V
He did not look up when the procession entered, nor did he remove his cricket cap. He was in his usual place at the centre table.
Challis found chairs for the Committee, and the members ranged themselves round the opposite side of the table. Curiously, the effect produced was that of a class brought up for a viva voce examination, and when the Wonder raised his eyes and glanced deliberately down the line of his judges, this effect was heightened. There was an audible fidgeting, a creak of chairs, an indication of small embarrassments.
“Her—um!” Deane Elmer cleared his throat with noisy vigour; looked at the Wonder, met his eyes and looked hastily away again; “Hm!—her—rum!” he repeated, and then he turned to Challis. “So this little fellow has never been to school?” he said.
Challis frowned heavily. He looked exceedingly uncomfortable and unhappy. He was conscious that he could take neither side in this controversy—that he was in sympathy with no one of the seven other persons who were seated in his library.
He shook his head impatiently in answer to Sir Deane Elmer’s question, and the chairman turned to the Rev. Philip Steven, who was gazing intently at the pattern of the carpet.
“I think, Steven,” said Elmer, “that your large experience will probably prompt you to a more efficient examination than we could conduct. Will you initiate the inquiry?”
Steven raised his head slightly, put a readjusting hand up to his glasses, and then looked sternly at the Wonder over the top of them. Even the sixth form quailed when the head master assumed this expression, but the small child at the table was gazing out of the window.
Doubtless Steven was slightly embarrassed by the detachment of the examinee, and blundered. “What is the square root of 226?” he asked—he probably intended to say 225.
“15·03329—to five places,” replied the Wonder.
Steven started. Neither he nor any other member of the Committee was capable of checking that answer without resort to pencil and paper.
“Dear me!” ejaculated Squire Standing.
Elmer scratched the superabundance of his purple jowl, and looked at Challis, who thrust his hands into his pockets and stared at the ceiling.
Crashaw leaned forward and clasped his hands together. He was biding his time.
“Mayor” Purvis alone seemed unmoved. “What’s that book he’s got open in front of him?” he asked.
“May I see?” interposed Challis hurriedly, and he rose from his chair, picked up the book in question, glanced at it for a moment, and then handed it to the grocer. The book was Van Vloten’s Dutch text and Latin translation of Spinoza’s Short Treatise.
The grocer turned to the title-page. “Ad—beany—dick—ti—de—Spy—nozer,” he read aloud and then: “What’s it all about, Mr. Challis?” he asked. “German or something, I take it?”
“In any case it has nothing to do with elementary arithmetic,” replied Challis curtly, “Mr. Steven will set your mind at ease on that point.”
“Certainly, certainly,” murmured Steven.
Grocer Purvis closed the book carefully and replaced it on the desk. “What does half a stone o’ loaf sugar at two-three-farthings come to?” he asked.
The Wonder shook his head. He did not understand the grocer’s phraseology.
“What is seven times two and three quarters?” translated Challis.
“19·25,” answered the Wonder.
“What’s that in shillin’s?” asked Purvis.
“1·60416.”
“Wrong!” returned the grocer triumphantly.
“Er—excuse me, Mr. Purvis,” interposed Steven, “I think not. The—the—er—examinee has given the correct mathematical answer to five places of decimals—that is, so far as I can check him mentally.”
“Well, it seems to me,” persisted the grocer, “as he’s gone a long way round to answer a simple question what any fifth-standard child could do in his head. I’ll give him another.”
“Cast it in another form,” put in the chairman. “Give it as a multiplication sum.”
Purvis tucked his fingers carefully into his waistcoat pockets. “I put the question, Mr. Chairman,” he said, “as it’ll be put to the youngster when he has to tot up a bill. That seems to be a sound and practical form for such questions to be put in.”
Challis sighed impatiently. “I thought Mr. Steven had been delegated to conduct the first part of the examination,” he said. “It seems to me that we are wasting a lot of time.”
Elmer nodded. “Will you go on, Mr. Steven?” he said.
Challis was ashamed for his compeers. “What children we are,” he thought.
Steven got to work again with various arithmetical questions, which were answered instantly, and then he made a sudden leap and asked: “What is the binomial theorem?”
