IV
Harvey Walters lived in Wenderby, but his consulting-rooms were in Harley Street, and he did not practise in his own neighbourhood; nevertheless he vaccinated Victor Stott to oblige Challis.
“Well?” asked Challis a few days later, “what do you make of him, Walters? No clichés, now, and no professional jargon.”
“Candidly, I don’t know,” replied Walters, after a thoughtful interval.
“How many times have you seen him?”
“Four, altogether.”
“Good patient? Healthy flesh and that sort of thing?”
“Splendid.”
“Did he look you in the eyes?”
“Once, only once, the first time I visited the house.”
Challis nodded. “My own experience, exactly. And did you return that look of his?”
“Not willingly. It was, I confess, not altogether a pleasant experience.”
“Ah!”
Challis was silent for a few moments, and it was Walters who took up the interrogatory.
“Challis!”
“Yes?”
“Have you, now, some feeling of, shall I say, distaste for the child? Do you feel that you have no wish to see it again?”
“Is it that exactly?” parried Challis.
“If not, what is it?” asked Walters.
“In my own case,” said Challis, “I can find an analogy only in my attitude towards my ‘head’ at school. In his presence I was always intimidated by my consciousness of his superior learning. I felt unpleasantly ignorant, small, negligible. Curiously enough, I see something of the same expression of feeling in the attitude of that feeble Crashaw to myself. Well, one makes an attempt at self-assertion, a kind of futile bragging; and one knows the futility of it—at the time. But, afterwards, one finds excuse and seeks to belittle the personality and attainment of the person one feared. At school we did not love the ‘head,’ and, as schoolboys will, we were always trying to run him down. ‘Next time he rags me, I’ll cheek him,’ was our usual boast—but we never did. Let’s be honest, Walters, are not you and I exhibiting much the same attitude towards this extraordinary child? Didn’t he produce the effect upon you that I’ve described? Didn’t you have a little of the ‘fifth form’ feeling,—a boy under examination?”
Walters smiled and screwed his mouth on one side. “The thing is so absurd,” he said.
“That is what we used to say at school,” replied Challis.