III
He was allowed no respite. Victor Stott was emerging from the library window as Challis rolled up to the hall door. It was one of Ellen Mary’s days—she stood respectfully in the background while her son descended; she curtsied to Challis as he came forward.
He hesitated a moment. He would not risk insult in the presence of his chauffeur and Mrs. Stott. He confronted the Wonder; he stood before him, and over him like a cliff.
“I must speak to you for a moment on a matter of some importance,” said Challis to the little figure below him, and as he spoke he looked over the child’s head at the child’s mother. “It is a matter that concerns your own welfare. Will you come into the house with me for a few minutes?”
Ellen Mary nodded, and Challis understood. He turned and led the way. At the door, however, he stood aside and spoke again to Mrs. Stott. “Won’t you come in and have some tea, or something?” he asked.
“No, sir, thank you, sir,” replied Ellen Mary; “I’ll just wait ’ere till ’e’s ready.”
“At least come in and sit down,” said Challis, and she came in and sat in the hall. The Wonder had already preceded them into the house. He had walked into the morning-room—probably because the door stood open, though he was now tall enough to reach the handles of the Challis Court doors. He stood in the middle of the room when Challis entered.
“Won’t you sit down?” said Challis.
The Wonder shook his head.
“I don’t know if you are aware,” began Challis, “that there is a system of education in England at the present time, which requires that every child should attend school at the age of five years, unless the parents are able to provide their children with an education elsewhere.”
The Wonder nodded.
Challis inferred that he need proffer no further information with regard to the Education Act.
“Now, it is very absurd,” he continued, “and I have, myself, pointed out the absurdity; but there is a man of some influence in this neighbourhood who insists that you should attend the elementary school.” He paused, but the Wonder gave no sign.
“I have argued with this man,” continued Challis, “and I have also seen another member of the Local Education Authority—a man of some note in the larger world—and it seems that you cannot be exempted unless you convince the Authority that your knowledge is such that to give you a Council school education would be the most absurd farce.”
“Cannot you stand in loco parentis?” asked the Wonder suddenly, in his still, thin voice.
“You mean,” said Challis, startled by this outburst, “that I am in a sense providing you with an education? Quite true; but there is Crashaw to deal with.”
“Inform him,” said the Wonder.
Challis sighed. “I have,” he said, “but he can’t understand.” And then, feeling the urgent need to explain something of the motives that govern this little world of ours—the world into which this strangely logical exception had been born—Challis attempted an exposition.
“I know,” he said, “that these things must seem to you utterly absurd, but you must try to realise that you are an exception to the world about you; that Crashaw or I, or, indeed, the greatest minds of the present day, are not ruled by the fine logic which you are able to exercise. We are children compared to you. We are swayed even in the making of our laws by little primitive emotions and passions, self-interests, desires. And at the best we are not capable of ordering our lives and our government to those just ends which we may see, some of us, are abstractly right and fine. We are at the mercy of that great mass of the people who have not yet won to an intellectual and discriminating judgment of how their own needs may best be served, and whose representatives consider the interests of a party, a constituency, and especially of their own personal ambitions and welfare, before the needs of humanity as a whole, or even the humanity of these little islands.
“Above all, we are divided man against man. We are split into parties and factions, by greed and jealousies, petty spites and self-seeking, by unintelligence, by education, and by our inability—a mental inability—‘to see life steadily and see it whole,’ and lastly, perhaps chiefly, by our intense egotisms, both physical and intellectual.
“Try to realise this. It is necessary, because whatever your wisdom, you have to live in a world of comparative ignorance, a world which cannot appreciate you, but which can and will fall back upon the compelling power of the savage—the resort to physical, brute force.”
The Wonder nodded. “You suggest——?” he said.
“Merely that you should consent to answer certain elementary questions which the members of the Local Authority will put to you,” replied Challis. “I can arrange that these questions be asked here—in the library. Will you consent?”
The Wonder nodded, and made his way into the hall, without another word. His mother rose and opened the front door for him.
As Challis watched the curious couple go down the drive, he sighed again, perhaps with relief, perhaps at the impotence of the world of men.