III
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.
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 crown. 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 there was no response, so 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.