The Wonder

"I can see him, then?" asked Grossmann, with the faintly annoyed air of one who is compelled by circumstances to undertake a futile task.

"Certainly, I will arrange an interview for you," Elmer replied, and went on to give an account of his own experience, an account that lost nothing in the telling.

Elmer created a mild sensation in the rooms of the Royal Society that evening.

II

He found Challis at his house in Eaton Square the next morning, but it became evident from the outset that the plan of confounding Grossmann did not appeal to the magnate of Stoke-Underhill. Challis frowned and prevaricated. "It's a thousand to one, the child won't condescend to answer," was his chief evasion.

Elmer was not to be frustrated in the development of his scheme by any such trivial excuse as that. He began to display a considerable annoyance at last.

"Oh! nonsense; nonsense, Challis," he said. "You make altogether too much fuss about this prodigy of yours."

"Not mine," Challis interrupted. "Take him over yourself, Elmer. Bring him out. Exhibit him. I make you a gift of all my interest in him."

Elmer looked thoughtful for a moment, as if he were seriously considering that proposition, and then he said, "I recognise that there are—difficulties. The child seems—er—to have a queer, morose temper, doesn't he?"

Challis shook his head. "It isn't that," he said.

Elmer scratched his cheek. "I understand," he began, and then broke off and went on, "I'm putting this as a personal favour, Challis; but it is more than that. You know my theories with regard to the future of the race. I have a steady faith in our enormous potentialities for real progress. But it must be organised, and Grossmann is just now standing in our way. That stubborn materialism of his has infected many fine intelligences; and I would make very great sacrifices in order to clear this great and terrible obstacle out of the way."

"And you believe that this interview …" interrupted Challis.

"I do, indeed," Elmer said. "It will destroy one of Grossmann's most vital premisses. This prodigy of yours—he is unquestionably a prodigy—demonstrates the fact of an immense progressive variation. Once that is conceded, the main argument of Grossmann's 'Heredity' is invalidated. We shall have knocked away the keystone of his mechanistic theory of evolution...."

"But suppose that the boy refuses...."

"He did not refuse to see us."

"That was to save himself from further trouble."

"But isn't he susceptible to argument?"

"Not the kind of argument you have been using to me," Challis said gravely.

Elmer blew like a porpoise; looked very thoughtful for a moment, and then said:

"You could represent Grossmann as the final court of appeal—the High Lord Muck-a-muck of the L.E.A."

"I should have to do something of the sort," Challis admitted, and continued with a spurt of temper. "But understand, Elmer, I don't do it again; no, not to save the reputation of the Royal Society."

III

Unhappily, no record exists of the conversation between the Wonder and Herr Grossmann.

The Professor seems at the last moment to have had some misgiving as to the nature of the interview that was before him, and refused to have a witness to the proceedings.

Challis made the introduction, and he says that the Wonder regarded Grossmann with perhaps rather more attention than he commonly conceded to strangers; and that the Professor exhibited the usual signs of embarrassment.

Altogether, Grossmann was in the library for about half an hour, and he displayed no sign of perturbation when he rejoined Challis and Elmer in the breakfast-room. Indeed, only one fact of any significance emerges to throw suspicion on Grossmann's attitude during the progress of that secluded half-hour with the greatest intellect of all time—the Professor's spectacles had been broken.

He spoke of the accident with a casual air when he was in the breakfast-room, but Challis remarked a slight flush on the great scientist's face as he referred, perhaps a trifle too ostentatiously, to the incident. And although it is worthless as evidence, there is something rather suspicious in Challis's discovery of finely powdered glass in his library—a mere pinch on the parquet near the further window of the big room, several feet away from the table at which the Wonder habitually sat. Challis would never have noticed the glass, had not one larger atom that had escaped pulverisation, caught the light from the window and drawn his attention.

But even this find is in no way conclusive. The Professor may quite well have walked over to the window, taken off his spectacles to wipe them and dropped them as he, himself, explained. While the crushing of some fragment of one of the lenses was probably due to the chance of his stepping upon it, as he turned on his heel to continue the momentarily interrupted conversation. It is hard to believe that so great a man as Grossmann could have been convulsed by a petty rage that found expression in some act of wanton destruction.

