," was Challis's last word.
+
+As Challis walked down to the gate, where his motor was waiting for him,
+Mr. Forman trotted up from behind and ranged himself alongside.
+
+"More rain wanted yet for the roots, sir," he said. "September was a
+grand month for 'arvest, but we want rain badly now."
+
+"Quite, quite," murmured Challis, politely. He shook hands with Mr.
+Forman before he got into the car.
+
+Mr. Forman, standing politely bareheaded, saw that Mr. Challis's car
+went in the direction of Ailesworth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HIS EXAMINATION
+
+
+I
+
+Challis's first visit was paid to Sir Deane Elmer,[4] that man of many
+activities, whose name inevitably suggests his favourite phrase of
+"Organised Progress"--with all its variants.
+
+This is hardly the place in which to criticise a man of such diverse
+abilities as Deane Elmer, a man whose name still figures so prominently
+in the public press in connection with all that is most modern in
+eugenics; with the Social Reform programme of the moderate party; with
+the reconstruction of our penal system; with education, and so many
+kindred interests; and, finally, of course, with colour photography and
+process printing. This last Deane Elmer always spoke of as his hobby,
+but we may doubt whether all his interests were not hobbies in the same
+sense. He is the natural descendant of those earlier amateur
+scientists--the adjective conveys no reproach--of the nineteenth
+century, among whom we remember such striking figures as those of Lord
+Avebury and Sir Francis Galton.
+
+In appearance Deane Elmer was a big, heavy, rather corpulent man, with a
+high complexion, and his clean-shaven jowl and his succession of chins
+hung in heavy folds. But any suggestion of material grossness was
+contradicted by the brightness of his rather pale-blue eyes, by his
+alertness of manner, and by his ready, whimsical humour.
+
+As chairman of the Ailesworth County Council, and its most prominent
+unpaid public official--after the mayor--Sir Deane Elmer was certainly
+the most important member of the Local Authority, and Challis wisely
+sought him at once. He found him in the garden of his comparatively
+small establishment on the Quainton side of the town. Elmer was very
+much engaged in photographing flowers from nature through the ruled
+screen and colour filter--in experimenting with the Elmer process, in
+fact; by which the intermediate stage of a coloured negative is rendered
+unnecessary. His apparatus was complicated and cumbrous.
+
+"Show Mr. Challis out here," he commanded the man who brought the
+announcement.
+
+"You must forgive me, Challis," said Elmer, when Challis appeared. "We
+haven't had such a still day for weeks. It's the wind upsets us in this
+process. Screens create a partial vacuum."
+
+He was launched on a lecture upon his darling process before Challis
+could get in a word. It was best to let him have his head, and Challis
+took an intelligent interest.
+
+It was not until the photographs were taken, and his two assistants
+could safely be trusted to complete the mechanical operations, that
+Elmer could be divorced from his hobby. He was full of jubilation. "We
+should have excellent results," he boomed--he had a tremendous
+voice--"but we shan't be able to judge until we get the blocks made. We
+do it all on the spot. I have a couple of platens in the shops here; but
+we shan't be able to take a pull until to-morrow morning, I'm afraid.
+You shall have a proof, Challis. We _should_ get magnificent results."
+He looked benignantly at the vault of heaven, which had been so
+obligingly free from any current of air.
+
+Challis was beginning to fear that even now he would be allowed no
+opportunity to open the subject of his mission. But quite suddenly Elmer
+dropped the shutter on his preoccupation, and with that ready
+adaptability which was so characteristic of the man, forgot his hobby
+for the time being, and turned his whole attention to a new subject.
+
+"Well?" he said, "what is the latest news in anthropology?"
+
+"A very remarkable phenomenon," replied Challis. "That is what I have
+come to see you about."
+
+"I thought you were in Paraguay pigging it with the Guaranis----"
+
+"No, no; I don't touch the Americas," interposed Challis. "I want all
+your attention, Elmer. This is important."
+
+"Come into my study," said Elmer, "and let us have the facts. What will
+you have--tea, whisky, beer?"
+
+Challis's resume of the facts need not be reported. When it was
+accomplished, Elmer put several keen questions, and finally delivered
+his verdict thus:
+
+"We must see the boy, Challis. Personally I am, of course, satisfied,
+but we must not give Crashaw opportunity to raise endless questions, as
+he can and will. There is Mayor Purvis, the grocer, to be reckoned with,
+you must remember. He represents a powerful Nonconformist influence.
+Crashaw will get hold of him--and work him if we see Purvis first.
+Purvis always stiffens his neck against any breach of conventional
+procedure. If Crashaw saw him first, well and good, Purvis would
+immediately jump to the conclusion that Crashaw intended some subtle
+attack on the Nonconformist position, and would side with us."
+
+"I don't think I know Purvis," mused Challis.
+
+"Purvis & Co. in the Square," prompted Elmer. "Black-and-white fellow;
+black moustache and side whiskers, black eyes and white face. There's a
+suggestion of the Methodist pulpit about him. Doesn't appear in the shop
+much, and when he does, always looks as if he'd sooner sell you a Bible
+than a bottle of whisky."
+
+"Ah, yes! I know," said Challis. "I daresay you're right, Elmer; but it
+will be difficult to persuade this child to answer any questions his
+examiners may put to him."
+
+"Surely he must be open to reason," roared Elmer. "You tell me he has an
+extraordinary intelligence, and in the next sentence you imply that the
+child's a fool who can't open his mouth to serve his own interests.
+What's your paradox?"
+
+"Sublimated material. Intellectual insight and absolute spiritual
+blindness," replied Challis, getting to his feet. "The child has gone
+too far in one direction--in another he has made not one step. His mind
+is a magnificent, terrible machine. He has the imagination of a
+mathematician and a logician developed beyond all conception, he has not
+one spark of the imagination of a poet. And so he cannot deal with men;
+he can't understand their weaknesses and limitations; they are geese and
+hens to him, creatures to be scared out of his vicinity. However, I will
+see what I can do. Could you arrange for the members of the Authority to
+come to my place?"
+
+"I should think so. Yes," said Elmer. "I say, Challis, are you sure
+you're right about this child? Sounds to me like some--some freak."
+
+"You'll see," returned Challis. "I'll try and arrange an interview. I'll
+let you know."
+
+"And, by the way," said Elmer, "you had better invite Crashaw to be
+present. He will put Purvis's back up, and that'll enlist the difficult
+grocer on our side probably."
+
+When Challis had gone, Elmer stood for a few minutes, thoughtfully
+scratching the ample red surface of his wide, clean-shaven cheek. "I
+don't know," he ejaculated at last, addressing his empty study, "I don't
+know." And with that expression he put all thought of Victor Stott away
+from him, and sat down to write an exhaustive article on the necessity
+for a broader basis in primary education.
+
+
+II
+
+Challis called at the rectory of Stoke-Underhill on the way back to his
+own house.
+
+"I give way," was the characteristic of his attitude to Crashaw, and the
+rector suppled his back again, remembered the Derby office-boy's
+tendency to brag, and made the amende honorable. He even overdid his
+magnanimity and came too near subservience--so lasting is the influence
+of the lessons of youth.
+
+Crashaw did not mention that in the interval between the two interviews
+he had called upon Mr. Purvis in the Square. The ex-mayor had refused to
+commit himself to any course of action.
+
+But Challis forgot the rectory and all that it connoted before he was
+well outside the rectory's front door. Challis had a task before him
+that he regarded with the utmost distaste. He had warmly championed a
+cause; he had been heated by the presentation of a manifest injustice
+which was none the less tyrannical because it was ridiculous. And now he
+realised that it was only the abstract question which had aroused his
+enthusiastic advocacy, and he shrank from the interview with Victor
+Stott--that small, deliberate, intimidating child.
+
+Henry Challis, the savant, the man of repute in letters, the respected
+figure in the larger world; Challis, the proprietor and landlord;
+Challis, the power among known men, knew that he would have to plead, to
+humble himself, to be prepared for a rebuff--worst of all, to
+acknowledge the justice of taking so undignified a position. Any
+aristocrat may stoop with dignity when he condescends of his own free
+will; but there are few who can submit gracefully to deserved contempt.
+
+Challis was one of the few. He had many admirable qualities.
+Nevertheless, during that short motor ride from Stoke to his own house,
+he resented the indignity he anticipated, resented it intensely--and
+submitted.
+
+
+III
+
+He was allowed no respite. Victor Stott was emerging from the library
+window as Challis rolled up to the hall door. It was one of Ellen Mary's
+days--she stood respectfully in the background while her son descended;
+she curtsied to Challis as he came forward.
+
+He hesitated a moment. He would not risk insult in the presence of his
+chauffeur and Mrs. Stott. He confronted the Wonder; he stood before him,
+and over him like a cliff.
+
+"I must speak to you for a moment on a matter of some importance," said
+Challis to the little figure below him, and as he spoke he looked over
+the child's head at the child's mother. "It is a matter that concerns
+your own welfare. Will you come into the house with me for a few
+minutes?"
+
+Ellen Mary nodded, and Challis understood. He turned and led the way. At
+the door, however, he stood aside and spoke again to Mrs. Stott. "Won't
+you come in and have some tea, or something?" he asked.
+
+"No, sir, thank you, sir," replied Ellen Mary; "I'll just wait 'ere till
+'e's ready."
+
+"At least come in and sit down," said Challis, and she came in and sat
+in the hall. The Wonder had already preceded them into the house. He had
+walked into the morning-room--probably because the door stood open,
+though he was now tall enough to reach the handles of the Challis Court
+doors. He stood in the middle of the room when Challis entered.
+
+"Won't you sit down?" said Challis.
+
+The Wonder shook his head.
+
+"I don't know if you are aware," began Challis, "that there is a system
+of education in England at the present time, which requires that every
+child should attend school at the age of five years, unless the parents
+are able to provide their children with an education elsewhere."
+
+The Wonder nodded.
+
+Challis inferred that he need proffer no further information with regard
+to the Education Act.
+
+"Now, it is very absurd," he continued, "and I have, myself, pointed out
+the absurdity; but there is a man of some influence in this
+neighbourhood who insists that you should attend the elementary school."
+He paused, but the Wonder gave no sign.
+
+"I have argued with this man," continued Challis, "and I have also seen
+another member of the Local Education Authority--a man of some note in
+the larger world--and it seems that you cannot be exempted unless you
+convince the Authority that your knowledge is such that to give you a
+Council school education would be the most absurd farce."
+
+"Cannot you stand in loco parentis?" asked the Wonder suddenly, in his
+still, thin voice.
+
+"You mean," said Challis, startled by this outburst, "that I am in a
+sense providing you with an education? Quite true; but there is Crashaw
+to deal with."
+
+"Inform him," said the Wonder.
+
+Challis sighed. "I have," he said, "but he can't understand." And then,
+feeling the urgent need to explain something of the motives that govern
+this little world of ours--the world into which this strangely logical
+exception had been born--Challis attempted an exposition.
+
+"I know," he said, "that these things must seem to you utterly absurd,
+but you must try to realise that you are an exception to the world about
+you; that Crashaw or I, or, indeed, the greatest minds of the present
+day, are not ruled by the fine logic which you are able to exercise. We
+are children compared to you. We are swayed even in the making of our
+laws by little primitive emotions and passions, self-interests, desires.
+And at the best we are not capable of ordering our lives and our
+government to those just ends which we may see, some of us, are
+abstractly right and fine. We are at the mercy of that great mass of the
+people who have not yet won to an intellectual and discriminating
+judgment of how their own needs may best be served, and whose
+representatives consider the interests of a party, a constituency, and
+especially of their own personal ambitions and welfare, before the needs
+of humanity as a whole, or even the humanity of these little islands.
+
+"Above all, we are divided man against man. We are split into parties
+and factions, by greed and jealousies, petty spites and self-seeking, by
+unintelligence, by education, and by our inability--a mental
+inability--'to see life steadily and see it whole,' and lastly, perhaps
+chiefly, by our intense egotisms, both physical and intellectual.
+
+"Try to realise this. It is necessary, because whatever your wisdom, you
+have to live in a world of comparative ignorance, a world which cannot
+appreciate you, but which can and will fall back upon the compelling
+power of the savage--the resort to physical, brute force."
+
+The Wonder nodded. "You suggest----?" he said.
+
+"Merely that you should consent to answer certain elementary questions
+which the members of the Local Authority will put to you," replied
+Challis. "I can arrange that these questions be asked here--in the
+library. Will you consent?"
+
+The Wonder nodded, and made his way into the hall, without another word.
+His mother rose and opened the front door for him.
+
+As Challis watched the curious couple go down the drive, he sighed
+again, perhaps with relief, perhaps at the impotence of the world of
+men.
+
+
+IV
+
+There were four striking figures on the Education Committee selected by
+the Ailesworth County Council.
+
+The first of these was Sir Deane Elmer, who was also chairman of the
+Council at this time. The second was the vice-chairman, Enoch Purvis,
+the ex-mayor, commonly, if incorrectly, known as "Mayor" Purvis.
+
+The third was Richard Standing, J.P., who owned much property on the
+Quainton side of the town. He was a bluff, hearty man, devoted to sport
+and agriculture; a Conservative by birth and inclination, a staunch
+upholder of the Church and the Tariff Reform movement.
+
+The fourth was the Rev. Philip Steven, a co-opted member of the
+Committee, head master of the Ailesworth Grammar School. Steven was a
+tall, thin man with bent shoulders, and he had a long, thin face, the
+length of which was exaggerated by his square brown beard. He wore
+gold-mounted spectacles which, owing to his habit of dropping his head,
+always needed adjustment whenever he looked up. The movement of lifting
+his head and raising his hand to his glasses had become so closely
+associated, that his hand went up even when there was no apparent need
+for the action. Steven spoke of himself as a Broad Churchman, and in his
+speech on prize-day he never omitted some allusion to the necessity for
+"marching" or "keeping step" with the times. But Elmer was inclined to
+laugh at this assumption of modernity. "Steven," he said, on one
+occasion, "marks time and thinks he is keeping step. And every now and
+then he runs a little to catch up." The point of Elmer's satire lay in
+the fact that Steven was usually to be seen either walking very slowly,
+head down, lost in abstraction; or--when aroused to a sense of present
+necessity--going with long-strides as if intent on catching up with the
+times without further delay. Very often, too, he might be seen running
+across the school playground, his hand up to those elusive glasses of
+his. "There goes Mr. Steven, catching up with the times," had become an
+accepted phrase.
+
+There were other members of the Education Committee, notably Mrs. Philip
+Steven, but they were subordinate. If those four striking figures were
+unanimous, no other member would have dreamed of expressing a contrary
+opinion. But up to this time they had not yet been agreed upon any
+important line of action.
+
+This four, Challis and Crashaw met in the morning-room of Challis Court
+one Thursday afternoon in November. Elmer had brought a stenographer
+with him for scientific purposes.
