The Wonder (13 page)

“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.

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 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.)

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, 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.

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.