The Wonder (14 page)

This reading craze may be symptomatic of some form of idiocy, he thought; “and I don’t believe he does read,” was his illogical deduction.

Mrs. Stott usually came to meet her son, and sometimes she would come early in the afternoon and stand at the window watching him at his work; but neither Challis nor Lewes ever saw the Wonder display by any sign that he was aware of his mother’s presence.

During those three weeks the Wonder held himself completely detached from any intercourse with the world of men. At the end of that period he once more manifested his awareness of the human factor in existence.

Challis, if he spoke little to Lewes of the Wonder during this time, maintained a strict observation of the child’s doings.

The Wonder began his last volume of the Encyclopædia one Wednesday afternoon soon after lunch, and on Thursday morning, Challis was continually in and out of the room watching the child’s progress, and noting his nearness to the end of the colossal task he had undertaken.

At a quarter to twelve he took up his old position in the doorway, and with his hands clasped behind his back he watched the reading of the last forty pages.

There was no slackening and no quickening in the Wonder’s rate of progress. He read the articles under “Z” with the same attention he had given to the remainder of the work, and then, arrived at the last page, he closed the volume and took up the Index.

Challis suffered a qualm; not so much on account of the possible postponement of the crisis he was awaiting, as because he saw that the reading of the Index could only be taken as a sign that the whole study had been unintelligent. No one could conceivably have any purpose in reading through an index.

And at this moment Lewes joined him in the doorway.

“What volume has he got to now?” asked Lewes.

“The Index,” returned Challis.

Lewes was no less quick in drawing his inference than Challis had been.

“Well, that settles it, I should think,” was Lewes’s comment.

“Wait, wait,” returned Challis.

The Wonder turned a dozen pages at once, glanced at the new opening, made a further brief examination of two or three headings near the end of the volume, closed the book, and looked up.

“Have you finished?” asked Challis.

The Wonder shook his head. “All this,” he said—he indicated with a small and dirty hand the pile of volumes that were massed round him—“all this …” he repeated, hesitated for a word, and again shook his head with that solemn, deliberate impressiveness which marked all his actions.

Challis came towards the child, leaned over the table for a moment, and then sat down opposite to him. Between the two protagonists hovered Lewes, sceptical, inclined towards aggression.

“I am most interested,” said Challis. “Will you try to tell me, my boy, what you think of—all this?”

“So elementary … inchoate … a disjunctive … patchwork,” replied the Wonder. His abstracted eyes were blind to the objective world of our reality; he seemed to be profoundly analysing the very elements of thought.

Then that almost voiceless child found words. Heathcote’s announcement of lunch was waved aside, the long afternoon waned, and still that thin trickle of sound flowed on.

The Wonder spoke in odd, pedantic phrases; he used the technicalities of every science; he constructed his sentences in unusual ways, and often he paused for a word and gave up the search, admitting that his meaning could not be expressed through the medium of any language known to him.

Occasionally Challis would interrupt him fiercely, would even rise from his chair and pace the room, arguing, stating a point of view, combating some suggestion that underlay the trend of that pitiless wisdom which in the end bore him down with its unanswerable insistence.

During those long hours much was stated by that small, thin voice which was utterly beyond the comprehension of the two listeners; indeed, it is doubtful whether even Challis understood a tithe of the theory that was actually expressed in words.

As for Lewes, though he was at the time non-plussed, quelled, he was in the outcome impressed rather by the marvellous powers of memory exhibited than by the far finer powers shown in the superhuman logic of the synthesis.

One sees that Lewes entered upon the interview with a mind predisposed to criticise, to destroy. There can be no doubt that as he listened his uninformed mind was endeavouring to analyse, to weigh, and to oppose; and this antagonism and his own thoughts continually interposed between him and the thought of the speaker. Lewes’s account of what was spoken on that afternoon is utterly worthless.

Challis’s failure to comprehend was not, at the outset, due to his antagonistic attitude. He began with an earnest wish to understand: he failed only because the thing spoken was beyond the scope of his intellectual powers. But he did, nevertheless, understand the trend of that analysis of progress; he did in some half-realised way apprehend the gist of that terrible deduction of a final adjustment.