+
+"Well," said Challis, when they were all assembled. "The--the subject--I
+mean, Victor Stott is in the library. Shall we adjourn?" Challis had not
+felt so nervous since the morning before he had sat for honours in the
+Cambridge Senate House.
+
+In the library they found a small child, reading.
+
+
+V
+
+He did not look up when the procession entered, nor did he remove his
+cricket cap. He was in his usual place at the centre table.
+
+Challis found chairs for the Committee, and the members ranged
+themselves round the opposite side of the table. Curiously, the effect
+produced was that of a class brought up for a viva voce examination, and
+when the Wonder raised his eyes and glanced deliberately down the line
+of his judges, this effect was heightened. There was an audible
+fidgeting, a creak of chairs, an indication of small embarrassments.
+
+"Her--um!" Deane Elmer cleared his throat with noisy vigour; looked at
+the Wonder, met his eyes and looked hastily away again; "Hm!--her--rum!"
+he repeated, and then he turned to Challis. "So this little fellow has
+never been to school?" he said.
+
+Challis frowned heavily. He looked exceedingly uncomfortable and
+unhappy. He was conscious that he could take neither side in this
+controversy--that he was in sympathy with no one of the seven other
+persons who were seated in his library.
+
+He shook his head impatiently in answer to Sir Deane Elmer's question,
+and the chairman turned to the Rev. Philip Steven, who was gazing
+intently at the pattern of the carpet.
+
+"I think, Steven," said Elmer, "that your large experience will probably
+prompt you to a more efficient examination than we could conduct. Will
+you initiate the inquiry?"
+
+Steven raised his head slightly, put a readjusting hand up to his
+glasses, and then looked sternly at the Wonder over the top of them.
+Even the sixth form quailed when the head master assumed this
+expression, but the small child at the table was gazing out of the
+window.
+
+Doubtless Steven was slightly embarrassed by the detachment of the
+examinee, and blundered. "What is the square root of 226?" he asked--he
+probably intended to say 225.
+
+"15.03329--to five places," replied the Wonder.
+
+Steven started. Neither he nor any other member of the Committee was
+capable of checking that answer without resort to pencil and paper.
+
+"Dear me!" ejaculated Squire Standing.
+
+Elmer scratched the superabundance of his purple jowl, and looked at
+Challis, who thrust his hands into his pockets and stared at the
+ceiling.
+
+Crashaw leaned forward and clasped his hands together. He was biding his
+time.
+
+"Mayor" Purvis alone seemed unmoved. "What's that book he's got open in
+front of him?" he asked.
+
+"May I see?" interposed Challis hurriedly, and he rose from his chair,
+picked up the book in question, glanced at it for a moment, and then
+handed it to the grocer. The book was Van Vloten's Dutch text and Latin
+translation of Spinoza's Short Treatise.
+
+The grocer turned to the title-page. "Ad--beany--dick--ti--de--Spy--nozer,"
+he read aloud and then: "What's it all about, Mr. Challis?" he asked.
+"German or something, I take it?"
+
+"In any case it has nothing to do with elementary arithmetic," replied
+Challis curtly, "Mr. Steven will set your mind at ease on that point."
+
+"Certainly, certainly," murmured Steven.
+
+Grocer Purvis closed the book carefully and replaced it on the desk.
+"What does half a stone o' loaf sugar at two-three-farthings come to?"
+he asked.
+
+The Wonder shook his head. He did not understand the grocer's
+phraseology.
+
+"What is seven times two and three quarters?" translated Challis.
+
+"19.25," answered the Wonder.
+
+"What's that in shillin's?" asked Purvis.
+
+"1.60416."
+
+"Wrong!" returned the grocer triumphantly.
+
+"Er--excuse me, Mr. Purvis," interposed Steven, "I think not.
+The--the--er--examinee has given the correct mathematical answer to five
+places of decimals--that is, so far as I can check him mentally."
+
+"Well, it seems to me," persisted the grocer, "as he's gone a long way
+round to answer a simple question what any fifth-standard child could do
+in his head. I'll give him another."
+
+"Cast it in another form," put in the chairman. "Give it as a
+multiplication sum."
+
+Purvis tucked his fingers carefully into his waistcoat pockets. "I put
+the question, Mr. Chairman," he said, "as it'll be put to the youngster
+when he has to tot up a bill. That seems to be a sound and practical
+form for such questions to be put in."
+
+Challis sighed impatiently. "I thought Mr. Steven had been delegated to
+conduct the first part of the examination," he said. "It seems to me
+that we are wasting a lot of time."
+
+Elmer nodded. "Will you go on, Mr. Steven?" he said.
+
+Challis was ashamed for his compeers. "What children we are," he
+thought.
+
+Steven got to work again with various arithmetical questions, which were
+answered instantly, and then he made a sudden leap and asked: "What is
+the binomial theorem?"
+
+"A formula for writing down the coefficient of any stated term in the
+expansion of any stated power of a given binomial," replied the Wonder.
+
+Elmer blew out his cheeks and looked at Challis, but met the gaze of Mr.
+Steven, who adjusted his glasses and said, "I am satisfied under this
+head."
+
+"It's all beyond me," remarked Squire Standing frankly.
+
+"I think, Mr. Chairman, that we've had enough theoretical arithmetic,"
+said Purvis. "There's a few practical questions I'd like to put."
+
+"No more arithmetic, then," assented Elmer, and Crashaw exchanged a
+glance of understanding with the grocer.
+
+"Now, how old was our Lord when He began His ministry?" asked the
+grocer.
+
+"Uncertain," replied the Wonder.
+
+Mr. Purvis smiled. "Any Sunday-school child knows that!" he said.
+
+"Of course, of course," murmured Crashaw.
+
+But Steven looked uncomfortable. "Are you sure you understand the
+purport of the answer, Mr. Purvis?" he asked.
+
+"Can there be any doubt about it?" replied the grocer. "I asked how old
+our Lord was when He began His ministry, and he"--he made an indicative
+gesture with one momentarily released hand towards the Wonder--"and he
+says he's 'uncertain.'"
+
+"No, no," interposed Challis impatiently, "he meant that the answer to
+your question was uncertain."
+
+"How's that?" returned the grocer. "I've always understood----"
+
+"Quite, quite," interrupted Challis. "But what we have always understood
+does not always correspond to the actual fact."
+
+"What did you intend by your answer?" put in Elmer quickly, addressing
+the Wonder.
+
+"The evidence rests mainly on Luke's Gospel," answered the Wonder, "but
+the phrase '{archomenos hosei eton triakonta}' is vague--it allows
+latitude in either direction. According to the chronology of John's
+Gospel the age might have been about thirty-two."
+
+"It says 'thirty' in the Bible, and that's good enough for me," said the
+grocer, and Crashaw muttered "Heresy, heresy," in an audible under tone.
+
+"Sounds very like blarsphemy to me," said Purvis, "like doubtin' the
+word of God. I'm for sending him to school."
+
+Deane Elmer had been regarding the face of the small abstracted child
+with considerable interest. He put aside for the moment the grocer's
+intimation of his voting tendency.
+
+"How many elements are known to chemists?" asked Elmer of the examinee.
+
+"Eighty-one well characterised; others have been described," replied the
+Wonder.
+
+"Which has the greatest atomic weight?" asked Elmer.
+
+"Uranium."
+
+"And that weight is?"
+
+"On the oxygen basis of 16--238.5."
+
+"Extraordinary powers of memory," muttered Elmer, and there was silence
+for a moment, a silence broken by Squire Standing, who, in a loud voice,
+asked suddenly and most irrelevantly, "What's your opinion of Tariff
+Reform?"
+
+"An empirical question that cannot be decided from a theoretical basis,"
+replied the Wonder.
+
+Elmer laughed out, a great shouting guffaw. "Quite right, quite right,"
+he said, his cheeks shaking with mirth. "What have you to say to that,
+Standing?"
+
+"I say that Tariff Reform's the only way to save the country," replied
+Squire Standing, looking very red and obstinate, "and if this
+Government----"
+
+Challis rose to his feet. "Oh! aren't you all satisfied?" he said. "Is
+this Committee here to argue questions of present politics? What more
+evidence do you need?"
+
+"I'm not satisfied," put in Purvis resolutely, "nor is the Rev. Mr.
+Crashaw, I fancy."
+
+"He has no vote," said Challis. "Elmer, what do you say?"
+
+"I think we may safely say that the child has been, and is being,
+provided with an education elsewhere, and that he need not therefore
+attend the elementary school," replied Elmer, still chuckling.
+
+"On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, is that what you put to the
+meeting?" asked Purvis.
+
+"This is quite informal," replied Elmer. "Unless we are all agreed, the
+question must be put to the full Committee."
+
+"Shall we argue the point in the other room?" suggested Challis.
+
+"Certainly, certainly," said Elmer. "We can return, if necessary."
+
+And the four striking figures of the Education Committee filed out,
+followed by Crashaw and the stenographer.
+
+Challis, coming last, paused at the door and looked back.
+
+The Wonder had returned to his study of Spinoza.
+
+Challis waved a hand to the unconscious figure. "I must join my
+fellow-children," he said grimly, "or they will be quarrelling."
+
+
+VI
+
+But when he joined his fellow-children, Challis stood at the window of
+the morning-room, attending little to the buzz of voices and the clatter
+of glasses which marked the relief from the restraint of the
+examination-room. Even the stenographer was talking; he had joined
+Crashaw and Purvis--a lemonade group; the other three were drinking
+whisky. The division, however, is arbitrary, and in no way significant.
+
+Challis caught a fragment of the conversation here and there: a
+bull-roar from Elmer or Squire Standing; an occasional blatancy from
+Purvis; a vibrant protest from Crashaw; a hesitating tenor pronouncement
+from Steven.
+
+"Extraordinary powers of memory.... It isn't facts, but what they stand
+for that I.... Don't know his Bible--that's good enough for me....
+Heresy, heresy.... An astounding memory, of course, quite astounding,
+but----"
+
+The simple exposition of each man's theme was dogmatically asserted, and
+through it all Challis, standing alone, hardly conscious of each
+individual utterance, was still conscious that the spirits of those six
+men were united in one thing, had they but known it. Each was
+endeavouring to circumscribe the powers of the child they had just
+left--each was insistent on some limitation he chose to regard as vital.
+
+They came to no decision that afternoon. The question as to whether the
+Authority should prosecute or not had to be referred to the Committee.
+
+At the last, Crashaw entered his protest and announced once more that he
+would fight the point to the bitter end.
+
+Crashaw's religious hatred was not, perhaps, altogether free from a
+sense of affronted dignity, but it was nevertheless a force to be
+counted; and he had that obstinacy of the bigot which has in the past
+contributed much fire and food to the pyre of martyrdom. He had, too, a
+power of initiative within certain limits. It is true that the bird on a
+free wing could avoid him with contemptuous ease, but along his own path
+he was a terrifying juggernaut. Crashaw, thus circumscribed, was a
+power, a moving force.
+
+But now he was seeking to crush, not some paralysed rabbit on the road,
+but an elusive spirit of swiftness which has no name, but may be figured
+as the genius of modernity. The thing he sought to obliterate ran ahead
+of him with a smiling facility and spat rearwards a vaporous jet of
+ridicule.
+
+Crashaw might crush his clerical wideawake over his frowning eyebrows,
+arm himself with a slightly dilapidated umbrella, and seek with long,
+determined strides the members of the Local Education Authority, but far
+ahead of him had run an intelligence that represented the instructed
+common sense of modernity.
+
+It was for Crashaw to realise--as he never could and never did
+realise--that he was no longer the dominant force of progress; that he
+had been outstripped, left toiling and shouting vain words on a road
+that had served its purpose, and though it still remained and was used
+as a means of travel, was becoming year by year more antiquated and
+despised.
+
+Crashaw toiled to the end, and no one knows how far his personal purpose
+and spite were satisfied, but he could never impede any more that
+elusive spirit of swiftness; it had run past him.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] Afterwards Lord Quainton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HIS INTERVIEW WITH HERR GROSSMANN
+
+
+I
+
+Crashaw must have suffered greatly just at that time; and the
+anticipation of his defeat by the Committee was made still more bitter
+by the wonderful visit of Herr Grossmann. It is true that that visit
+feebly helped Crashaw's cause at the moment by further enlisting the
+sympathies and strenuous endeavour of the Nonconformist Purvis; but no
+effort of the ex-mayor could avail to upset the majority of the Local
+Education Authority and the grocer, himself, was not a person acceptable
+to Crashaw. The two men were so nearly allied by their manner of thought
+and social origin; and Crashaw instinctively flaunted the splendid
+throne of his holy office, whenever he and Purvis were together. Purvis
+was what the rector might have described as an ignorant man. It is a
+fact that, until Crashaw very fully and inaccurately informed him, he
+had never even heard of Hugo Grossmann.
+
+In that conversation between Crashaw and Purvis, the celebrated German
+Professor figured as the veritable Anti-Christ, the Devil's personal
+representative on earth; but Crashaw was not a safe authority on Science
+and Philosophy.
+
+Herr Grossmann's world-wide reputation was certainly not won in the
+field of religious controversy. He had not at that time reached the
+pinnacle of achievement which placed him so high above his brilliant
+contemporaries, and now presents him as the unique figure and
+representative of twentieth-century science. But his very considerable
+contributions to knowledge had drawn the attention of Europe for ten
+years, and he was already regarded by his fellow-scientists with that
+mixture of contempt and jealousy which inevitably precedes the world's
+acceptance of its greatest men.
+
+Sir Deane Elmer, for example, was a generous and kindly man; he had
+never been involved in any controversy with the professional scientists
+whose ground he continually encroached upon, and yet he could not hear
+the name of Grossmann without frowning. Grossmann had the German vice of
+thoroughness. He took up a subject and exhausted it, as far as is
+possible within the limits of our present knowledge; and his monograph
+on Heredity had demonstrated with a detestable logic that much of
+Elmer's treatise on Eugenics was based on evidence that must be viewed
+with the gravest suspicion. Not that Grossmann had directly attacked
+that treatise; he had made no kind of reference to it in his own book;
+but his irrefutable statements had been quoted by every reviewer of
+"Eugenics" who chanced to have come across the English translation of
+"Heredity and Human Development," to the confounding of Elmer's somewhat
+too optimistic prophecies concerning the possibility of breeding a race
+that should approximate to a physical and intellectual perfection.
+
+And it happened that Elmer met Grossmann at an informal gathering of
+members of the Royal Society a few days after the examination of the
+Wonder in the Challis Court Library. Herr Grossmann was delivering an
+impromptu lecture on the limits of variation from the normal type, when
+Elmer came in and joined the group of the great Professor's listeners,
+every one of whom was seeking some conclusive argument to confute their
+guest's overwhelmingly accurate collation of facts.
+
+Elmer realised instantly that his opportunity had come at last. He
+listened patiently for a few minutes to the flow of the German's
+argument, and then broke in with a loud exclamation of dissent. All the
+learned members of the Society turned to him at once, with a movement of
+profound relief and expectation.