His own brief account of the interview accords very well with the single reference to the Wonder which exists in the literature of the world. This reference is a footnote to a second edition of Grossmann's brochure entitled "An Explanation of Certain Intellectual Abnormalities reported in History" ("Eine Erklärung gewisser Intellektueller geschichtlich überlieferter Anormalen Erscheinungen"). This footnote comes at the end of Grossmann's masterly analysis of the Heinecken case and reads: "I recently examined a similar case of abnormality in England, but found that it presented no such marked divergence from the type as would demand serious investigation."

And in his brief account of the interview rendered to Challis and Elmer, Herr Grossmann, in effect, did no more than draft that footnote.

IV

It must remain uncertain, now, whether or not Elmer would have persisted in his endeavour to exploit the Wonder to the confounding of Grossmann, despite Challis's explicit statement that he would do no more, not even if it were to save the reputation of the Royal Society. Elmer certainly had the virtue of persistence and might have made the attempt. But in one of his rare moments of articulate speech, the Wonder decided the fate of that threatened controversy beyond the possibility of appeal.

He spoke to Challis that same afternoon. He put up his tiny hand to command attention and made the one clear statement on record of his own interests and ambitions in the world.

Challis, turning from his discovery of the Professor's crushed glasses, listened in silence.

"This Grossmann," the Wonder said, "was not concerned in my exemption?"

Challis shook his head. "He is the last," the Wonder concluded with a fine brevity. "You and your kind have no interest in truth."

That last statement may have had a double intention. It is obvious from the Wonder's preliminary question,—which had, indeed, also the quality of an assertion,—how plainly he had recognised that Grossmann had been introduced under false pretences. But, it is permissible to infer that the pronouncement went deeper than that. The Wonder's logic penetrated far into the mysteries of life and he may have seen that Grossmann's attitude was warped by the human limitations of his ambition to shine as a great exponent of science; that he dared not follow up a line of research which might end in the invalidation of his great theory of heredity.

Victor Stott had once before expounded his philosophy and Challis, on that occasion, had deliberately refused to listen. And we may guess that Grossmann, also, might have received some great illumination, had he chosen to pay deference to a mind so infinitely greater than his own.

CHAPTER XIII

FUGITIVE

Meanwhile a child of five—all unconscious that his quiet refusal to participate in the making and breaking of reputations was temporarily a matter of considerable annoyance to a Fellow of the Royal Society—ran through a well-kept index of the books in the library of Challis Court—an index written clearly on cards that occupied a great nest of accessible drawers; two cards with a full description to each book, alphabetically arranged, one card under the title of the work and one under the author's name.

The child made no notes as he studied—he never wrote a single line in all his life; but when a drawer of that delightful index had been searched, he would walk here and there among the three rooms at his disposal, and by the aid of the flight of framed steps that ran smoothly on rubber-tyred wheels, he would take down now and again some book or another until, returning to the table at last to read, he sat in an enceinte of piled volumes that had been collected round him.

Sometimes he read a book from beginning to end, more often he glanced through it, turning a dozen pages at a time, and then pushed it on one side with a gesture displaying the contempt that was not shown by any change of expression.

On many afternoons the sombrely clad figure of a tall, gaunt woman would stand at the open casement of a window in the larger room, and keep a mystic vigil that sometimes lasted for hours. She kept her gaze fixed on that strange little figure whenever it roved up and down the suite of rooms or clambered the pyramid of brown steps that might have made such a glorious plaything for any other child. And even when her son was hidden behind the wall of volumes he had built, the woman would still stare in his direction, but then her eyes seemed to look inwards; at such times she appeared to be wrapped in an introspective devotion.

Very rarely, the heavy-shouldered figure of a man would come to the doorway of the larger room, and also keep a silent vigil—a man who would stand for some minutes with thoughtful eyes and bent brows and then sigh, shake his head and move away, gently closing the door behind him.

