The Wonder (11 page)

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.

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.

“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

“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.