+
+"You said what?" asked Grossmann with a frown of great annoyance.
+
+Elmer thrust out his lower lip and looked at his antagonist with the
+expression of a man seeking a vital spot for the coup de grace.
+
+"I said, Herr Professor," Elmer returned, "that there are exceptions
+which confound your argument."
+
+"For example?" Grossmann said, putting his hands behind him and gently
+nodding his head like a tolerant schoolmaster awaiting the inevitable
+confusion of the too intrepid scholar.
+
+"Christian Heinecken?" suggested Elmer.
+
+"Ah! You have not then read my brochure on certain abnormalities
+reported in history?" Grossmann said, and continued, "Mr. Aylmer, is it
+not? To whom I am speaking? Yes? We have met, I believe, once in
+Leipzig. I thought so. But in my brochure, Mr. Aylmer, I have examined
+the Heinecken case and shown my reasons to regard it as not so departing
+from the normal."
+
+Elmer shook his head. "Your reasons are not valid, Herr Professor," he
+said and held up a corpulent forefinger to enforce Grossmann's further
+attention. "They seemed convincing at the time, I admit, but this new
+prodigy completely upsets your case."
+
+"Eh! What is that? What new prodigy?" sneered Grossmann; and two or
+three savants among the little ring of listeners, although they had not
+that perfect confidence in Elmer which would have put them at ease,
+nodded gravely as if they were aware of the validity of his instance.
+
+Elmer blew out his cheeks and raised his eyebrows. "Ah! you haven't
+heard of him!" he remarked with a rather fleshy surprise. "Victor Stott,
+you know, son of a professional cricketer, protege of Henry Challis, the
+anthropologist. Oh! you ought to investigate that case, Herr Professor.
+It is most remarkable, most remarkable."
+
+"Ach! What form does the abnormality take?" asked Grossmann
+suspiciously, and his tone made it clear that he had little confidence
+in the value of any report made to him by such an observer as Sir Deane
+Elmer.
+
+"I can't pretend to give you anything like a full account of it," Elmer
+returned. "I have only seen the child once. But, honestly, Herr
+Professor, you cannot use that brochure of yours in any future argument
+until you have investigated this case of young Stott. It confutes you."
+
+"I can see him, then?" Grossmann asked, frowning. In that company he
+could not afford to decline the challenge that had been thrown down.
+There were, at least, five men present who would, he believed,
+immediately conduct the examination on their own account, should he
+refuse the opportunity; men who would not fail to use their material for
+the demolition of that pamphlet on the type of abnormality, more
+particularly represented by the amazing precocity of Christian
+Heinecken.
+
+To the layman such an attack may seem a small matter, and likely to have
+little effect on such a reputation as that already won by Hugo
+Grossmann; and it should be explained that in the Professor's great work
+on "Heredity and Human Development," an essential argument was based on
+the absence of any considerable _progressive_ variation from the normal.
+Indeed it was from this premise that he developed the celebrated
+"variation" theory which is, now, generally admitted to have compromised
+the whole principle of "Natural Selection" while it has given a
+wonderful impetus to all recent investigations and experiments on the
+lines first indicated by Mendel.
+
+"I can see him, then?" asked Grossmann, with the faintly annoyed air of
+one who is compelled by circumstances to undertake a futile task.
+
+"Certainly, I will arrange an interview for you," Elmer replied, and
+went on to give an account of his own experience, an account that lost
+nothing in the telling.
+
+Elmer created a mild sensation in the rooms of the Royal Society that
+evening.
+
+
+II
+
+He found Challis at his house in Eaton Square the next morning, but it
+became evident from the outset that the plan of confounding Grossmann
+did not appeal to the magnate of Stoke-Underhill. Challis frowned and
+prevaricated. "It's a thousand to one, the child won't condescend to
+answer," was his chief evasion.
+
+Elmer was not to be frustrated in the development of his scheme by any
+such trivial excuse as that. He began to display a considerable
+annoyance at last.
+
+"Oh! nonsense; nonsense, Challis," he said. "You make altogether too
+much fuss about this prodigy of yours."
+
+"Not mine," Challis interrupted. "Take him over yourself, Elmer. Bring
+him out. Exhibit him. I make you a gift of all my interest in him."
+
+Elmer looked thoughtful for a moment, as if he were seriously
+considering that proposition, and then he said, "I recognise that there
+are--difficulties. The child seems--er--to have a queer, morose temper,
+doesn't he?"
+
+Challis shook his head. "It isn't that," he said.
+
+Elmer scratched his cheek. "I understand," he began, and then broke off
+and went on, "I'm putting this as a personal favour, Challis; but it is
+more than that. You know my theories with regard to the future of the
+race. I have a steady faith in our enormous potentialities for real
+progress. But it must be organised, and Grossmann is just now standing
+in our way. That stubborn materialism of his has infected many fine
+intelligences; and I would make very great sacrifices in order to clear
+this great and terrible obstacle out of the way."
+
+"And you believe that this interview ..." interrupted Challis.
+
+"I do, indeed," Elmer said. "It will destroy one of Grossmann's most
+vital premisses. This prodigy of yours--he is unquestionably a
+prodigy--demonstrates the fact of an immense progressive variation. Once
+that is conceded, the main argument of Grossmann's 'Heredity' is
+invalidated. We shall have knocked away the keystone of his mechanistic
+theory of evolution...."
+
+"But suppose that the boy refuses...."
+
+"He did not refuse to see us."
+
+"That was to save himself from further trouble."
+
+"But isn't he susceptible to argument?"
+
+"Not the kind of argument you have been using to me," Challis said
+gravely.
+
+Elmer blew like a porpoise; looked very thoughtful for a moment, and
+then said:
+
+"You could represent Grossmann as the final court of appeal--the High
+Lord Muck-a-muck of the L.E.A."
+
+"I should have to do something of the sort," Challis admitted, and
+continued with a spurt of temper. "But understand, Elmer, I don't do it
+again; no, not to save the reputation of the Royal Society."
+
+
+III
+
+Unhappily, no record exists of the conversation between the Wonder and
+Herr Grossmann.
+
+The Professor seems at the last moment to have had some misgiving as to
+the nature of the interview that was before him, and refused to have a
+witness to the proceedings.
+
+Challis made the introduction, and he says that the Wonder regarded
+Grossmann with perhaps rather more attention than he commonly conceded
+to strangers; and that the Professor exhibited the usual signs of
+embarrassment.
+
+Altogether, Grossmann was in the library for about half an hour, and he
+displayed no sign of perturbation when he rejoined Challis and Elmer in
+the breakfast-room. Indeed, only one fact of any significance emerges to
+throw suspicion on Grossmann's attitude during the progress of that
+secluded half-hour with the greatest intellect of all time--the
+Professor's spectacles had been broken.
+
+He spoke of the accident with a casual air when he was in the
+breakfast-room, but Challis remarked a slight flush on the great
+scientist's face as he referred, perhaps a trifle too ostentatiously, to
+the incident. And although it is worthless as evidence, there is
+something rather suspicious in Challis's discovery of finely powdered
+glass in his library--a mere pinch on the parquet near the further
+window of the big room, several feet away from the table at which the
+Wonder habitually sat. Challis would never have noticed the glass, had
+not one larger atom that had escaped pulverisation, caught the light
+from the window and drawn his attention.
+
+But even this find is in no way conclusive. The Professor may quite well
+have walked over to the window, taken off his spectacles to wipe them
+and dropped them as he, himself, explained. While the crushing of some
+fragment of one of the lenses was probably due to the chance of his
+stepping upon it, as he turned on his heel to continue the momentarily
+interrupted conversation. It is hard to believe that so great a man as
+Grossmann could have been convulsed by a petty rage that found
+expression in some act of wanton destruction.
+
+His own brief account of the interview accords very well with the single
+reference to the Wonder which exists in the literature of the world.
+This reference is a footnote to a second edition of Grossmann's
+brochure entitled "An Explanation of Certain Intellectual Abnormalities
+reported in History" ("Eine Erklaerung gewisser Intellektueller
+geschichtlich ueberlieferter Anormalen Erscheinungen"). This footnote
+comes at the end of Grossmann's masterly analysis of the Heinecken case
+and reads: "I recently examined a similar case of abnormality in
+England, but found that it presented no such marked divergence from the
+type as would demand serious investigation."
+
+And in his brief account of the interview rendered to Challis and Elmer,
+Herr Grossmann, in effect, did no more than draft that footnote.
+
+
+IV
+
+It must remain uncertain, now, whether or not Elmer would have persisted
+in his endeavour to exploit the Wonder to the confounding of Grossmann,
+despite Challis's explicit statement that he would do no more, not even
+if it were to save the reputation of the Royal Society. Elmer certainly
+had the virtue of persistence and might have made the attempt. But in
+one of his rare moments of articulate speech, the Wonder decided the
+fate of that threatened controversy beyond the possibility of appeal.
+
+He spoke to Challis that same afternoon. He put up his tiny hand to
+command attention and made the one clear statement on record of his own
+interests and ambitions in the world.
+
+Challis, turning from his discovery of the Professor's crushed glasses,
+listened in silence.
+
+"This Grossmann," the Wonder said, "was not concerned in my exemption?"
+
+Challis shook his head. "He is the last," the Wonder concluded with a
+fine brevity. "You and your kind have no interest in truth."
+
+That last statement may have had a double intention. It is obvious from
+the Wonder's preliminary question,--which had, indeed, also the quality
+of an assertion,--how plainly he had recognised that Grossmann had been
+introduced under false pretences. But, it is permissible to infer that
+the pronouncement went deeper than that. The Wonder's logic penetrated
+far into the mysteries of life and he may have seen that Grossmann's
+attitude was warped by the human limitations of his ambition to shine as
+a great exponent of science; that he dared not follow up a line of
+research which might end in the invalidation of his great theory of
+heredity.
+
+Victor Stott had once before expounded his philosophy and Challis, on
+that occasion, had deliberately refused to listen. And we may guess that
+Grossmann, also, might have received some great illumination, had he
+chosen to pay deference to a mind so infinitely greater than his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+FUGITIVE
+
+
+Meanwhile a child of five--all unconscious that his quiet refusal to
+participate in the making and breaking of reputations was temporarily a
+matter of considerable annoyance to a Fellow of the Royal Society--ran
+through a well-kept index of the books in the library of Challis
+Court--an index written clearly on cards that occupied a great nest of
+accessible drawers; two cards with a full description to each book,
+alphabetically arranged, one card under the title of the work and one
+under the author's name.
+
+The child made no notes as he studied--he never wrote a single line in
+all his life; but when a drawer of that delightful index had been
+searched, he would walk here and there among the three rooms at his
+disposal, and by the aid of the flight of framed steps that ran smoothly
+on rubber-tyred wheels, he would take down now and again some book or
+another until, returning to the table at last to read, he sat in an
+enceinte of piled volumes that had been collected round him.
+
+Sometimes he read a book from beginning to end, more often he glanced
+through it, turning a dozen pages at a time, and then pushed it on one
+side with a gesture displaying the contempt that was not shown by any
+change of expression.
+
+On many afternoons the sombrely clad figure of a tall, gaunt woman would
+stand at the open casement of a window in the larger room, and keep a
+mystic vigil that sometimes lasted for hours. She kept her gaze fixed on
+that strange little figure whenever it roved up and down the suite of
+rooms or clambered the pyramid of brown steps that might have made such
+a glorious plaything for any other child. And even when her son was
+hidden behind the wall of volumes he had built, the woman would still
+stare in his direction, but then her eyes seemed to look inwards; at
+such times she appeared to be wrapped in an introspective devotion.
+
+Very rarely, the heavy-shouldered figure of a man would come to the
+doorway of the larger room, and also keep a silent vigil--a man who
+would stand for some minutes with thoughtful eyes and bent brows and
+then sigh, shake his head and move away, gently closing the door behind
+him.
+
+There were few other interruptions to the silence of that chapel-like
+library. Half a dozen times in the first few months a fair-haired,
+rather supercilious young man came and fetched away a few volumes; but
+even he evidenced an inclination to walk on tiptoe, a tendency that
+mastered him whenever he forgot for a moment his self-imposed role of
+scorn....
+
+Outside, over the swelling undulations of rich grass the sheep came back
+with close-cropped, ungainly bodies to a land that was yellow with
+buttercups. But when one looked again, their wool hung about them, and
+they were snatching at short turf that was covered at the woodside by a
+sprinkle of brown leaves. Then the sheep have gone, and the wood is
+black with February rain. And, again, the unfolding of the year is about
+us; a thickening of high twigs in the wood, a glint of green on the
+blackthorn....
+
+Nearly three cycles of death and birth have run their course, and then
+the strange little figure comes no more to the library at Challis
+Court.
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK
+
+
+I
+
+The circumstance that had intrigued me for so long was determined with
+an abruptness only less remarkable than the surprise of the onset. Two
+deaths within six months brought to me, the first, a competence, the
+second, release from gall and bitterness. For the first time in my life
+I was a free man. At forty one can still look forward, and I put the
+past behind me and made plans for the future. There was that book of
+mine still waiting to be written.
+
+It was wonderful how the detail of it all came back to me--the plan of
+it, the thread of development, even the very phrases that I had toyed
+with. The thought of the book brought back a train of associations.
+There was a phrase I had coined as I had walked out from Ailesworth to
+Stoke-Underhill; a chapter I had roughed out the day I went to see
+Ginger Stott at Pym. It seemed to me that the whole conception of the
+book was associated in some way with that neighbourhood. I remembered at
+last that I had first thought of writing it after my return from
+America, on the day that I had had that curious experience with the
+child in the train. It occurred to me that by a reversal of the process,
+I might regain many more of my original thoughts; that by going to live,
+temporarily perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Ailesworth, I might revive
+other associations.
+
+The picture of Pym presented itself to me very clearly. I remembered
+that I had once thought that Pym was a place to which I might retire one
+day in order to write the things I wished to write. I decided to make
+the dream a reality, and I wrote to Mrs. Berridge at the Wood Farm,
+asking her if she could let me have her rooms for the spring, summer,
+and autumn.
+
+
+II
+
+I was all aglow with excitement on the morning that I set out for the
+Hampden Hills. This was change, I thought, freedom, adventure. This was
+the beginning of life, my real entry into the joy of living.
+
+The world was alight with the fire of growth. May had come with a clear
+sky and a torrent of green was flowing over field, hedge, and wood. I
+remember that I thanked "whatever gods there be," that one could live so
+richly in the enjoyment of these things.
+
+
+III
+
+Farmer Bates met me at Great Hittenden Station. His was the only
+available horse and cart at Pym, for the Berridges were in a very small
+way, and it is doubtful if they could have made both ends meet if Mrs.
+Berridge had not done so well by letting her two spare rooms.
+
+I have a great admiration for Farmer Bates and Mrs. Berridge. I regret
+intensely that they should both have been unhappily married. If they had
+married each other they would undoubtedly have made a success of life.