He must have apprehended, in part, for he fiercely combated the argument, only to quaver, at last, into a silence which permitted again that trickle of hesitating, pedantic speech, which was yet so overwhelming, so conclusive.

As the afternoon wore on, however, Challis’s attitude must have changed; he must have assumed an armour of mental resistance not unlike the resistance of Lewes. Challis perceived, however dimly, that life would hold no further pleasure for him if he accepted that theory of origin, evolution, and final adjustment; he found in this cosmogony no place for his own idealism; and he feared to be convinced even by that fraction of the whole argument which he could understand.

We see that Challis, with all his apparent devotion to science, was never more than a dilettante. He had another stake in the world which, at the last analysis, he valued more highly than the acquisition of knowledge. Those means of ease, of comfort, of liberty, of opportunity to choose his work among various interests, were the ruling influence of his life. With it all Challis was an idealist, and unpractical. His genial charity, his refinement of mind, his unthinking generosity, indicate the bias of a character which inclined always towards a picturesque optimism. It is not difficult to understand that he dared not allow himself to be convinced by Victor Stott’s appalling synthesis.

At last, when the twilight was deepening into night, the voice ceased, the child’s story had been told, and it had not been understood. The Wonder never again spoke of his theory of life. He realised from that time that no one could comprehend him.

As he rose to go, he asked one question that, simple as was its expression, had a deep and wonderful significance.

“Is there none of my kind?” he said. “Is this,” and he laid a hand on the pile of books before him, “is this all?”

“There is none of your kind,” replied Challis; and the little figure born into a world that could not understand him, that was not ready to receive him, walked to the window and climbed out into the darkness.

(Henry Challis is the only man who could ever have given any account of that extraordinary analysis of life, and he made no effort to recall the fundamental basis of the argument, and so allowed his memory of the essential part to fade. Moreover, he had a marked disinclination to speak of that afternoon or of anything that was said by Victor Stott during those six momentous hours of expression. It is evident that Challis’s attitude to Victor Stott was not unlike the attitude of Captain Wallis to Victor Stott’s father on the occasion of Hampdenshire’s historic match with Surrey. “This man will have to be barred,” Wallis said. “It means the end of cricket.” Challis, in effect, thought that if Victor Stott were encouraged, it would mean the end of research, philosophy, all the mystery, idealism, and joy of life. Once, and once only, did Challis give me any idea of what he had learned during that afternoon’s colloquy, and the substance of what Challis then told me will be found at the end of this volume.)

CHAPTER X

HIS PASTORS AND MASTERS

FOR MANY MONTHS AFTER
that long afternoon in the library, Challis was affected with a fever of restlessness, and his work on the book stood still. He was in Rome during May, and in June he was seized by a sudden whim and went to China by the Trans-Siberian railway. Lewes did not accompany him. Challis preferred, one imagines, to have no intercourse with Lewes while the memory of certain pronouncements was still fresh. He might have been tempted to discuss that interview, and if, as was practically certain, Lewes attempted to pour contempt on the whole affair, Challis might have been drawn into a defence which would have revived many memories he wished to obliterate.

He came back to London in September—he made the return journey by steamer—and found his secretary still working at the monograph on the primitive peoples of Melanesia.

Lewes had spent the whole summer in Challis’s town house in Eaton Square, whither all the material had been removed two days after that momentous afternoon in the library of Challis Court.

“I have been wanting your help badly for some time, sir,” Lewes said on the evening of Challis’s return. “Are you proposing to take up the work again? If not …” Gregory Lewes thought he was wasting valuable time.

“Yes, yes, of course; I am ready to begin again now, if you care to go on with me,” said Challis. He talked for a few minutes of the book without any great show of interest. Presently they came to a pause, and Lewes suggested that he should give some account of how his time had been spent.