There were few other interruptions to the silence of that chapel-like library. Half a dozen times in the first few months a fair-haired, rather supercilious young man came and fetched away a few volumes; but even he evidenced an inclination to walk on tiptoe, a tendency that mastered him whenever he forgot for a moment his self-imposed rôle of scorn....

Outside, over the swelling undulations of rich grass the sheep came back with close-cropped, ungainly bodies to a land that was yellow with buttercups. But when one looked again, their wool hung about them, and they were snatching at short turf that was covered at the woodside by a sprinkle of brown leaves. Then the sheep have gone, and the wood is black with February rain. And, again, the unfolding of the year is about us; a thickening of high twigs in the wood, a glint of green on the blackthorn....

Nearly three cycles of death and birth have run their course, and then the strange little figure comes no more to the library at Challis Court.

PART THREE

MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER

CHAPTER XIV

HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK

I

The circumstance that had intrigued me for so long was determined with an abruptness only less remarkable than the surprise of the onset. Two deaths within six months brought to me, the first, a competence, the second, release from gall and bitterness. For the first time in my life I was a free man. At forty one can still look forward, and I put the past behind me and made plans for the future. There was that book of mine still waiting to be written.

It was wonderful how the detail of it all came back to me—the plan of it, the thread of development, even the very phrases that I had toyed with. The thought of the book brought back a train of associations. There was a phrase I had coined as I had walked out from Ailesworth to Stoke-Underhill; a chapter I had roughed out the day I went to see Ginger Stott at Pym. It seemed to me that the whole conception of the book was associated in some way with that neighbourhood. I remembered at last that I had first thought of writing it after my return from America, on the day that I had had that curious experience with the child in the train. It occurred to me that by a reversal of the process, I might regain many more of my original thoughts; that by going to live, temporarily perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Ailesworth, I might revive other associations.

The picture of Pym presented itself to me very clearly. I remembered that I had once thought that Pym was a place to which I might retire one day in order to write the things I wished to write. I decided to make the dream a reality, and I wrote to Mrs. Berridge at the Wood Farm, asking her if she could let me have her rooms for the spring, summer, and autumn.

II

I was all aglow with excitement on the morning that I set out for the Hampden Hills. This was change, I thought, freedom, adventure. This was the beginning of life, my real entry into the joy of living.

The world was alight with the fire of growth. May had come with a clear sky and a torrent of green was flowing over field, hedge, and wood. I remember that I thanked "whatever gods there be," that one could live so richly in the enjoyment of these things.

III

Farmer Bates met me at Great Hittenden Station. His was the only available horse and cart at Pym, for the Berridges were in a very small way, and it is doubtful if they could have made both ends meet if Mrs. Berridge had not done so well by letting her two spare rooms.

I have a great admiration for Farmer Bates and Mrs. Berridge. I regret intensely that they should both have been unhappily married. If they had married each other they would undoubtedly have made a success of life.

Bates was a Cockney by birth, but always he had had an ambition to take a farm, and after twenty years of work as a skilled mechanic he had thrown up a well-paid job, and dared the uncertainties which beset the English farmer. That venture was a constant bone of strife between him and his wife. Mrs. Bates preferred the town. It has always seemed to me that there was something fine about Bates and his love for the land.

"Good growing weather, Mr. Bates," I said, as I climbed up into the cart.

"Shouldn't be sorry to see some more rain," replied Bates, and damped my ardour for a moment.

Just before we turned into the lane that leads up the long hill to Pym, we passed a ramshackle cart, piled up with a curious miscellany of ruinous furniture. A man was driving, and beside him sat a slatternly woman and a repulsive-looking boy of ten or twelve years old, with a great swollen head and an open, slobbering mouth.

I was startled. I jumped to the conclusion that this was the child I had seen in the train, the son of Ginger Stott.

As we slowed down to the ascent of the long hill, I said to Bates: "Is that Stott's boy?"