+
+Bates was a Cockney by birth, but always he had had an ambition to take
+a farm, and after twenty years of work as a skilled mechanic he had
+thrown up a well-paid job, and dared the uncertainties which beset the
+English farmer. That venture was a constant bone of strife between him
+and his wife. Mrs. Bates preferred the town. It has always seemed to me
+that there was something fine about Bates and his love for the land.
+
+"Good growing weather, Mr. Bates," I said, as I climbed up into the
+cart.
+
+"Shouldn't be sorry to see some more rain," replied Bates, and damped my
+ardour for a moment.
+
+Just before we turned into the lane that leads up the long hill to Pym,
+we passed a ramshackle cart, piled up with a curious miscellany of
+ruinous furniture. A man was driving, and beside him sat a slatternly
+woman and a repulsive-looking boy of ten or twelve years old, with a
+great swollen head and an open, slobbering mouth.
+
+I was startled. I jumped to the conclusion that this was the child I had
+seen in the train, the son of Ginger Stott.
+
+As we slowed down to the ascent of the long hill, I said to Bates: "Is
+that Stott's boy?"
+
+Bates looked at me curiously. "Why, no," he said. "Them's the 'Arrisons.
+'Arrison's dead now; he was a wrong 'un, couldn't make a job of it,
+nohow. They used to live 'ere, five or six year ago, and now 'er
+'usband's dead, Mrs. 'Arrison's coming back with the boy to live. Worse
+luck. We thought we was shut of 'em."
+
+"Oh!" I said. "The boy's an idiot, I suppose."
+
+"'Orrible," replied Bates, shaking his head, "'orrible; can't speak nor
+nothing; goes about bleating and baa-ing like an old sheep."
+
+I looked round, but the ramshackle cart was hidden by the turn of the
+road. "Does Stott still live at Pym?" I asked.
+
+"Not Ginger," replied Bates. "He lives at Ailesworth. Mrs. Stott and 'er
+son lives here."
+
+"The boy's still alive then?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," said Bates.
+
+"Intelligent child?" I asked.
+
+"They say," replied Bates. "Book-learnin' and such. They say 'e's read
+every book in Mr. Challis's librairy."
+
+"Does he go to school?"
+
+"No. They let 'im off. Leastways Mr. Challis did. They say the Reverend
+Crashaw, down at Stoke, was fair put out about it."
+
+I thought that Bates emphasised the "on dit" nature of his information
+rather markedly. "What do _you_ think of him?" I asked.
+
+"Me?" said Bates. "I don't worry my 'ead about him. I've got too much to
+_do_." And he went off into technicalities concerning the abundance of
+charlock on the arable land of Pym. He called it "garlic." I saw that it
+was typical of Bates that he should have too much to _do_. I reflected
+that his was the calling which begot civilisation.
+
+
+IV
+
+The best and surest route from Pym to the Wood Farm is, appropriately,
+by way of the wood; but in wet weather the alternative of various cart
+tracks that wind among the bracken and shrub of the Common, is
+preferable in many ways. May had been very dry that year, however, and
+Farmer Bates chose the wood. The leaves were still light on the beeches.
+I remember that as I tried to pierce the vista of stems that dipped over
+the steep fall of the hill, I promised myself many a romantic
+exploration of the unknown mysteries beyond.
+
+Everything was so bright that afternoon that nothing, I believe, could
+have depressed me. When I had reached the farm and looked round the low,
+dark room with its one window, a foot from the ground and two from the
+ceiling, I only thought that I should be out-of-doors all the time. It
+amused me that I could touch the ceiling with my head by standing on
+tiptoe, and I laughed at the framed "presentation plates" from old
+Christmas numbers on the walls. These things are merely curious when the
+sun is shining and it is high May, and one is free to do the desired
+work after twenty years in a galley.
+
+
+V
+
+At a quarter to eight that evening I saw the sun set behind the hills.
+As I wandered reflectively down the lane that goes towards Challis
+Court, a blackbird was singing ecstatically in a high elm; here and
+there a rabbit popped out and sat up, the picture of precocious
+curiosity. Nature seemed to be standing in her doorway for a careless
+half-hour's gossip, before putting up the shutters to bar the robbers
+who would soon be about their work of the night.
+
+It was still quite light as I strolled back over the Common, and I chose
+a path that took me through a little spinney of ash, oak, and beech,
+treading carefully to avoid crushing the tender crosiers of bracken that
+were just beginning to break their way through the soil.
+
+As I emerged from the little clump of wood, I saw two figures going away
+from me in the direction of Pym.
+
+One was that of a boy wearing a cricket-cap; he was walking
+deliberately, his hands hanging at his sides; the other figure was a
+taller boy, and he threw out his legs in a curious, undisciplined way,
+as though he had little control over them. At first sight I thought he
+was not sober.
+
+The two passed out of sight behind a clump of hawthorn, but once I saw
+the smaller figure turn and face the other, and once he made a repelling
+gesture with his hands.
+
+It occurred to me that the smaller boy was trying to avoid his
+companion; that he was, in one sense, running away from him, that he
+walked as one might walk away from some threatening animal,
+deliberately--to simulate the appearance of courage.
+
+I fancied the bigger boy was the idiot Harrison I had seen that
+afternoon, and Farmer Bates's "We hoped we were shut of him" recurred to
+me. I wondered if the idiot were dangerous or only a nuisance.
+
+I took the smaller boy to be one of the villagers' children. I noticed
+that his cricket-cap had a dark patch as though it had been mended with
+some other material.
+
+The impression which I received from this trivial affair was one of
+disappointment. The wood and the Common had been so deserted by
+humanity, so given up to nature, that I felt the presence of the idiot
+to be a most distasteful intrusion. "If that horrible thing is going to
+haunt the Common there will be no peace or decency," was the idea that
+presented itself. "I must send him off, the brute," was the corollary.
+But I disliked the thought of being obliged to drive him away.
+
+
+VI
+
+The next morning I did not go on the Common; I was anxious to avoid a
+meeting with the Harrison idiot. I had been debating whether I should
+drive him away if I met him. Obviously I had no more right on the Common
+than he had--on the other hand, he was a nuisance, and I did not see why
+I should allow him to spoil all my pleasure in that ideal stretch of
+wild land which pressed on three sides of the Wood Farm. It was a stupid
+quandary of my own making; but I am afraid it was rather typical of my
+mental attitude. I am prone to set myself tasks, such as this eviction
+of the idiot from common ground, and equally prone to avoid them by a
+process of procrastination.
+
+By way of evasion I walked over to Deane Hill and surveyed the wonderful
+panorama of neat country that fills the basin between the Hampden and
+the Quainton Hills. Seen from that height, it has something the effect
+of a Dutch landscape, it all looks so amazingly tidy. Away to the left I
+looked over Stoke-Underhill. Ailesworth was a blur in the hollow, but I
+could distinguish the high fence of the County Ground.
+
+I sat all the morning on Deane Hill, musing and smoking, thinking of
+such things as Ginger Stott, and the match with Surrey. I decided that I
+must certainly go and see Stott's queer son, the phenomenon who had,
+they say, read all the books in Mr. Challis's library. I wondered what
+sort of a library this Challis had, and who he was. I had never heard of
+him before. I think I must have gone to sleep for a time.
+
+When Mrs. Berridge came to clear away my dinner--I dined, without shame,
+at half-past twelve--I detained her with conversation. Presently I asked
+about little Stott.
+
+"He's a queer one, that's what he is," said Mrs. Berridge. She was a
+neat, comely little woman, rather superior to her station, and it seemed
+to me, certainly superior to her clod of a husband.
+
+"A great reader, Farmer Bates tells me," I said.
+
+Mrs. Berridge passed that by. "His mother's in trouble about him this
+morning," she said. "She's such a nice, respectable woman, and has all
+her milk and eggs and butter off of us. She was here this morning while
+you were out, sir, and, what I could make of it that 'Arrison boy had
+been chasing her boy on the Common last night."
+
+"Oh!" I said with sudden enlightenment. "I believe I saw them." At the
+back of my mind I was struggling desperately with a vague remembrance.
+It may sound incredible, but I had only the dimmest memory of my later
+experience of the child. The train incident was still fresh in my mind,
+but I could not remember what Stott had told me when I talked with him
+by the pond. I seemed to have an impression that the child had some
+strange power of keeping people at a distance; or was I mixing up
+reality with some Scandinavian fairy tale?
+
+"Very likely, sir," Mrs. Berridge went on. "What upset Mrs. Stott was
+that her boy's never upset by anything--he has a curious way of looking
+at you, sir, that makes you wish you wasn't there; but from what Mrs.
+Stott says, this 'Arrison boy wasn't to be drove off, anyhow, and her
+son came in quite flurried like. Mrs. Stott seemed quite put out about
+it."
+
+Doubtless I might have had more information from my landlady, but I was
+struggling to reconstruct that old experience which had slipped away
+from me, and I nodded and turned back to the book I had been pretending
+to read. Mrs. Berridge was one of those unusual women--for her station
+in life--who know when to be silent, and she finished her clearing away
+without initiating any further remarks.
+
+When she had finished I went out onto the Common and looked for the pond
+where I had talked with Ginger Stott.
+
+I found it after a time, and then I began to gather up the threads I had
+dropped.
+
+It all came back to me, little by little. I remembered that talk I had
+had with him, his very gestures; I remembered how he had spoken of
+habits, or the necessity for the lack of them, and that took me back to
+the scene in the British Museum Reading Room, and to my theory. I was
+suddenly alive to that old interest again.
+
+I got up and walked eagerly in the direction of Mrs. Stott's cottage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE INCIPIENCE OF MY SUBJECTION TO THE WONDER
+
+
+I
+
+Victor Stott was in his eighth year when I met him for the third time. I
+must have stayed longer than I imagined by the pond on the Common, for
+Mrs. Stott and her son had had tea, and the boy was preparing to go out.
+He stopped when he saw me coming; an unprecedented mark of recognition,
+so I have since learned.
+
+As I saw him then, he made a remarkable, but not a repulsively abnormal
+figure. His baldness struck one immediately, but it did not give him a
+look of age. Then one noticed that his head was unmistakably out of
+proportion to his body, yet the disproportion was not nearly so marked
+as it had been in infancy. These two things were conspicuous; the less
+salient peculiarities were observed later; the curious little beaky nose
+that jutted out at an unusual angle from the face, the lips that were
+too straight and determined for a child, the laxity of the limbs when
+the body was in repose--lastly, the eyes.
+
+When I met Victor Stott on this, third, occasion, there can be no doubt
+that he had lost something of his original power. This may have been due
+to his long sojourn in the world of books, a sojourn that had, perhaps,
+altered the strange individuality of his thought; or it may have been
+due, in part at least, to his recent recognition of the fact that the
+power of his gaze exercised no influence over creatures such as the
+Harrison idiot. Nevertheless, though something of the original force had
+abated, he still had an extraordinary, and, so far as I can learn,
+altogether unprecedented power of enforcing his will without word or
+gesture; and I may say here that in those rare moments when Victor Stott
+looked me in the face, I seemed to see a rare and wonderful personality
+peering out through his eyes,--the personality which had, no doubt,
+spoken to Challis and Lewes through that long afternoon in the library
+of Challis Court. Normally one saw a curious, unattractive, rather
+repulsive figure of a child; when he looked at one with that rare look
+of intention, the man that lived within that unattractive body was
+revealed, his insight, his profundity, his unexampled wisdom. If we mark
+the difference between man and animals by a measure of intelligence,
+then surely this child was a very god among men.
+
+
+II
+
+Victor Stott did not look at me when I entered his mother's cottage; I
+saw only the unattractive exterior of him, and I blundered into an air
+of patronage.
+
+"Is this your boy?" I said, when I had greeted her. "I hear he is a
+great scholar."
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Ellen Mary quietly. She never boasted to strangers.
+
+"You don't remember me, I suppose?" I went on, foolishly; trying,
+however, to speak as to an equal. "You were in petticoats the last time
+I saw you."
+
+The Wonder was standing by the window, his arms hanging loosely at his
+sides; he looked out aslant up the lane; his profile was turned towards
+me. He made no answer to my question.
+
+"Oh yes, sir, he remembers," replied Ellen Mary. "He never forgets
+anything."
+
+I paused, uncomfortably. I was slightly huffed by the boy's silence.
+
+"I have come to spend the summer here," I said at last. "I hope he will
+come to see me. I have brought a good many books with me; perhaps he
+might care to read some of them."
+
+I had to talk _at_ the boy; there was no alternative. Inwardly I was
+thinking that I had Kant's Critique and Hegel's Phenomenology among my
+books. "He may put on airs of scholarship," I thought; "but I fancy that
+he will find those two works rather above the level of his comprehension
+as yet." I did not recognise the fact that it was I who was putting on
+airs, not Victor Stott.
+
+"'E's given up reading the past six weeks, sir," said Ellen Mary, "but I
+daresay he will come and see your books."
+
+She spoke demurely, and she did not look at her son; I received the
+impression that her statements were laid before him to take up, reject,
+or pass unnoticed as he pleased.
+
+I was slightly exasperated. I turned to the Wonder. "Would you care to
+come?" I asked.
+
+He nodded without looking at me, and walked out of the cottage.
+
+I hesitated.
+
+"'E'll go with you now, sir," prompted Ellen Mary. "That's what 'e
+means."
+
+I followed the Wonder in a condition of suppressed irritation. "His
+mother might be able to interpret his rudeness," I thought, "but I would
+teach him to convey his intentions more clearly. The child had been
+spoilt."
+
+
+III
+
+The Wonder chose the road over the Common. I should have gone by the
+wood, but when we came to the entrance of the wood, he turned up on to
+the Common. He did not ask me which way I preferred. Indeed, we neither
+of us spoke during the half-mile walk that separated the Wood Farm from
+the last cottage in Pym.
+
+I was fuming inwardly. I had it in my mind at that time to put the
+Wonder through some sort of an examination. I was making plans to
+contribute towards his education, to send him to Oxford, later. I had
+adumbrated a scheme to arouse interest in his case among certain
+scholars and men of influence with whom I was slightly acquainted. I had
+been very much engrossed with these plans as I had made my way to the
+Stotts' cottage. I was still somewhat exalted in mind with my dreams of
+a vicarious brilliance. I had pictured the Wonder's magnificent passage
+through the University; I had acted, in thought, as the generous and
+kindly benefactor.... It had been a grandiose dream, and the reality was
+so humiliating. Could I make this mannerless child understand his
+possibilities? Had he any ambition?
+
+Thinking of these things, I had lagged behind as we crossed the Common,
+and when I came to the gate of the farmyard, the Wonder was at the door
+of the house. He did not wait for me, but walked straight into my
+sitting-room. When I entered, I found him seated on the low window-sill,
+turning over the top layer of books in the large case which had been
+opened, but not unpacked. There was no place to put the books; in fact,
+I was proposing to have some shelves put up, if Mrs. Berridge had no
+objection.