“A formula for writing down the coefficient of any stated term in the expansion of any stated power of a given binomial,” replied the Wonder.
Elmer blew out his cheeks and looked at Challis, but met the gaze of Mr. Steven, who adjusted his glasses and said, “I am satisfied under this head.”
“It’s all beyond me,” remarked Squire Standing frankly.
“I think, Mr. Chairman, that we’ve had enough theoretical arithmetic,” said Purvis. “There’s a few practical questions I’d like to put.”
“No more arithmetic, then,” assented Elmer, and Crashaw exchanged a glance of understanding with the grocer.
“Now, how old was our Lord when He began His ministry?” asked the grocer.
“Uncertain,” replied the Wonder.
Mr. Purvis smiled. “Any Sunday-school child knows that!” he said.
“Of course, of course,” murmured Crashaw.
But Steven looked uncomfortable. “Are you sure you understand the purport of the answer, Mr. Purvis?” he asked.
“Can there be any doubt about it?” replied the grocer. “I asked how old our Lord was when He began His ministry, and he”—he made an indicative gesture with one momentarily released hand towards the Wonder—“and he says he’s ‘uncertain.’”
“No, no,” interposed Challis impatiently, “he meant that the answer to your question was uncertain.”
“How’s that?” returned the grocer. “I’ve always understood——”
“Quite, quite,” interrupted Challis. “But what we have always understood does not always correspond to the actual fact.”
“What did you intend by your answer?” put in Elmer quickly, addressing the Wonder.
“The evidence rests mainly on [Luke’s Gospel],” answered the Wonder, “but the phrase ‘ἀρχόμενος ὡσὲι ἐτῶν τριάκοντα’ is vague—it allows latitude in either direction. According to the chronology of John’s Gospel the age might have been about thirty-two.”
“It says ‘thirty’ in the Bible, and that’s good enough for me,” said the grocer, and Crashaw muttered “Heresy, heresy,” in an audible under tone.
“Sounds very like blarsphemy to me,” said Purvis, “like doubtin’ the word of God. I’m for sending him to school.”
Deane Elmer had been regarding the face of the small abstracted child with considerable interest. He put aside for the moment the grocer’s intimation of his voting tendency.
“How many elements are known to chemists?” asked Elmer of the examinee.
“Eighty-one well characterised; others have been described,” replied the Wonder.
“Which has the greatest atomic weight?” asked Elmer.
“Uranium.”
“And that weight is?”
“On the oxygen basis of 16—238·5.”
“Extraordinary powers of memory,” muttered Elmer, and there was silence for a moment, a silence broken by Squire Standing, who, in a loud voice, asked suddenly and most irrelevantly, “What’s your opinion of Tariff Reform?”
“An empirical question that cannot be decided from a theoretical basis,” replied the Wonder.
Elmer laughed out, a great shouting guffaw. “Quite right, quite right,” he said, his cheeks shaking with mirth. “What have you to say to that, Standing?”
“I say that Tariff Reform’s the only way to save the country,” replied Squire Standing, looking very red and obstinate, “and if this Government——”
Challis rose to his feet. “Oh! aren’t you all satisfied?” he said. “Is this Committee here to argue questions of present politics? What more evidence do you need?”
“I’m not satisfied,” put in Purvis resolutely, “nor is the Rev. Mr. Crashaw, I fancy.”
“He has no vote,” said Challis. “Elmer, what do you say?”
“I think we may safely say that the child has been, and is being, provided with an education elsewhere, and that he need not therefore attend the elementary school,” replied Elmer, still chuckling.
“On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, is that what you put to the meeting?” asked Purvis.
“This is quite informal,” replied Elmer. “Unless we are all agreed, the question must be put to the full Committee.”
“Shall we argue the point in the other room?” suggested Challis.
“Certainly, certainly,” said Elmer. “We can return, if necessary.”
And the four striking figures of the Education Committee filed out, followed by Crashaw and the stenographer.
Challis, coming last, paused at the door and looked back.
The Wonder had returned to his study of Spinoza.
Challis waved a hand to the unconscious figure. “I must join my fellow-children,” he said grimly, “or they will be quarrelling.”