Bates looked at me curiously. "Why, no," he said. "Them's the 'Arrisons. 'Arrison's dead now; he was a wrong 'un, couldn't make a job of it, nohow. They used to live 'ere, five or six year ago, and now 'er 'usband's dead, Mrs. 'Arrison's coming back with the boy to live. Worse luck. We thought we was shut of 'em."

"Oh!" I said. "The boy's an idiot, I suppose."

"'Orrible," replied Bates, shaking his head, "'orrible; can't speak nor nothing; goes about bleating and baa-ing like an old sheep."

I looked round, but the ramshackle cart was hidden by the turn of the road. "Does Stott still live at Pym?" I asked.

"Not Ginger," replied Bates. "He lives at Ailesworth. Mrs. Stott and 'er son lives here."

"The boy's still alive then?" I asked.

"Yes," said Bates.

"Intelligent child?" I asked.

"They say," replied Bates. "Book-learnin' and such. They say 'e's read every book in Mr. Challis's librairy."

"Does he go to school?"

"No. They let 'im off. Leastways Mr. Challis did. They say the Reverend Crashaw, down at Stoke, was fair put out about it."

I thought that Bates emphasised the "on dit" nature of his information rather markedly. "What do you think of him?" I asked.

"Me?" said Bates. "I don't worry my 'ead about him. I've got too much to do." And he went off into technicalities concerning the abundance of charlock on the arable land of Pym. He called it "garlic." I saw that it was typical of Bates that he should have too much to do. I reflected that his was the calling which begot civilisation.

IV

The best and surest route from Pym to the Wood Farm is, appropriately, by way of the wood; but in wet weather the alternative of various cart tracks that wind among the bracken and shrub of the Common, is preferable in many ways. May had been very dry that year, however, and Farmer Bates chose the wood. The leaves were still light on the beeches. I remember that as I tried to pierce the vista of stems that dipped over the steep fall of the hill, I promised myself many a romantic exploration of the unknown mysteries beyond.

Everything was so bright that afternoon that nothing, I believe, could have depressed me. When I had reached the farm and looked round the low, dark room with its one window, a foot from the ground and two from the ceiling, I only thought that I should be out-of-doors all the time. It amused me that I could touch the ceiling with my head by standing on tiptoe, and I laughed at the framed "presentation plates" from old Christmas numbers on the walls. These things are merely curious when the sun is shining and it is high May, and one is free to do the desired work after twenty years in a galley.

V

At a quarter to eight that evening I saw the sun set behind the hills. As I wandered reflectively down the lane that goes towards Challis Court, a blackbird was singing ecstatically in a high elm; here and there a rabbit popped out and sat up, the picture of precocious curiosity. Nature seemed to be standing in her doorway for a careless half-hour's gossip, before putting up the shutters to bar the robbers who would soon be about their work of the night.

It was still quite light as I strolled back over the Common, and I chose a path that took me through a little spinney of ash, oak, and beech, treading carefully to avoid crushing the tender crosiers of bracken that were just beginning to break their way through the soil.

As I emerged from the little clump of wood, I saw two figures going away from me in the direction of Pym.

One was that of a boy wearing a cricket-cap; he was walking deliberately, his hands hanging at his sides; the other figure was a taller boy, and he threw out his legs in a curious, undisciplined way, as though he had little control over them. At first sight I thought he was not sober.

The two passed out of sight behind a clump of hawthorn, but once I saw the smaller figure turn and face the other, and once he made a repelling gesture with his hands.

It occurred to me that the smaller boy was trying to avoid his companion; that he was, in one sense, running away from him, that he walked as one might walk away from some threatening animal, deliberately—to simulate the appearance of courage.

I fancied the bigger boy was the idiot Harrison I had seen that afternoon, and Farmer Bates's "We hoped we were shut of him" recurred to me. I wondered if the idiot were dangerous or only a nuisance.

I took the smaller boy to be one of the villagers' children. I noticed that his cricket-cap had a dark patch as though it had been mended with some other material.