+
+I entered the room in a condition of warm indignation. "Cheek" was the
+word that was in my mind. "Confounded cheek," I muttered. Nevertheless I
+did not interrupt the boy; instead, I lit a cigarette, sat down and
+watched him.
+
+I was sceptical at first. I noted at once the sure touch with which the
+boy handled my books, the practised hand that turned the pages, the
+quick examination of title-page and the list of contents, the occasional
+swift reference to the index, but I did not believe it possible that any
+one could read so fast as he read when he did condescend for a few
+moments to give his attention to a few consecutive pages. "Was it a
+pose?" I thought, yet he was certainly an adept in handling the books. I
+was puzzled, yet I was still sceptical--the habit of experience was
+towards disbelief--a boy of seven and a half could not possibly have the
+mental equipment to skim all that philosophy....
+
+My books were being unpacked very quickly. Kant, Hegel, Schelling,
+Fichte, Leibnitz, Nietzsche, Hume, Bradley, William James had all been
+rejected and were piled on the floor, but he had hesitated longer over
+Bergson's _Creative Evolution_. He really seemed to be giving that some
+attention, though he read it--if he were reading it--so fast that the
+hand which turned the pages hardly rested between each movement.
+
+When Bergson was sent to join his predecessors, I determined that I
+would get some word out of this strange child--I had never yet heard him
+speak, not a single syllable. I determined to brave all rebuffs. I was
+prepared for that.
+
+"Well?" I said, when Bergson was laid down. "Well! What do you make of
+that?"
+
+He turned and looked out of the window.
+
+I came and sat on the end of the table within a few feet of him. From
+that position I, too, could see out of the window, and I saw the figure
+of the Harrison idiot slouching over the farmyard gate.
+
+A gust of impatience whirled over me. I caught up my stick and went out
+quickly.
+
+"Now then," I said, as I came within speaking distance of the idiot,
+"get away from here. Out with you!"
+
+The idiot probably understood no word of what I said, but like a dog he
+was quick to interpret my tone and gesture. He made a revoltingly
+inhuman sound as he shambled away, a kind of throaty yelp. I walked back
+to the house. I could not avoid the feeling that I had been
+unnecessarily brutal.
+
+When I returned the Wonder was still staring out of the window; but
+though I did not guess it then, the idiot had served my purpose better
+than my determination. It was to the idiot that I owed my subsequent
+knowledge of Victor Stott. The Wonder had found a use for me. He was
+resigned to bear with my feeble mental development, because I was strong
+enough to keep at bay that half-animal creature who appeared to believe
+that Victor Stott was one of his own kind--the only one he had ever met.
+The idiot in some unimaginable way had inferred a likeness between
+himself and the Wonder--they both had enormous heads--and the idiot was
+the only human being over whom the Wonder was never able to exercise the
+least authority.
+
+
+IV
+
+I went in and sat down again on the end of the table. I was rather
+heated. I lit another cigarette and stared at the Wonder, who was still
+looking out of the window.
+
+There was silence for a few seconds, and then he spoke of his own
+initiative.
+
+"Illustrates the weakness of argument from history and analogy," he said
+in a clear, small voice, addressing no one in particular. "Hegel's
+limitations are qualitatively those of Harrison, who argues that I and
+he are similar in kind."
+
+The proposition was so astounding that I could find no answer
+immediately. If the statement had been made in boyish language I should
+have laughed at it, but the phraseology impressed me.
+
+"You've read Hegel, then?" I asked evasively.
+
+"Subtract the endeavour to demonstrate a preconceived hypothesis from
+any known philosophy," continued the Wonder, without heeding my
+question, "and the remainder, the only valuable material, is found to be
+distorted." He paused as if waiting for my reply.
+
+How could one answer such propositions as these offhand? I tried,
+however, to get at the gist of the sentence, and, as the silence
+continued, I said with some hesitation: "But it is impossible, surely,
+to approach the work of writing, say a philosophy, without some
+apprehension of the end in view?"
+
+"Illogical," replied the Wonder, "not philosophy; a system of trial and
+error--to evaluate a complex variable function." He paused a moment, and
+then glanced down at the pile of books on the floor. "More millions," he
+said.
+
+I think he meant that more millions of books might be written on this
+system without arriving at an answer to the problem, but I admit that I
+am at a loss, that I cannot interpret his remarks. I wrote them down an
+hour or two after they were uttered, but I may have made mistakes. The
+mathematical metaphor is beyond me. I have no acquaintance with the
+higher mathematics.
+
+The Wonder had a very expressionless face, but I thought at this moment
+that he wore a look of sadness; and that look was one of the factors
+which helped me to understand the unbridgeable gulf that lay between his
+intellect and mine. I think it was at this moment that I first began to
+change my opinion. I had been regarding him as an unbearable little
+prig, but it flashed across me as I watched him now, that his mind and
+my own might be so far differentiated that he was unable to convey his
+thoughts to me. "Was it possible," I wondered, "that he had been trying
+to talk down to my level?"
+
+"I am afraid I don't quite follow you," I said. I had intended to
+question him further, to urge him to explain, but it came to me that it
+would be quite hopeless to go on. How can one answer the unreasoning
+questions of a child? Here I was the child, though a child of slightly
+advanced development. I could appreciate that it was useless to persist
+in a futile "Why, why?" when the answer could only be given in terms
+that I could not comprehend. Therefore I hesitated, sighed, and then
+with that obstinacy of vanity which creates an image of self-protection
+and refuses to relinquish it, I said:
+
+"I wish you could explain yourself; not on this particular point of
+philosophy, but your life----" I stopped, because I did not know how to
+phrase my demand. What was it, after all, that I wanted to learn?
+
+"That I can't explain," said the Wonder. "There are no data."
+
+I saw that he had accepted my request for explanation in a much wider
+sense than I had intended, and I took him up on this.
+
+"But haven't you any hypothesis?"
+
+"I cannot work on the system of trial and error," replied the Wonder.
+
+Our conversation went no further this afternoon, for Mrs. Berridge came
+in to lay the cloth. She looked askance, I thought, at the figure on the
+window-sill, but she ventured no remark save to ask if I was ready for
+my supper.
+
+"Yes, oh! yes!" I said.
+
+"Shall I lay for two, sir?" asked Mrs. Berridge.
+
+"Will you stay and have supper?" I said to the Wonder, but he shook his
+head, got up and walked out of the room. I watched him cross the
+farmyard and make his way over the Common.
+
+"Well!" I said to Mrs. Berridge, when the boy was out of sight, "that
+child is what in America they call 'the limit,' Mrs. Berridge."
+
+My landlady put her lips together, shook her head, and shivered
+slightly. "He gives me the shudders," she said.
+
+
+V
+
+I neither read nor wrote that evening. I forgot to go out for a walk at
+sunset. I sat and pondered until it was time for bed, and then I
+pondered myself to sleep. No vision came to me, and I had no relevant
+dreams.
+
+The next morning at seven o'clock I saw Mrs. Stott come over the Common
+to fetch her milk from the farm. I waited until her business was done,
+and then I went out and walked back with her.
+
+"I want to understand about your son," I said by way of making an
+opening.
+
+She looked at me quickly. "You know, 'e 'ardly ever speaks to me, sir,"
+she said.
+
+I was staggered for a moment. "But you understand him?" I said.
+
+"In some ways, sir," was her answer.
+
+I recognised the direction of the limitation. "Ah! we none of us
+understand him in all ways," I said, with a touch of patronage.
+
+"No, sir," replied Ellen Mary. She evidently agreed to that statement
+without qualification.
+
+"But what is he going to do?" I asked. "When he grows up, I mean?"
+
+"I can't say, sir. We must leave that to 'im."
+
+I accepted the rebuke more mildly than I should have done on the
+previous day. "He never speaks of his future?" I said feebly.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+There seemed to be nothing more to say. We had only gone a couple of
+hundred yards, but I paused in my walk. I thought I might as well go
+back and get my breakfast. But Mrs. Stott looked at me as though she had
+something more to say. We stood facing each other on the cart track.
+
+"I suppose I can't be of any use?" I asked vaguely.
+
+Ellen Mary became suddenly voluble.
+
+"I 'ope I'm not askin' too much, sir," she said, "but there is a way you
+could 'elp if you would. 'E 'ardly ever speaks to me, as I've said, but
+I've been opset about that 'Arrison boy. 'E's a brute beast, sir, if you
+know what I mean, and _'e_" (she differentiated her pronouns only by
+accent, and where there is any doubt I have used italics to indicate
+that her son is referred to) "doesn't seem to 'ave the same 'old on 'im
+as _'e_ does over others. It's truth, I am not easy in my mind about it,
+sir, although _'e_ 'as never said a word to me, not being afraid of
+anything like other children, but 'e seems to have took a sort of a
+fancy to you, sir" (I think this was intended as the subtlest flattery),
+"and if you was to go with 'im when 'e takes 'is walks--'e's much in the
+air, sir, and a great one for walkin'--I think 'e'd be glad of your
+cump'ny, though maybe 'e won't never say it in so many words. You
+mustn't mind 'im being silent, sir; there's some things we can't
+understand, and though, as I say, 'e 'asn't said anything to me, it's
+not that I'm scheming be'ind 'is back, for I know 'is meaning without
+words being necessary."
+
+She might have said more, but I interrupted her at this point.
+"Certainly, I will come and fetch him,"--I lapsed unconsciously into her
+system of denomination--"this morning, if you are sure he would like to
+come out with me."
+
+"I'm quite sure, sir," she said.
+
+"About nine o'clock?" I asked.
+
+"That would do nicely, sir," she answered.
+
+As I walked back to the farm I was thinking of the life of those two
+occupants of the Stotts' cottage. The mother who watched her son in
+silence, studying his every look and action in order to gather his
+meaning; who never asked her son a question nor expected from him any
+statement of opinion; and the son wrapped always in that profound
+speculation which seemed to be his only mood. What a household!
+
+It struck me while I was having breakfast that I seemed to have let
+myself in for a duty that might prove anything but pleasant.
+
+
+VI
+
+There is nothing to say of that first walk of mine with the Wonder. I
+spoke to him once or twice and he answered by nodding his head; even
+this notice I now know to have been a special mark of favour, a
+condescension to acknowledge his use for me as a guardian. He did not
+speak at all on this occasion.
+
+I did not call for him in the afternoon; I had made other plans. I
+wanted to see the man Challis, whose library had been at the disposal of
+this astonishing child. Challis might be able to give me further
+information. The truth of the matter is that I was in two minds as to
+whether I would stay at Pym through the summer, as I had originally
+intended. I was not in love with the prospect which the sojourn now held
+out for me. If I were to be constituted head nursemaid to Master Victor
+Stott, there would remain insufficient time for the progress of my own
+book on certain aspects of the growth of the philosophic method.
+
+I see now, when I look back, that I was not convinced at that time, that
+I still doubted the Wonder's learning. I may have classed it as a
+freakish pedantry, the result of an unprecedented memory.
+
+Mrs. Berridge had much information to impart on the subject of Henry
+Challis. He was her husband's landlord, of course, and his was a
+hallowed name, to be spoken with decency and respect. I am afraid I
+shocked Mrs. Berridge at the outset by my casual "Who's this man
+Challis?" She certainly atoned by her own manner for my irreverence; she
+very obviously tried to impress me. I professed submission, but was not
+intimidated, rather my curiosity was aroused.
+
+Mrs. Berridge was not able to tell me the one thing I most desired to
+know, whether the lord of Challis Court was in residence; but it was not
+far to walk, and I set out about two o'clock.
+
+
+VII
+
+Challis was getting into his motor as I walked up the drive. I hurried
+forward to catch him before the machine was started. He saw me coming
+and paused on the doorstep.
+
+"Did you want to see me?" he asked, as I came up.
+
+"Mr. Challis?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"I won't keep you now," I said, "but perhaps you could let me know some
+time when I could see you."
+
+"Oh, yes," he said, with the air of a man who is constantly subjected to
+annoyance by strangers. "But perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me what
+it is you wish to see me about? I might be able to settle it now, at
+once."
+
+"I am staying at the Wood Farm," I began. "I am interested in a very
+remarkable child----"
+
+"Ah! take my advice, leave him alone," interrupted Challis quickly.
+
+I suppose I looked my amazement, for Challis laughed. "Oh, well," he
+said, "of course you won't take such spontaneous advice as that. I'm in
+no hurry. Come in." He took off his heavy overcoat and threw it into the
+tonneau. "Come round again in an hour," he said to the chauffeur.
+
+"It's very good of you," I protested, "I could come quite well at any
+other time."
+
+"I'm in no hurry," he repeated. "You had better come to the scene of
+Victor Stott's operations. He hasn't been here for six weeks, by the
+way. Can you throw any light on his absence?"
+
+I made a friend that afternoon. When the car came back at four o'clock,
+Challis sent it away again. "I shall probably stay down here to-night,"
+he said to the butler, and to me: "Can you stay to dinner? I must
+convince you about this child."
+
+"I have dined once to-day," I said. "At half-past twelve. I have no
+other excuse."
+
+"Oh! well," said Challis, "you needn't eat, but I must. Get us
+something, Heathcote," he said to the butler, "and bring tea here."
+
+Much of our conversation after dinner was not relevant to the subject of
+the Wonder; we drifted into a long argument upon human origins which has
+no place here. But by that time I had been very well informed as to all
+the essential facts of the Wonder's childhood, of his entry into the
+world of books, of his earlier methods, and of the significance of that
+long speech in the library. But at that point Challis became reserved.
+He would give me no details.
+
+"You must forgive me; I can't go into that," he said.
+
+"But it is so incomparably important," I protested.
+
+"That may be, but you must not question me. The truth of the matter is
+that I have a very confused memory of what the boy said, and the little
+I might remember, I prefer to leave undisturbed."
+
+He piqued my curiosity, but I did not press him. It was so evident that
+he did not wish to speak on that head.
+
+He walked up with me to the farm at ten o'clock and came into my room.
+
+"We need not keep you out of bed, Mrs. Berridge," he said to my
+flustered landlady. "I daresay we shall be up till all hours. We promise
+to see that the house is locked up." Mr. Berridge stood a figure of
+subservience in the background.
+
+My books were still heaped on the floor. Challis sat down on the
+window-sill and looked over some of them. "Many of these Master Stott
+probably read in my library," he remarked, "in German. Language is no
+bar to him. He learns a language as you or I would learn a page of
+history."
+
+Later on, I remember that we came down to essentials. "I must try and
+understand something of this child's capacities," I said in answer to a
+hint of Challis's that I should leave the Wonder alone. "It seems to me
+that here we have something which is of the first importance, of greater
+importance, indeed, than anything else in the history of the world."
+
+"But you can't make him speak," said Challis.
+
+"I shall try," I said. "I recognise that we cannot compel him, but I
+have a certain hold over him. I see from what you have told me that he
+has treated me with most unusual courtesy. I assure you that several
+times when I spoke to him this morning he nodded his head."
