VI
Challis gave directions that the window which the Wonder had found to be his most convenient method of entry and exit should be kept open, except at night; and a stool was placed under the sill inside the room, and a low bench was fixed outside to facilitate the child’s goings and comings. Also, a little path was made across the flowerbed.
The Wonder gave no trouble. He arrived at nine o’clock every morning, Sunday included, and left at a quarter to six in the evening. On wet days he was provided with a waterproof which had evidently been made by his mother out of a larger garment. This he took off when he entered the room and left on the stool under the window.
He was given a glass of milk and a plate of bread-and-butter at twelve o’clock; and except for this he demanded and received no attention.
For three weeks he devoted himself exclusively to the study of the Encyclopædia.
Lewes was puzzled.
Challis spoke little of the child during these three weeks, but he often stood at the entrance to the farther rooms and watched the Wonder’s eyes travelling so rapidly yet so intently down the page. That sight had a curious fascination for him; he returned to his own work by an effort, and an hour afterwards he would be back again at the door of the larger room. Sometimes Lewes would hear him mutter: “If he would only answer a few questions....” There was always one hope in Challis’s mind. He hoped that some sort of climax might be reached when the Encyclopædia was finished. The child must, at least, ask then for another book. Even if he chose one for himself, his choice might furnish some sort of a test.
So Challis waited and said little; and Lewes was puzzled, because he was beginning to doubt whether it were possible that the child could sustain a pose so long. That, in itself, would be evidence of extraordinary abnormality. Lewes fumbled in his mind for another hypothesis.
This reading craze may be symptomatic of some form of idiocy, was his thought; “and I don’t believe he does read,” was the inevitable rider.
Mrs. Stott usually came to meet her son, and sometimes she would come early in the afternoon and stand at the window watching him at his work; but neither Challis nor Lewes ever saw the Wonder display by any sign that he was aware of his mother’s presence.
During those three weeks the Wonder held himself completely detached from any intercourse with the world of men. At the end of that period he once more manifested his awareness of the human factor in existence.
Challis, if he spoke little to Lewes of the Wonder during this time, maintained a strict observation of the child’s doings.
The Wonder began his last volume of the Encyclopædia one Wednesday afternoon soon after lunch, and on Thursday morning, Challis was continually in and out of the room watching the child’s progress, and noting his nearness to the end of the colossal task he had undertaken.
At a quarter to twelve he took up his old position in the doorway, and with his hands clasped behind his back he watched the reading of the last forty pages.
There was no slackening and no quickening in the Wonder’s rate of progress. He read the articles under “Z” with the same attention he had given to the remainder of the work, and then, arrived at the last page, he closed the volume and took up the Index.
Challis suffered a qualm; not so much on account of the possible postponement of the crisis he was awaiting, as because he saw that the reading of the Index could only be taken as a sign that the whole study had been unintelligent. No one could conceivably have any purpose in reading through an index.
And at this moment Lewes joined him in the doorway.
“What volume has he got to now?” asked Lewes.
“The Index,” returned Challis.
Lewes was no less quick in drawing his inference than Challis had been.
“Well, that settles it, I should think,” was Lewes’s comment.
“Wait, wait,” returned Challis.
The Wonder turned a dozen pages at once, glanced at the new opening, made a further brief examination of two or three headings near the end of the volume, closed the book, and looked up.
“Have you finished?” asked Challis.
The Wonder shook his head. “All this,” he said—he indicated with a small and dirty hand the pile of volumes that were massed round him—“all this ...” he repeated, hesitated for a word, and again shook his head with that solemn, deliberate impressiveness which marked all his actions.
Challis came towards the child, leaned over the table for a moment, and then sat down opposite to him. Between the two protagonists hovered Lewes, sceptical, inclined towards aggression.
“I am most interested,” said Challis. “Will you try to tell me, my boy, what you think of—all this?”
“So elementary ... inchoate ... a disjunctive ... patchwork” replied the Wonder. His abstracted eyes were blind to the objective world of our reality; he seemed to be profoundly analysing the very elements of thought.