The impression which I received from this trivial affair was one of disappointment. The wood and the Common had been so deserted by humanity, so given up to nature, that I felt the presence of the idiot to be a most distasteful intrusion. "If that horrible thing is going to haunt the Common there will be no peace or decency," was the idea that presented itself. "I must send him off, the brute," was the corollary. But I disliked the thought of being obliged to drive him away.

VI

The next morning I did not go on the Common; I was anxious to avoid a meeting with the Harrison idiot. I had been debating whether I should drive him away if I met him. Obviously I had no more right on the Common than he had—on the other hand, he was a nuisance, and I did not see why I should allow him to spoil all my pleasure in that ideal stretch of wild land which pressed on three sides of the Wood Farm. It was a stupid quandary of my own making; but I am afraid it was rather typical of my mental attitude. I am prone to set myself tasks, such as this eviction of the idiot from common ground, and equally prone to avoid them by a process of procrastination.

By way of evasion I walked over to Deane Hill and surveyed the wonderful panorama of neat country that fills the basin between the Hampden and the Quainton Hills. Seen from that height, it has something the effect of a Dutch landscape, it all looks so amazingly tidy. Away to the left I looked over Stoke-Underhill. Ailesworth was a blur in the hollow, but I could distinguish the high fence of the County Ground.

I sat all the morning on Deane Hill, musing and smoking, thinking of such things as Ginger Stott, and the match with Surrey. I decided that I must certainly go and see Stott's queer son, the phenomenon who had, they say, read all the books in Mr. Challis's library. I wondered what sort of a library this Challis had, and who he was. I had never heard of him before. I think I must have gone to sleep for a time.

When Mrs. Berridge came to clear away my dinner—I dined, without shame, at half-past twelve—I detained her with conversation. Presently I asked about little Stott.

"He's a queer one, that's what he is," said Mrs. Berridge. She was a neat, comely little woman, rather superior to her station, and it seemed to me, certainly superior to her clod of a husband.

"A great reader, Farmer Bates tells me," I said.

Mrs. Berridge passed that by. "His mother's in trouble about him this morning," she said. "She's such a nice, respectable woman, and has all her milk and eggs and butter off of us. She was here this morning while you were out, sir, and, what I could make of it that 'Arrison boy had been chasing her boy on the Common last night."

"Oh!" I said with sudden enlightenment. "I believe I saw them." At the back of my mind I was struggling desperately with a vague remembrance. It may sound incredible, but I had only the dimmest memory of my later experience of the child. The train incident was still fresh in my mind, but I could not remember what Stott had told me when I talked with him by the pond. I seemed to have an impression that the child had some strange power of keeping people at a distance; or was I mixing up reality with some Scandinavian fairy tale?

"Very likely, sir," Mrs. Berridge went on. "What upset Mrs. Stott was that her boy's never upset by anything—he has a curious way of looking at you, sir, that makes you wish you wasn't there; but from what Mrs. Stott says, this 'Arrison boy wasn't to be drove off, anyhow, and her son came in quite flurried like. Mrs. Stott seemed quite put out about it."

Doubtless I might have had more information from my landlady, but I was struggling to reconstruct that old experience which had slipped away from me, and I nodded and turned back to the book I had been pretending to read. Mrs. Berridge was one of those unusual women—for her station in life—who know when to be silent, and she finished her clearing away without initiating any further remarks.

When she had finished I went out onto the Common and looked for the pond where I had talked with Ginger Stott.

I found it after a time, and then I began to gather up the threads I had dropped.

It all came back to me, little by little. I remembered that talk I had had with him, his very gestures; I remembered how he had spoken of habits, or the necessity for the lack of them, and that took me back to the scene in the British Museum Reading Room, and to my theory. I was suddenly alive to that old interest again.

I got up and walked eagerly in the direction of Mrs. Stott's cottage.

CHAPTER XV

THE INCIPIENCE OF MY SUBJECTION TO THE WONDER

I

Victor Stott was in his eighth year when I met him for the third time. I must have stayed longer than I imagined by the pond on the Common, for Mrs. Stott and her son had had tea, and the boy was preparing to go out. He stopped when he saw me coming; an unprecedented mark of recognition, so I have since learned.