+
+"A good beginning," laughed Challis.
+
+"I can't understand," I went on, "how it is that you are not more
+interested. It seems to me that this child knows many things which we
+have been patiently attempting to discover since the dawn of
+civilisation."
+
+"Quite," said Challis. "I admit that, but ... well, I don't think I want
+to know."
+
+"Surely," I said, "this key to all knowledge----"
+
+"We are not ready for it," replied Challis. "You can't teach metaphysics
+to children."
+
+Nevertheless my ardour was increased, not abated, by my long talk with
+Challis.
+
+"I shall go on," I said, as I went out to the farm gate with him at
+half-past two in the morning.
+
+"Ah! well," he answered, "I shall come over and see you when I get
+back." He had told me earlier that he was going abroad for some months.
+
+We hesitated a moment by the gate, and instinctively we both looked up
+at the vault of the sky and the glimmering dust of stars.
+
+The same thought was probably in both our minds, the thought of the
+insignificance of this little system that revolves round one of the
+lesser lights of the Milky Way, but that thought was not to be expressed
+save by some banality, and we did not speak.
+
+"I shall certainly look you up when I come back," said Challis.
+
+"Yes; I hope you will," I said lamely.
+
+I watched the loom of his figure against the vague background till I
+could distinguish it no longer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PROGRESS AND RELAXATION OF MY SUBJECTION
+
+
+I
+
+The memory of last summer is presented to me now as a series of
+pictures, some brilliant, others vague, others again so uncertain that I
+cannot be sure how far they are true memories of actual occurrences, and
+how far they are interwoven with my thoughts and dreams. I have, for
+instance, a recollection of standing on Deane Hill and looking down over
+the wide panorama of rural England, through a driving mist of fine rain.
+This might well be counted among true memories, were it not for the fact
+that clearly associated with the picture is an image of myself grown to
+enormous dimensions, a Brocken spectre that threatened the world with
+titanic gestures of denouncement, and I seem to remember that this
+figure was saying: "All life runs through my fingers like a handful of
+dry sand." And yet the remembrance has not the quality of a dream.
+
+I was, undoubtedly, overwrought at times. There were days when the
+sight of a book filled me with physical nausea, with contempt for the
+littleness, the narrow outlook, that seemed to me to characterise every
+written work. I was fiercely, but quite impotently, eager at such times
+to demonstrate the futility of all the philosophy ranged on the rough
+wooden shelves in my gloomy sitting-room. I would walk up and down and
+gesticulate, struggling, fighting to make clear to myself what a true
+philosophy should set forth. I felt at such times that all the knowledge
+I needed for so stupendous a task was present with me in some
+inexplicable way, was even pressing upon me, but that my brain was so
+clogged and heavy that not one idea of all that priceless wisdom could
+be expressed in clear thought. "I have never been taught to think," I
+would complain, "I have never perfected the machinery of thought," and
+then some dictum thrown out haphazard by the Wonder--his conception of
+light conversation--would recur to me, and I would realise that however
+well I had been trained, my limitations would remain, that I was an
+undeveloped animal, only one stage higher than a totem-fearing savage, a
+creature of small possibilities, incapable of dealing with great
+problems.
+
+Once the Wonder said to me, in a rare moment of lucid condescension to
+my feeble intellect, "You figure space as a void in three dimensions,
+and time as a line that runs across it, and all other conceptions you
+relegate to that measure." He implied that this was a cumbrous machinery
+which had no relation to reality, and could define nothing. He told me
+that his idea of force, for example, was a pure abstraction, for which
+there was no figure in my mental outfit.
+
+Such pronouncements as these left me struggling like a drowning man in
+deep water. I felt that it _must_ be possible for me to come to the
+surface, but I could do nothing but flounder; beating fiercely with
+limbs that were so powerful and yet so utterly useless. I saw that my
+very metaphors symbolised my feebleness; I had no terms for my own
+mental condition; I was forced to resort to some inapplicable physical
+analogy.
+
+These fits of revolt against the limitations of human thought grew more
+frequent as the summer progressed. Day after day my self-sufficiency and
+conceit were being crushed out of me. I was always in the society of a
+boy of seven whom I was forced to regard as immeasurably my intellectual
+superior. There was no department of useful knowledge in which I could
+compete with him. Compete indeed! I might as well speak of a
+third-standard child competing with Macaulay in a general knowledge
+paper.
+
+"_Useful_ knowledge," I have written, but the phrase needs definition. I
+might have taught the Wonder many things, no doubt; the habits of men
+in great cities, the aspects of foreign countries, or the subtleties of
+cricket; but when I was with him I felt--and my feelings must have been
+typical--that such things as these were of no account.
+
+Towards the end of the summer, the occasions upon which I was able to
+stimulate myself into a condition of bearable complacency were very
+rare. I often thought of Challis's advice to leave the Wonder alone. I
+should have gone away if I had been free, but Victor Stott had a use for
+me, and I was powerless to disobey him. I feared him, but he controlled
+me at his will. I feared him as I had once feared an imaginary God, but
+I did not hate him.
+
+One curious little fragment of wisdom came to me as the result of my
+experience--a useless fragment perhaps, but something that has in one
+way altered my opinion of my fellow-men. I have learnt that a measure of
+self-pride, of complacency, is essential to every human being. I judge
+no man any more for displaying an overweening vanity, rather do I envy
+him this representative mark of his humanity. The Wonder was completely
+and quite inimitably devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had no
+meaning for him. It was inconceivable that he should compare himself
+with any of his fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that any
+honour they might have lavished upon him would have given him one
+moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among aliens who were unable to
+comprehend him, aliens who could not flatter him, whose opinions were
+valueless to him. He had no more common ground on which to air his
+knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve
+self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep.
+From what I have heard him say on the subject of our slavery to
+preconceptions, I think the metaphor of sheep is one which he might have
+approved.
+
+But the result of all this, so far as I am concerned, is a feeling of
+admiration for those men who are capable of such magnificent approval
+for themselves, the causes they espouse, their family, their country,
+and their species; it is an approval which I fear I can never again
+attain in full measure.
+
+I have seen possibilities which have enforced a humbleness that is not
+good for my happiness nor conducive to my development. Henceforward I
+will espouse the cause of vanity. It is only the vain who deprecate
+vanity in others.
+
+But there were times in the early period of my association with Victor
+Stott when I rebelled vigorously against his complacent assumption of my
+ignorance.
+
+
+II
+
+May was a gloriously fine month, and we were much out of doors.
+Unfortunately, except for one fortnight in August, that was all the
+settled weather we had that summer.
+
+I remember sitting one afternoon staring at the same pond that Ginger
+Stott had stared at when he told me that the boy now beside me was a
+"blarsted freak."
+
+The Wonder had said nothing that day, but now he began to enunciate some
+of his incomprehensible commonplaces in that thin, clear voice of his. I
+wrote down what I could remember of his utterances when I went home, but
+now I read them over again I am exceedingly doubtful whether I reported
+him correctly. There is, however, one dictum which seems clearly
+phrased, and when I recall the scene, I remember trying to push the
+induction he had started. The pronouncement, as I have it written, is as
+follows:
+
+"Pure deduction from a single premiss, unaided by previous knowledge of
+the functions of the terms used in the expansion of the argument, is an
+act of creation, incontrovertible, and outside the scope of human
+reasoning."
+
+I believe he meant to say--but my notes are horribly confused--that
+logic and philosophy were only relative, being dependent always in a
+greater or less degree upon the test of a material experiment for
+verification.
+
+Here, as always, I find the Wonder's pronouncements very elusive. In one
+sense I see that what I have quoted here is a self-evident proposition,
+but I have the feeling that behind it there lies some gleam of wisdom
+which throws a faint light on the profound problem of existence.
+
+I remember that in my own feeble way I tried to analyse this statement,
+and for a time I thought I had grasped one significant aspect of it. It
+seemed to me that the possibility of conceiving a philosophy that was
+not dependent for verification upon material experiment--that is to say,
+upon evidence afforded by the five senses--indicates that there is
+something which is not matter; but that since the development of such a
+philosophy is not possible to our minds, we must argue that our
+dependence upon matter is so intimate that it is almost impossible to
+conceive that we are actuated by any impulse which does not arise out of
+a material complex.
+
+At the back of my mind there seemed to be a thought that I could not
+focus, I trembled on the verge of some great revelation that never came.
+
+Through my thoughts there ran a thread of reverence for the intelligence
+that had started my speculations. If only he could speak in terms that
+I could understand.
+
+I looked round at the Wonder. He was, as usual, apparently lost in
+abstraction, and quite unconscious of my regard.
+
+The wind was strong on the Common, and he sniffed once or twice and then
+wiped his nose. He did not use a handkerchief.
+
+It came to me at the moment that he was no more than a vulgar little
+village boy.
+
+
+III
+
+There were few incidents to mark the progress of that summer. I marked
+the course of time by my own thoughts and feelings, especially by my
+growing submission to the control of the Wonder.
+
+It was curious to recall that I had once thought of correcting the
+Wonder's manners, of administering, perhaps, a smacking. That was a
+fault of ignorance. I had often erred in the same way in other
+experiences of life, but I had not taken the lesson to heart. I remember
+at school our "head" taking us--I was in the lower fifth then--in Latin
+verse. He rebuked me for a false quantity, and I, very cocksure,
+disputed the point and read my line. The head pointed out very gravely
+that I had been misled by an English analogy in my pronunciation of the
+word "maritus," and I grew very hot and ashamed and apologetic. I feel
+much the same now when I think of my early attitude towards the Wonder.
+But this time, I think, I have profited by my experience.
+
+There is, however, one incident which in the light of subsequent events
+it seems worth while to record.
+
+One afternoon in early July, when the sky had lifted sufficiently for us
+to attempt some sort of a walk, we made our way down through the sodden
+woods in the direction of Deane Hill.
+
+As we were emerging into the lane at the foot of the slope, I saw the
+Harrison idiot lurking behind the trunk of a big beech. This was only
+the third time I had seen him since I drove him away from the farm, and
+on the two previous occasions he had not come close to us.
+
+This time he had screwed up his courage to follow us. As we climbed the
+lane I saw him slouching up the hedge-side behind us.
+
+The Wonder took no notice, and we continued our way in silence.
+
+When we reached the prospect at the end of the hill, where the ground
+falls away like a cliff and you have a bird's-eye view of two counties,
+we sat down on the steps of the monument erected in honour of those
+Hampdenshire men whose lives were thrown away in the South-African war.
+
+That view always has a soothing effect upon me, and I gave myself up to
+an ecstasy of contemplation and forgot, for a few moments, the presence
+of the Wonder, and the fact that the idiot had followed us.
+
+I was recalled to existence by the sound of a foolish, conciliatory
+mumbling, and looked round to see the leering face of the Harrison idiot
+ogling the Wonder from the corner of the plinth. The Wonder was between
+me and the idiot, but he was apparently oblivious of either of us.
+
+I was about to rise and drive the idiot away, but the Wonder, still
+staring out at some distant horizon, said quietly, "Let him be."
+
+I was astonished, but I sat still and awaited events.
+
+The idiot behaved much as I have seen a very young and nervous puppy
+behave.
+
+He came within a few feet of us, gurgling and crooning, flapping his
+hands and waggling his great head; his uneasy eyes wandered from the
+Wonder to me and back again, but it was plainly the Wonder whom he
+wished to propitiate. Then he suddenly backed as if he had dared too
+much, flopped on to the wet grass and regarded us both with foolish,
+goggling eyes. For a few seconds he lay still, and then he began to
+squirm along the ground towards us, a few inches at a time, stopping
+every now and again to bleat and gurgle with that curious, crooning
+note which he appeared to think would pacificate the object of his
+overtures.
+
+I stood by, as it were; ready to obey the first hint that the presence
+of this horrible creature was distasteful to the Wonder, but he gave no
+sign.
+
+The idiot had come within five or six feet of us, wriggling himself
+along the wet grass, before the Wonder looked at him. The look when it
+came was one of those deliberate, intentional stares which made one feel
+so contemptible and insignificant.
+
+The idiot evidently regarded this look as a sign of encouragement. He
+knelt up, began to flap his hands and changed his crooning note to a
+pleased, emphatic bleat.
+
+"A-ba-ba," he blattered, and made uncouth gestures, by which I think he
+meant to signify that he wanted the Wonder to come and play with him.
+
+Still the Wonder gave no sign, but his gaze never wavered, and though
+the idiot was plainly not intimidated, he never met that gaze for more
+than a second or two. Nevertheless he came on, walking now on his knees,
+and at last stretched out a hand to touch the boy he so curiously
+desired for a playmate.
+
+That broke the spell. The Wonder drew back quickly--he never allowed one
+to touch him--got up and climbed two or three steps higher up the base
+of the monument. "Send him away," he said to me.
+
+"That'll do," I said threateningly to the idiot, and at the sound of my
+voice and the gesture of my hand, he blenched, yelped, rolled over away
+from me, and then got to his feet and shambled off for several yards
+before stopping to regard us once more with his pacificatory, disgusting
+ogle.
+
+"Send him away," repeated the Wonder, as I hesitated, and I rose to my
+feet and pretended to pick up a stone.
+
+That was enough. The idiot yelped again and made off. This time he did
+not stop, though he looked over his shoulder several times as he
+lolloped away among the low gorse, to which look I replied always with
+the threat of an imaginary stone.
+
+The Wonder made no comment on the incident as we walked home. He had
+shown no sign of fear. It occurred to me that my guardianship of him was
+merely a convenience, not a protection from any danger.
+
+
+IV
+
+As time went on it became increasingly clear to me that my chance of
+obtaining the Wonder's confidence was becoming more and more remote.
+
+At first he had replied to my questions; usually, it is true, by no more
+than an inclination of his head, but he soon ceased to make even this
+acknowledgment of my presence.
+
+So I fell by degrees into a persistent habit of silence, admitted my
+submission by obtruding neither remark nor question upon my constant
+companion, and gave up my intention of using the Wonder as a means to
+gratify my curiosity concerning the problem of existence.
+
+Once or twice I saw Crashaw at a distance. He undoubtedly recognised the
+Wonder, and I think he would have liked to come up and rebuke
+him--perhaps me, also; but probably he lacked the courage. He would
+hover within sight of us for a few minutes, scowling, and then stalk
+away. He gave me the impression of being a dangerous man, a thwarted
+fanatic, brooding over his defeat. If I had been Mrs. Stott, I should
+have feared the intrusion of Crashaw more than the foolish overtures of
+the Harrison idiot. But there was, of course, the Wonder's compelling
+power to be reckoned with, in the case of Crashaw.
+
+
+V
+
+Challis came back in early September, and it was he who first coaxed,
+and then goaded me into rebellion.
+
+Challis did not come too soon.
+
+At the end of August I was seeing visions, not pleasant, inspiriting
+visions, but the indefinite, perplexing shapes of delirium.
