The Incipience Of My Subjection To The Wonder

: MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER

I



Victor Stott was in his eighth year when I met him for the third time. I

must have stayed longer than I imagined by the pond on the Common, for

Mrs. Stott and her son had had tea, and the boy was preparing to go out.

He stopped when he saw me coming; an unprecedented mark of recognition,

so I have since learned.



As I saw him then, he made a remarkable, but not a repulsively abnormal
br /> figure. His baldness struck one immediately, but it did not give him a

look of age. Then one noticed that his head was unmistakably out of

proportion to his body, yet the disproportion was not nearly so marked

as it had been in infancy. These two things were conspicuous; the less

salient peculiarities were observed later; the curious little beaky nose

that jutted out at an unusual angle from the face, the lips that were

too straight and determined for a child, the laxity of the limbs when

the body was in repose--lastly, the eyes.



When I met Victor Stott on this, third, occasion, there can be no doubt

that he had lost something of his original power. This may have been due

to his long sojourn in the world of books, a sojourn that had, perhaps,

altered the strange individuality of his thought; or it may have been

due, in part at least, to his recent recognition of the fact that the

power of his gaze exercised no influence over creatures such as the

Harrison idiot. Nevertheless, though something of the original force had

abated, he still had an extraordinary, and, so far as I can learn,

altogether unprecedented power of enforcing his will without word or

gesture; and I may say here that in those rare moments when Victor Stott

looked me in the face, I seemed to see a rare and wonderful personality

peering out through his eyes,--the personality which had, no doubt,

spoken to Challis and Lewes through that long afternoon in the library

of Challis Court. Normally one saw a curious, unattractive, rather

repulsive figure of a child; when he looked at one with that rare look

of intention, the man that lived within that unattractive body was

revealed, his insight, his profundity, his unexampled wisdom. If we mark

the difference between man and animals by a measure of intelligence,

then surely this child was a very god among men.





II



Victor Stott did not look at me when I entered his mother's cottage; I

saw only the unattractive exterior of him, and I blundered into an air

of patronage.



"Is this your boy?" I said, when I had greeted her. "I hear he is a

great scholar."



"Yes, sir," replied Ellen Mary quietly. She never boasted to strangers.



"You don't remember me, I suppose?" I went on, foolishly; trying,

however, to speak as to an equal. "You were in petticoats the last time

I saw you."



The Wonder was standing by the window, his arms hanging loosely at his

sides; he looked out aslant up the lane; his profile was turned towards

me. He made no answer to my question.



"Oh yes, sir, he remembers," replied Ellen Mary. "He never forgets

anything."



I paused, uncomfortably. I was slightly huffed by the boy's silence.



"I have come to spend the summer here," I said at last. "I hope he will

come to see me. I have brought a good many books with me; perhaps he

might care to read some of them."



I had to talk at the boy; there was no alternative. Inwardly I was

thinking that I had Kant's Critique and Hegel's Phenomenology among my

books. "He may put on airs of scholarship," I thought; "but I fancy that

he will find those two works rather above the level of his comprehension

as yet." I did not recognise the fact that it was I who was putting on

airs, not Victor Stott.



"'E's given up reading the past six weeks, sir," said Ellen Mary, "but I

daresay he will come and see your books."



She spoke demurely, and she did not look at her son; I received the

impression that her statements were laid before him to take up, reject,

or pass unnoticed as he pleased.



I was slightly exasperated. I turned to the Wonder. "Would you care to

come?" I asked.



He nodded without looking at me, and walked out of the cottage.



I hesitated.



"'E'll go with you now, sir," prompted Ellen Mary. "That's what 'e

means."



I followed the Wonder in a condition of suppressed irritation. "His

mother might be able to interpret his rudeness," I thought, "but I would

teach him to convey his intentions more clearly. The child had been

spoilt."





III



The Wonder chose the road over the Common. I should have gone by the

wood, but when we came to the entrance of the wood, he turned up on to

the Common. He did not ask me which way I preferred. Indeed, we neither

of us spoke during the half-mile walk that separated the Wood Farm from

the last cottage in Pym.



I was fuming inwardly. I had it in my mind at that time to put the

Wonder through some sort of an examination. I was making plans to

contribute towards his education, to send him to Oxford, later. I had

adumbrated a scheme to arouse interest in his case among certain

scholars and men of influence with whom I was slightly acquainted. I had

been very much engrossed with these plans as I had made my way to the

Stotts' cottage. I was still somewhat exalted in mind with my dreams of

a vicarious brilliance. I had pictured the Wonder's magnificent passage

through the University; I had acted, in thought, as the generous and

kindly benefactor.... It had been a grandiose dream, and the reality was

so humiliating. Could I make this mannerless child understand his

possibilities? Had he any ambition?



Thinking of these things, I had lagged behind as we crossed the Common,

and when I came to the gate of the farmyard, the Wonder was at the door

of the house. He did not wait for me, but walked straight into my

sitting-room. When I entered, I found him seated on the low window-sill,

turning over the top layer of books in the large case which had been

opened, but not unpacked. There was no place to put the books; in fact,

I was proposing to have some shelves put up, if Mrs. Berridge had no

objection.



I entered the room in a condition of warm indignation. "Cheek" was the

word that was in my mind. "Confounded cheek," I muttered. Nevertheless I

did not interrupt the boy; instead, I lit a cigarette, sat down and

watched him.



