Fugitive

: MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER

Meanwhile a child of five--all unconscious that his quiet refusal to

participate in the making and breaking of reputations was temporarily a

matter of considerable annoyance to a Fellow of the Royal Society--ran

through a well-kept index of the books in the library of Challis

Court--an index written clearly on cards that occupied a great nest of

accessible drawers; two cards with a full description to each book,

alphab tically arranged, one card under the title of the work and one

under the author's name.



The child made no notes as he studied--he never wrote a single line in

all his life; but when a drawer of that delightful index had been

searched, he would walk here and there among the three rooms at his

disposal, and by the aid of the flight of framed steps that ran smoothly

on rubber-tyred wheels, he would take down now and again some book or

another until, returning to the table at last to read, he sat in an

enceinte of piled volumes that had been collected round him.



Sometimes he read a book from beginning to end, more often he glanced

through it, turning a dozen pages at a time, and then pushed it on one

side with a gesture displaying the contempt that was not shown by any

change of expression.



On many afternoons the sombrely clad figure of a tall, gaunt woman would

stand at the open casement of a window in the larger room, and keep a

mystic vigil that sometimes lasted for hours. She kept her gaze fixed on

that strange little figure whenever it roved up and down the suite of

rooms or clambered the pyramid of brown steps that might have made such

a glorious plaything for any other child. And even when her son was

hidden behind the wall of volumes he had built, the woman would still

stare in his direction, but then her eyes seemed to look inwards; at

such times she appeared to be wrapped in an introspective devotion.



Very rarely, the heavy-shouldered figure of a man would come to the

doorway of the larger room, and also keep a silent vigil--a man who

would stand for some minutes with thoughtful eyes and bent brows and

then sigh, shake his head and move away, gently closing the door behind

him.



There were few other interruptions to the silence of that chapel-like

library. Half a dozen times in the first few months a fair-haired,

rather supercilious young man came and fetched away a few volumes; but

even he evidenced an inclination to walk on tiptoe, a tendency that

mastered him whenever he forgot for a moment his self-imposed role of

scorn....



Outside, over the swelling undulations of rich grass the sheep came back

with close-cropped, ungainly bodies to a land that was yellow with

buttercups. But when one looked again, their wool hung about them, and

they were snatching at short turf that was covered at the woodside by a

sprinkle of brown leaves. Then the sheep have gone, and the wood is

black with February rain. And, again, the unfolding of the year is about

us; a thickening of high twigs in the wood, a glint of green on the

blackthorn....



Nearly three cycles of death and birth have run their course, and then

the strange little figure comes no more to the library at Challis

Court.