+
+I think it must have been in August that I stood on Deane Hill, through
+an afternoon of fine, driving rain, and had a vision of myself playing
+tricks with the sands of life.
+
+I had begun to lose my hold on reality. Silence, contemplation, a
+long-continued wrestle with the profound problems of life, were
+combining to break up the intimacy of life and matter, and my brain was
+not of the calibre to endure the strain.
+
+Challis saw at once what ailed me.
+
+He came up to the farm one morning at twelve o'clock. The date was, I
+believe, the twelfth of September. It was a brooding, heavy morning,
+with half a gale of wind blowing from the south-west, but it had not
+rained, and I was out with the Wonder when Challis arrived.
+
+He waited for me and talked to the flattered Mrs. Berridge, remonstrated
+kindly with her husband for his neglect of the farm, and incidentally
+gave him a rebate on the rent.
+
+When I came in, he insisted that I should come to lunch with him at
+Challis Court.
+
+I consented, but stipulated that I must be back at Pym by three o'clock
+to accompany the Wonder for his afternoon walk.
+
+Challis looked at me curiously, but allowed the stipulation.
+
+We hardly spoke as we walked down the hill--the habit of silence had
+grown upon me, but after lunch Challis spoke out his mind.
+
+On that occasion I hardly listened to him, but he came up to the farm
+again after tea and marched me off to dinner at the Court. I was
+strangely plastic when commanded, but when he suggested that I should
+give up my walks with the Wonder, go away ... I smiled and said
+"Impossible," as though that ended the matter.
+
+Challis, however, persisted, and I suppose I was not too far gone to
+listen to him. I remember his saying: "That problem is not for you or me
+or any man living to solve by introspection. Our work is to add
+knowledge little by little, data here and there, for future evidence."
+
+The phrase struck me, because the Wonder had once said "There are no
+data," when in the early days I had asked him whether he could say
+definitely if there was any future existence possible for us?
+
+Now Challis put it to me that our work was to find data, that every
+little item of real knowledge added to the feeble store man has
+accumulated in his few thousand years of life, was a step, the greatest
+step any man could possibly make.
+
+"But could we not get, not a small but a very important item, from
+Victor Stott?"
+
+Challis shook his head. "He is too many thousands of years ahead of us,"
+he said. "We can only bridge the gap by many centuries of patient toil.
+If a revelation were made to us, we should not understand it."
+
+So, by degrees, Challis's influence took possession of me and roused me
+to self-assertion.
+
+One morning, half in dread, I stayed at home and read a novel--no other
+reading could hold my attention--philosophy had become nauseating.
+
+I expected to see the strange little figure of the Wonder come across
+the Common, but he never came, nor did I receive any reproach from Ellen
+Mary. I think she had forgotten her fear of the Harrison idiot.
+
+Nevertheless, I did not give up my guardianship all at once. Three times
+after that morning I took the Wonder for a walk. He made no allusion to
+my defalcations. Indeed he never spoke. He relinquished me as he had
+taken me up, without comment or any expression of feeling.
+
+
+VI
+
+On the twenty-ninth of September I went down to Challis Court and stayed
+there for a week. Then I returned for a few days to Wood Farm in order
+to put my things together and pack my books. I had decided to go to
+Cairo for the winter with Challis.
+
+At half-past one o'clock on Thursday, the eighth of October, I was in
+the sitting-room, when I saw the figure of Mrs. Stott coming across the
+Common. She came with a little stumbling run. I could see that she was
+agitated even before she reached the farmyard gate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+RELEASE
+
+
+I
+
+She opened the front door without knocking, and came straight into my
+sitting-room.
+
+"'E's not 'ere," she said in a manner that left it doubtful whether she
+made an assertion or asked a question.
+
+"Your son?" I said. I had risen when she came into the room, "No; I
+haven't seen him to-day."
+
+Ellen Mary was staring at me, but it was clear that she neither saw nor
+heard me. She had a look of intense concentration. One could see that
+she was calculating, thinking, thinking....
+
+I went over to her and took her by the arm. I gently shook her. "Now,
+tell me what's the matter? What has happened?" I asked.
+
+She made an effort to collect herself, loosened her arm from my hold and
+with an instinctive movement pushed forward the old bonnet, which had
+slipped to the back of her head.
+
+"'E 'asn't been in to 'is dinner," she said hurriedly. "I've been on
+the Common looking for 'im."
+
+"He may have made a mistake in the time," I suggested.
+
+She made a movement as though to push me on one side, and turned towards
+the door. She was calculating again. Her expression said quite plainly,
+"Could he be there, could he be _there_?"
+
+"Come, come," I said, "there is surely no need to be anxious yet."
+
+She turned on me. "'E never makes a mistake in the time," she said
+fiercely, "'e always knows the time to the minute without clock or
+watch. Why did you leave 'im alone?"
+
+She broke off in her attack upon me and continued: "'E's never been late
+before, not a minute, and now it's a hour after 'is time."
+
+"He may be at home by now," I said. She took the hint instantly and
+started back again with the same stumbling little run.
+
+I picked up my hat and followed her.
+
+
+II
+
+The Wonder was not at the cottage.
+
+"Now, my dear woman, you must keep calm," I said. "There is absolutely
+no reason to be disturbed. You had better go to Challis Court and see if
+he is in the library, I----"
+
+"I'm a fool," broke in Ellen Mary with sudden decision, and she set off
+again without another word. I followed her back to the Common and
+watched her out of sight. I was more disturbed about her than about the
+non-appearance of the Wonder. He was well able to take care of himself,
+but she.... How strange that with all her calculations she had not
+thought of going to Challis Court, to the place where her son had spent
+so many days. I began to question whether the whole affair was not, in
+some way, a mysterious creation of her own disordered brain.
+
+Nevertheless, I took upon myself to carry out that part of the programme
+which I had not been allowed to state in words to Mrs. Stott, and set
+out for Deane Hill. It was just possible that the Wonder might have
+slipped down that steep incline and injured himself. Possible, but very
+unlikely; the Wonder did not take the risks common to boys of his age,
+he did not disport himself on dangerous slopes.
+
+As I walked I felt a sense of lightness, of relief from depression. I
+had not been this way by myself since the end of August. It was good to
+be alone and free.
+
+The day was fine and not cold, though the sun was hidden. I noticed that
+the woods showed scarcely a mark of autumn decline.
+
+There was not a soul to be seen by the monument. I scrambled down the
+slope and investigated the base of the hill and came back another way
+through the woods. I saw no one. I stopped continually and whistled
+loudly. If he is anywhere near at hand, I thought, and in trouble, he
+will hear that and answer me. I did not call him by name. I did not know
+what name to call. It would have seemed absurd to have called "Victor."
+No one ever addressed him by name.
+
+My return route brought me back to the south edge of the Common, the
+point most remote from the farm. There I met a labourer whom I knew by
+sight, a man named Hawke. He was carrying a stick, and prodding with it
+foolishly among the furze and gorse bushes. The bracken was already
+dying down.
+
+"What are you looking for?" I asked.
+
+"It's this 'ere Master Stott, sir," he said, looking up. "'E's got
+loarst seemingly."
+
+I felt a sudden stab of self-reproach. I had been taking things too
+easily. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to four.
+
+"Mr. Challis 'ave told me to look for 'un," added the man, and continued
+his aimless prodding of the gorse.
+
+"Where is Mr. Challis?" I asked.
+
+"'E's yonder, soomewheres." He made a vague gesture in the direction of
+Pym.
+
+The sun had come out, and the Common was all aglow. I hastened towards
+the village.
+
+On the way I met Farmer Bates and two or three labourers. They, too,
+were beating among the gorse and brown bracken. They told me that Mr.
+Challis was at the cottage and I hurried on. All the neighbourhood, it
+seems, was searching for the Wonder. In the village I saw three or four
+women standing with aprons over their heads, talking together.
+
+I had never seen Pym so animated.
+
+
+III
+
+I met Challis in the lane. He was coming away from Mrs. Stott's cottage.
+
+"Have you found him?" I asked stupidly. I knew quite well that the
+Wonder was not found, and yet I had a fond hope that I might,
+nevertheless, be mistaken.
+
+Challis shook his head. "There will be a mad woman in that cottage if he
+doesn't come back by nightfall," he remarked with a jerk of his head.
+"I've done what I can for her."
+
+I explained that I had been over to Deane Hill, searching and calling.
+
+"You didn't see anything?" asked Challis, echoing my foolish query of a
+moment before. I shook my head.
+
+We were both agitated without doubt.
+
+We soon came up with Farmer Bates and his men. They stopped and touched
+their hats when they saw us, and we put the same silly question to them.
+
+"You haven't found him?" We knew perfectly well that they would have
+announced the fact at once if they had found him.
+
+"One of you go over to the Court and get any man you can find to come
+and help," said Challis. "Tell Heathcote to send every one."
+
+One of the labourers touched his cap again, and started off at once with
+a lumbering trot.
+
+Challis and I walked on in silence, looking keenly about us and stopping
+every now and then and calling. We called "Hallo! Hallo-o!" It was an
+improvement upon my whistle.
+
+"He's such a little chap," muttered Challis once; "it would be so easy
+to miss him if he were unconscious."
+
+It struck me that the reference to the Wonder was hardly sufficiently
+respectful. I had never thought of him as "a little chap." But Challis
+had not known him so intimately as I had.
+
+The shadows were fast creeping over the Common. At the woodside it was
+already twilight. The whole of the western sky right up to the zenith
+was a finely shaded study in brilliant orange and yellow. "More rain," I
+thought instinctively, and paused for a moment to watch the sunset. The
+black distance stood clearly silhouetted against the sky. One could
+discern the sharp outline of tiny trees on the distant horizon.
+
+We met Heathcote and several other men in the lane.
+
+"Shan't be able to do much to-night, sir," said Heathcote. "It'll be
+dark in 'alf an hour, sir."
+
+"Well, do what you can in half an hour," replied Challis, and to me he
+said, "You'd better come back with me. We've done what we can."
+
+I had a picture of him then as the magnate; I had hardly thought of him
+in that light before. The arduous work of the search he could delegate
+to his inferiors. Still, he had come out himself, and I doubt not that
+he had been altogether charming to the bewildered, distraught mother.
+
+I acquiesced in his suggestion. I was beginning to feel very tired.
+
+Mrs. Heathcote was at the gate when we arrived at the Court. "'Ave they
+found 'im, sir?" she asked.
+
+"Not yet," replied Challis.
+
+I followed him into the house.
+
+
+IV
+
+As I walked back at ten o'clock it was raining steadily. I had refused
+the offer of a trap. I went through the dark and sodden wood, and
+lingered and listened. The persistent tap, tap, tap of the rain on the
+leaves irritated me. How could one hear while that noise was going on?
+There was no other sound. There was not a breath of wind. Only that
+perpetual tap, tap, tap, patter, patter, drip, tap, tap. It seemed as if
+it might go on through eternity....
+
+I went to the Stotts' cottage, though I knew there could be no news.
+Challis had given strict instructions that any news should be brought to
+him immediately. If it was bad news it was to be brought to him before
+the mother was told.
+
+There was a light burning in the cottage, and the door was set wide
+open.
+
+I went up to the door but I did not go in.
+
+Ellen Mary was sitting in a high chair, her hands clasped together, and
+she rocked continually to and fro. She made no sound; she merely rocked
+herself with a steady, regular persistence.
+
+She did not see me standing at the open door, and I moved quietly away.
+
+As I walked over the Common--I avoided the wood deliberately--I wondered
+what was the human limit of endurance. I wondered whether Ellen Mary
+had not reached that limit.
+
+Mrs. Berridge had not gone to bed, and there were some visitors in the
+kitchen. I heard them talking. Mrs. Berridge came out when I opened the
+front door.
+
+"Any news, sir?" she asked.
+
+"No; no news," I said. I had been about to ask her the same question.
+
+
+V
+
+I did not go to sleep for some time. I had a picture of Ellen Mary
+before my eyes, and I could still hear that steady pat, patter, drip, of
+the rain on the beech leaves.
+
+In the night I awoke suddenly, and thought I heard a long, wailing cry
+out on the Common. I got up and looked out of the window, but I could
+see nothing. The rain was still falling, but there was a blur of light
+that showed where the moon was shining behind the clouds. The cry, if
+there had been a cry, was not repeated.
+
+I went back to bed and soon fell asleep again.
+
+I do not know whether I had been dreaming, but I woke suddenly with a
+presentation of the little pond on the Common very clear before me.
+
+"We never looked in the pond," I thought, and then--"but he could not
+have fallen into the pond; besides, it's not two feet deep."
+
+It was full daylight, and I got up and found that it was nearly seven
+o'clock.
+
+The rain had stopped, but there was a scurry of low, threatening cloud
+that blew up from the south.
+
+I dressed at once and went out. I made my way directly to the Stotts'
+cottage.
+
+The lamp was still burning and the door open, but Ellen Mary had fallen
+forward on to the table; her head was pillowed on her arms.
+
+"There _is_ a limit to our endurance," I reflected, "and she has reached
+it."
+
+I left her undisturbed.
+
+Outside I met two of Farmer Bates's labourers going back to work.
+
+"I want you to come up with me to the pond," I said.
+
+
+VI
+
+The pond was very full.
+
+On the side from which we approached, the ground sloped gradually, and
+the water was stretching out far beyond its accustomed limits.
+
+On the farther side the gorse among the trunks of the three ash-trees
+came right to the edge of the bank. On that side the bank was three or
+four feet high.
+
+We came to the edge of the pond, and one of the labourers waded in a
+little way--the water was very shallow on that side--but we could see
+nothing for the scum of weed, little spangles of dirty green, and a mass
+of some other plant that had borne a little white flower in the earlier
+part of the year--stuff like dwarf hemlock.
+
+Under the farther bank, however, I saw one comparatively clear space of
+black water.
+
+"Let's go round," I said, and led the way.
+
+There was a tiny path which twisted between the gorse roots and came out
+at the edge of the farther bank by the stem of the tallest ash. I had
+seen tiny village boys pretending to fish from this point with a stick
+and a piece of string. There was a dead branch of ash some five or six
+feet long, with the twigs partly twisted off; it was lying among the
+bushes. I remembered that I had seen small boys using this branch to
+clear away the surface weed. I picked it up and took it with me.
+
+I wound one arm round the trunk of the ash, and peered over into the
+water under the bank.
+
+I caught sight of something white under the water. I could not see
+distinctly. I thought it was a piece of broken ware--the bottom of a
+basin. I had picked up the ash stick and was going to probe the deeper
+water with it. Then I saw that the dim white object was globular.
+
+The end of my stick was actually in the water. I withdrew it quickly,
+and threw it behind me.
+
+My heart began to throb painfully.
+
+I turned my face away and leaned against the ash-tree.
+
+"Can you see anythin'?" asked one of the labourers who had come up
+behind me.
