"Shallyou 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 gistof 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! Iaminterested, 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, hehascome," 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.
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 conventionalgreeting. "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.
Thisbrief 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 whyyou 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 engagedin 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
Challisled 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 expressionbecame 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."
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 theEncyclopædia 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, halfan 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 heishumbugging—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, preparedto 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," heassented; "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.
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 andover 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 sayinganything 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 presenttime is his little brochureReflexive Associations, which has added little to our knowledge of the subject.)
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.
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, withsurprise. "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 theEncyclopædia 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. Themeans 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.
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 Wonderdisplay 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 wasawaiting, 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 tohim. 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.
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 fiercelycombated 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'shistoric 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.)
Formany 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'stown 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 nearlyevery 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 fromCrashaw, 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."
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 certainpoint. 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 airof 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 becamevery 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.
"Idounderstand," 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 partnershipfrom 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 todragyou 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," musedChallis. 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 thereisno suchconsensus 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 youmustagree 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 amdetermined"—he raised his voice and struck the writing-table with his fist—"I amdeterminedthat this infidel child shall go to school. I am prepared, ifnecessary, 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.