The Wonder (10 page)

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 littlesympathy 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.

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.

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.