+
+"Oh! Christ!" I said. I turned quickly from the pond and pressed a way
+through the gorse.
+
+I was overwhelmingly and disgustingly sick.
+
+
+VII
+
+By degrees the solid earth ceased to wave and sway before me like a
+rolling heave of water, and I looked up, pressing my hands to my
+head--my hands were as cold as death.
+
+My clothes were wet and muddy where I had lain on the sodden ground. I
+got to my feet and instinctively began to brush at the mud.
+
+I was still a little giddy, and I swayed and sought for support.
+
+I could see the back of one labourer. He was kneeling by the ash-tree
+bending right down over the water. The other man was standing in the
+pond, up to his waist in water and mud. I could just see his head and
+shoulders....
+
+I staggered away in the direction of the village.
+
+
+VIII
+
+I found Ellen Mary still sitting in the same chair. The lamp was
+fluttering to extinction, the flame leaping spasmodically, dying down
+till it seemed that it had gone out, and then again suddenly flickering
+up with little clicking bursts of flame. The air reeked intolerably of
+paraffin.
+
+I blew the lamp out and pushed it on one side.
+
+There was no need to break the news to Ellen Mary. She had known last
+night, and now she was beyond the reach of information.
+
+She sat upright in her chair and stared out into the immensity. Her
+hands alone moved, and they were not still for an instant. They lay in
+her lap, and her fingers writhed and picked at her dress.
+
+I spoke to her once, but I knew that her mind was beyond the reach of my
+words.
+
+"It is just as well," I thought; "but we must get her away."
+
+I went out and called to the woman next door.
+
+She was in her kitchen, but the door was open. She came out when I
+knocked.
+
+"Poor thing," she said, when I told her. "It _'as_ been a shock, no
+doubt. She was so wrapped hup in the boy."
+
+She could hardly have said less if her neighbour had lost half-a-crown.
+
+"Get her into your cottage before they come," I said harshly, and left
+her.
+
+I wanted to get out of the lane before the men came back, but I had
+hardly started before I saw them coming.
+
+They had made a chair of their arms, and were carrying him between them.
+They had not the least fear of him, now.
+
+
+IX
+
+The Harrison idiot suddenly jumped out of the hedge.
+
+I put my hand to my throat. I wanted to cry out, to stop him, but I
+could not move. I felt sick again, and utterly weak and powerless, and I
+could not take my gaze from that little doll with the great drooping
+head that rolled as the men walked.
+
+I was reminded, disgustingly, of children with a guy.
+
+The idiot ran shambling down the lane. He knew the two men, who
+tolerated him and laughed at him. He was not afraid of them nor their
+burden.
+
+He came right up to them. I heard one of the men say gruffly, "Now then,
+you cut along off!"
+
+I believe the idiot must have touched the dead body.
+
+I was gripping my throat in my hand; I was trying desperately to cry
+out.
+
+Whether the idiot actually touched the body or not I cannot say, but he
+must have realised in his poor, bemused brain that the thing was dead.
+
+He cried out with his horrible, inhuman cry, turned, and ran up the lane
+towards me. He fell on his face a few yards from me, scrambled wildly to
+his feet again and came on yelping and shrieking. He was wildly,
+horribly afraid. I caught sight of his face as he passed me, and his
+mouth was distorted into a square, his upper lip horribly drawn up over
+his ragged, yellow teeth. Suddenly he dashed at the hedge and clawed his
+way through. I heard him still yelping appallingly as he rushed away
+across the field....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+IMPLICATIONS
+
+
+I
+
+The jury returned a verdict of "Accidental death."
+
+If there had been any traces of a struggle, I had not noticed them when
+I came to the edge of the pond. There may have been marks as if a foot
+had slipped. I was not thinking of evidence when I looked into the
+water.
+
+There were marks enough when the police came to investigate, but they
+were the marks made by a twelve-stone man in hobnail boots, who had
+scrambled into, and out of, the pond. As the inspector said, it was not
+worth while wasting any time in looking for earlier traces of footsteps
+below those marks.
+
+Nor were there any signs of violence on the body. It was in no way
+disfigured, save by the action of the water, in which it had lain for
+perhaps eighteen hours.
+
+There was, indeed, only one point of any significance from the jury's
+point of view, and that they put on one side, if they considered it at
+all; the body was pressed into the mud.
+
+The Coroner asked a few questions about this fact.
+
+Was the mud very soft? Yes, very soft, liquid on top.
+
+How was the body lying? Face downwards.
+
+What part of the body was deepest in the mud? The chest. The witness
+said he had hard work to get the upper part of the body released; the
+head was free, but the mud held the rest. "The mooad soocked like," was
+the expressive phrase of the witness.
+
+The Coroner passed on to other things. Had any one a spite against the
+child? and such futilities. Only once more did he revert to that
+solitary significant fact. "Would it be possible," he asked of the
+abashed and self-conscious labourer, "would it be possible for the body
+to have worked its way down into the soft mud as you have described it
+to have been found?"
+
+"We-el," said the witness, "'twas in the stacky mooad, 'twas through the
+sarft stoof."
+
+"But this soft mud would suck any solid body down, would it not?"
+persisted the Coroner.
+
+And the witness recalled the case of a duck that had been sucked into
+the same soft pond mud the summer before, and cited the instance. He
+forgot to add that on that occasion the mud had not been under water.
+
+The Coroner accepted the instance. There can be no question that both he
+and the jury were anxious to accept the easier explanation.
+
+
+II
+
+But I know perfectly well that the Wonder did not fall into the pond by
+accident.
+
+I should have known, even if that conclusive evidence with regard to his
+being pushed into the mud had never come to light.
+
+He may have stood by the ash-tree and looked into the water, but he
+would never have fallen. He was too perfectly controlled; and, with all
+his apparent abstraction, no one was ever more alive to the detail of
+his surroundings. He and I have walked together perforce in many
+slippery places, but I have never known him to fall or even begin to
+lose his balance, whereas I have gone down many times.
+
+Yes; I know that he was pushed into the pond, and I know that he was
+held down in the mud, most probably by the aid of that ash stick I had
+held. But it was not for me to throw suspicion on any one at that
+inquest, and I preferred to keep my thoughts and my inferences to
+myself. I should have done so, even if I had been in possession of
+stronger evidence.
+
+I hope that it was the Harrison idiot who was to blame. He was not
+dangerous in the ordinary sense, but he might quite well have done the
+thing in play--as he understood it. Only I cannot quite understand his
+pushing the body down after it fell. That seems to argue
+vindictiveness--and a logic which I can hardly attribute to the idiot.
+Still, who can tell what went on in the distorted mind of that poor
+creature? He is reported to have rescued the dead body of a rabbit from
+the undergrowth on one occasion, and to have blubbered when he could not
+bring it back to life.
+
+There is but one other person who could have been implicated, and I
+hesitate to name him in this place. Yet one remembers what terrific acts
+of misapplied courage and ferocious brutality the fanatics of history
+have been capable of performing when their creed and their authority
+have been set at naught.
+
+
+III
+
+Ellen Mary never recovered her sanity. She died a few weeks ago in the
+County Asylum. I hear that her husband attended the funeral. When she
+lost her belief in the supernal wisdom and power of her god, her world
+must have fallen about her. The thing she had imagined to be solid,
+real, everlasting, had proved to be friable and destructible like all
+other human building.
+
+
+IV
+
+The Wonder is buried in Chilborough churchyard.
+
+You may find the place by its proximity to the great marble mausoleum
+erected over the remains of Sir Edward Bigg, the well-known brewer and
+philanthropist.
+
+The grave of Victor Stott is marked by a small stone, some six inches
+high, which is designed to catch the foot rather than the eye of the
+seeker.
+
+The stone bears the initials "V. S.," and a date--no more.
+
+
+V
+
+I saw the Wonder before he was buried.
+
+I went up into the little bedroom and looked at him in his tiny coffin.
+
+I was no longer afraid of him. His power over me was dissipated. He was
+no greater and no less than any other dead thing.
+
+It was the same with every one. He had become that "poor little boy of
+Mrs. Stott's." No one spoke of him with respect now. No one seemed to
+remember that he had been in any way different from other "poor little
+fellows" who had died an untimely death.
+
+One thing did strike me as curious. The idiot, the one person who had
+never feared him living, had feared him horribly when he was dead....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+THE USES OF MYSTERY
+
+Something Challis has told me; something I have learned for myself; and
+there is something which has come to me from an unknown source.
+
+But here again we are confronted with the original difficulty--the
+difficulty that for some conceptions there is no verbal figure.
+
+It is comprehensible, it is, indeed, obvious that the deeper abstract
+speculation of the Wonder's thought cannot be set out by any metaphor
+that would be understood by a lesser intelligence.
+
+We see that many philosophers, whose utterances have been recorded in
+human history--that record which floats like a drop of oil on the
+limitless ocean of eternity--have been confronted with this same
+difficulty, and have woven an intricate and tedious design of words in
+their attempt to convey some single conception--some conception which
+themselves could see but dimly when disguised in the masquerade of
+language; some figure that as it was limned grew ever more confused
+beneath the wrappings of metaphor, so that we who read can glimpse
+scarce a hint of its original shape and likeness. We see, also, that the
+very philosophers who caricatured their own eidolon, became intrigued
+with the logical abstraction of words and were led away into a
+wilderness of barren deduction--their one inspired vision of a stable
+premiss distorted and at last forgotten.
+
+How then shall we hope to find words to adumbrate a philosophy which
+starts by the assumption that we can have no impression of reality until
+we have rid ourselves of the interposing and utterly false concepts of
+space and time, which delimit the whole world of human thought.
+
+I admit that one cannot even begin to do this thing; within our present
+limitations our whole machinery of thought is built of these two
+original concepts. They are the only gauges wherewith we may measure
+every reality, every abstraction; wherewith we may give outline to any
+image or process of the mind. Only when we endeavour to grapple with
+that indeterminable mystery of consciousness can we conceive, however
+dimly, some idea of a pure abstraction uninfluenced by and independent
+of, those twin bases of our means of thought.
+
+Here it is that Challis has paused. Here he says that we must wait, that
+no revelation can reveal what we are incapable of understanding, that
+only by the slow process of evolution can we attain to any understanding
+of the mystery we have sought to solve by our futile and primitive
+hypotheses.
+
+"But then," I have pressed him, "why do you hesitate to speak of what
+you heard on that afternoon?"
+
+And once he answered me:
+
+"I glimpsed a finality," he said, "and that appalled me. Don't you see
+that ignorance is the means of our intellectual pleasure? It is the
+solving of the problem that brings enjoyment--the solved problem has no
+further interest. So when all is known, the stimulus for action ceases;
+when all is known there is quiescence, nothingness. Perfect knowledge
+implies the peace of death, implies the state of being one--our
+pleasures are derived from action, from differences, from heterogeneity.
+
+"Oh! pity the child," said Challis, "for whom there could be no mystery.
+Is not mystery the first and greatest joy of life? Beyond the gate there
+is unexplored mystery for us in our childhood. When that is explored,
+there are new and wonderful possibilities beyond the hills, then beyond
+the seas, beyond the known world, in the everyday chances and movements
+of the unknown life in which we are circumstanced.
+
+"Surely we should all perish through sheer inanity, or die desperately
+by suicide if no mystery remained in the world. Mystery takes a thousand
+beautiful shapes; it lurks even in the handiwork of man, in a stone god,
+or in some mighty, intricate machine, incomprehensibly deliberate and
+determined. The imagination endows the man-made thing with consciousness
+and powers, whether of reservation or aloofness; the similitude of
+meditation and profundity is wrought into stone. Is there not source for
+mystery to the uninstructed in the great machine registering the
+progress of its own achievement with each solemn, recurrent beat of its
+metal pulse?
+
+"Behind all these things is the wonder of the imagination that never
+approaches more nearly to the creation of a hitherto unknown image than
+when it thus hesitates on the verge of mystery.
+
+"There is yet so much, so very much cause for wondering speculation.
+Science gains ground so slowly. Slowly it has outlined, however vaguely,
+the uncertainties of our origin so far as this world is concerned, while
+the mystic has fought for his entrancing fairy tales one by one.
+
+"The mystic still holds his enthralling belief in the succession of
+peoples who have risen and died--the succeeding world-races, red, black,
+yellow, and white, which have in turn dominated this planet. Science
+with its hammer and chisel may lay bare evidence, may collate material,
+date man's appearance, call him the most recent of placental mammals,
+trace his superstitions and his first conceptions of a god from the
+elemental fears of the savage. But the mystic turns aside with an
+assumption of superior knowledge; he waves away objective evidence; he
+has a certainty impressed upon his mind.
+
+"And the mystic is a power. He compels a multitude of followers, because
+he offers an attraction greater than the facts of science. He tells of a
+mystery profounder than any problem solved by patient investigation,
+because his mystery is incomprehensible even by himself; and in fear
+lest any should comprehend it, he disguises the approach with an array
+of lesser mysteries, man-made; with terminologies, symbologies and high
+talk of esotericism too fearful for any save the initiate.
+
+"But we must preserve our mystic in some form against the awful time
+when science shall have determined a limit; when the long history of
+evolution shall be written in full, and every stage of world-building
+shall be made plain. When the cycle of atomic dust to atomic dust is
+demonstrated, and the detail of the life-process is taught and
+understood, we shall have a fierce need for the mystic to save us from
+the futility of a world we understand, to lie to us if need be, to
+inspirit our material and regular minds with some breath of delicious
+madness. We shall need the mystic then, or the completeness of our
+knowledge will drive us at last to complete the dusty circle in our
+eagerness to escape from a world we understand....
+
+"See how man clings to his old and useless traditions; see how he
+opposes at every step the awful force of progress. At each stage he
+protests that the thing that is, is good, or that the thing that was and
+has gone, was better. He despises new knowledge and fondly clings to the
+belief that once men were greater than they now are. He looks back to
+the more primitive, and endows it with that mystery he cannot find in
+his own times. So have men ever looked lingeringly behind them. It is an
+instinct, a great and wonderful inheritance that postpones the moment of
+disillusionment.
+
+"We are still mercifully surrounded with the countless mysteries of
+everyday experience, all the evidences of the unimaginable stimulus we
+call life. Would you take them away? Would you resolve life into a
+disease of the ether--a disease of which you and I, all life and all
+matter, are symptoms? Would you teach that to the child, and explain to
+him that the wonder of life and growth is no wonder, but a demonstrable
+result of impeded force, to be evaluated by the application of an
+adequate formula?
+
+"You and I," said Challis, "are children in the infancy of the world.
+Let us to our play in the nursery of our own times. The day will come,
+perhaps, when humanity shall have grown and will have to take upon
+itself the heavy burden of knowledge. But you need not fear that that
+will be in our day, nor in a thousand years.
+
+"Meanwhile leave us our childish fancies, our little imaginings, our
+hope--children that we are--of those impossible mysteries beyond the
+hills...."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wonder, by J. D. Beresford
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