“To-morrow,” replied Challis, “to-morrow will be time enough. I shall settle down again in a few days.” He hesitated a moment, and then said: “Any news from Chilborough?”

“N-no, I don’t think so,” returned Lewes. He was occupied with his own interests; he doubted Challis’s intention to continue his work on the book—the announcement had been so half-hearted.

“What about that child?” asked Challis.

“That child?” Lewes appeared to have forgotten the existence of Victor Stott.

“That abnormal child of Stott’s?” prompted Challis.

“Oh! Of course, yes. I believe he still goes nearly every day to the library. I have been down there two or three times, and found him reading. He has learned the use of the index-catalogue. He can get any book he wants. He uses the steps.”

“Do you know what he reads?”

“No; I can’t say I do.”

“What do you think will become of him?”

“Oh! these infant prodigies, you know,” said Lewes with a large air of authority, “they all go the same way. Most of them die young, of course, the others develop into ordinary commonplace men rather under than over the normal ability. After all, it is what one would expect. Nature always maintains her average by some means or another. If a child like this with his abnormal memory were to go on developing, there would be no place for him in the world’s economy. The idea is inconceivable.”

“Quite, quite,” murmured Challis, and after a short silence he added: “You think he will deteriorate, that his faculties will decay prematurely?”

“I should say there could be no doubt of it,” replied Lewes.

“Ah! well. I’ll go down and have a look at him, one day next week,” said Challis; but he did not go till the middle of October.

The immediate cause of his going was a letter from Crashaw, who offered to come up to town, as the matter was one of “really peculiar urgency.”

“I wonder if young Stott has been blaspheming again,” Challis remarked to Lewes. “Wire the man that I’ll go down and see him this afternoon. I shall motor. Say I’ll be at Stoke about half-past three.”

Challis was ushered into Crashaw’s study on his arrival, and found the rector in company with another man—introduced as Mr. Forman—a jolly-looking, high-complexioned man of sixty or so, with a great quantity of white hair on his head and face; he was wearing an old-fashioned morning-coat and grey trousers that were noticeably too short for him.

Crashaw lost no time in introducing the subject of “really peculiar urgency,” but he rambled in his introduction.

“You have probably forgotten,” he said, “that last spring I had to bring a most horrible charge against a child called Victor Stott, who has since been living, practically, as I may say, under your ægis, that is, he has, at least, spent a greater part of his day, er—playing in your library at Challis Court.”

“Quite, quite; I remember perfectly,” said Challis. “I made myself responsible for him up to a certain point. I gave him an occupation. It was intended, was it not, to divert his mind from speaking against religion to the yokels?”

“Quite a character, if I may say so,” put in Mr. Forman cheerfully.

Crashaw was seated at his study table; the affair had something the effect of an examining magistrate taking the evidence of witnesses.

“Yes, yes,” he said testily; “I did ask your help, Mr. Challis, and I did, in a way, receive some assistance from you. That is, the child has to some extent been isolated by spending so much of his time at your house.”

“Has he broken out again?” asked Challis.

“If I understand you to mean has the child been speaking openly on any subject connected with religion, I must say ‘No,’” said Crashaw. “But he never attends any Sunday school, or place of worship; he has received no instruction in—er—any sacred subject, though I understand he is able to read; and his time is spent among books which, pardon me, would not, I suppose, be likely to give a serious turn to his thoughts.”

“Serious?” questioned Challis.

“Perhaps I should say ‘religious,’” replied Crashaw. “To me the two words are synonymous.”

Mr. Forman bowed his head slightly with an air of reverence, and nodded two or three times to express his perfect approval of the rector’s sentiments.

“You think the child’s mind is being perverted by his intercourse with the books in the library where he—he—‘plays’ was your word, I believe?”

“No, not altogether,” replied Crashaw, drawing his eyebrows together. “We can hardly suppose that he is able at so tender an age to read, much less to understand, those works of philosophy and science which would produce an evil effect on his mind. I am willing to admit, since I, too, have had some training in scientific reading, that writers on those subjects are not easily understood even by the mature intelligence.”