I was sceptical at first. I noted at once the sure touch with which the

boy handled my books, the practised hand that turned the pages, the

quick examination of title-page and the list of contents, the occasional

swift reference to the index, but I did not believe it possible that any

one could read so fast as he read when he did condescend for a few

moments to give his attention to a few consecutive pages. "Was it a

pose?" I thought, yet he was certainly an adept in handling the books. I

was puzzled, yet I was still sceptical--the habit of experience was

towards disbelief--a boy of seven and a half could not possibly have the

mental equipment to skim all that philosophy....



My books were being unpacked very quickly. Kant, Hegel, Schelling,

Fichte, Leibnitz, Nietzsche, Hume, Bradley, William James had all been

rejected and were piled on the floor, but he had hesitated longer over

Bergson's Creative Evolution. He really seemed to be giving that some

attention, though he read it--if he were reading it--so fast that the

hand which turned the pages hardly rested between each movement.



When Bergson was sent to join his predecessors, I determined that I

would get some word out of this strange child--I had never yet heard him

speak, not a single syllable. I determined to brave all rebuffs. I was

prepared for that.



"Well?" I said, when Bergson was laid down. "Well! What do you make of

that?"



He turned and looked out of the window.



I came and sat on the end of the table within a few feet of him. From

that position I, too, could see out of the window, and I saw the figure

of the Harrison idiot slouching over the farmyard gate.



A gust of impatience whirled over me. I caught up my stick and went out

quickly.



"Now then," I said, as I came within speaking distance of the idiot,

"get away from here. Out with you!"



The idiot probably understood no word of what I said, but like a dog he

was quick to interpret my tone and gesture. He made a revoltingly

inhuman sound as he shambled away, a kind of throaty yelp. I walked back

to the house. I could not avoid the feeling that I had been

unnecessarily brutal.



When I returned the Wonder was still staring out of the window; but

though I did not guess it then, the idiot had served my purpose better

than my determination. It was to the idiot that I owed my subsequent

knowledge of Victor Stott. The Wonder had found a use for me. He was

resigned to bear with my feeble mental development, because I was strong

enough to keep at bay that half-animal creature who appeared to believe

that Victor Stott was one of his own kind--the only one he had ever met.

The idiot in some unimaginable way had inferred a likeness between

himself and the Wonder--they both had enormous heads--and the idiot was

the only human being over whom the Wonder was never able to exercise the

least authority.





IV



I went in and sat down again on the end of the table. I was rather

heated. I lit another cigarette and stared at the Wonder, who was still

looking out of the window.



There was silence for a few seconds, and then he spoke of his own

initiative.



"Illustrates the weakness of argument from history and analogy," he said

in a clear, small voice, addressing no one in particular. "Hegel's

limitations are qualitatively those of Harrison, who argues that I and

he are similar in kind."



The proposition was so astounding that I could find no answer

immediately. If the statement had been made in boyish language I should

have laughed at it, but the phraseology impressed me.



"You've read Hegel, then?" I asked evasively.



"Subtract the endeavour to demonstrate a preconceived hypothesis from

any known philosophy," continued the Wonder, without heeding my

question, "and the remainder, the only valuable material, is found to be

distorted." He paused as if waiting for my reply.



How could one answer such propositions as these offhand? I tried,

however, to get at the gist of the sentence, and, as the silence

continued, I said with some hesitation: "But it is impossible, surely,

to approach the work of writing, say a philosophy, without some

apprehension of the end in view?"



"Illogical," replied the Wonder, "not philosophy; a system of trial and

error--to evaluate a complex variable function." He paused a moment, and

then glanced down at the pile of books on the floor. "More millions," he

said.



I think he meant that more millions of books might be written on this

system without arriving at an answer to the problem, but I admit that I

am at a loss, that I cannot interpret his remarks. I wrote them down an

hour or two after they were uttered, but I may have made mistakes. The

mathematical metaphor is beyond me. I have no acquaintance with the

higher mathematics.



The Wonder had a very expressionless face, but I thought at this moment

that he wore a look of sadness; and that look was one of the factors

which helped me to understand the unbridgeable gulf that lay between his

intellect and mine. I think it was at this moment that I first began to

change my opinion. I had been regarding him as an unbearable little

prig, but it flashed across me as I watched him now, that his mind and

my own might be so far differentiated that he was unable to convey his

thoughts to me. "Was it possible," I wondered, "that he had been trying

to talk down to my level?"



"I am afraid I don't quite follow you," I said. I had intended to

question him further, to urge him to explain, but it came to me that it

would be quite hopeless to go on. How can one answer the unreasoning

questions of a child? Here I was the child, though a child of slightly

advanced development. I could appreciate that it was useless to persist

in a futile "Why, why?" when the answer could only be given in terms

that I could not comprehend. Therefore I hesitated, sighed, and then

with that obstinacy of vanity which creates an image of self-protection

and refuses to relinquish it, I said:



"I wish you could explain yourself; not on this particular point of

philosophy, but your life----" I stopped, because I did not know how to

phrase my demand. What was it, after all, that I wanted to learn?



"That I can't explain," said the Wonder. "There are no data."



I saw that he had accepted my request for explanation in a much wider

sense than I had intended, and I took him up on this.



"But haven't you any hypothesis?"



"I cannot work on the system of trial and error," replied the Wonder.



Our conversation went no further this afternoon, for Mrs. Berridge came

in to lay the cloth. She looked askance, I thought, at the figure on the

window-sill, but she ventured no remark save to ask if I was ready for

my supper.



"Yes, oh! yes!" I said.



"Shall I lay for two, sir?" asked Mrs. Berridge.



"Will you stay and have supper?" I said to the Wonder, but he shook his

head, got up and walked out of the room. I watched him cross the

farmyard and make his way over the Common.



"Well!" I said to Mrs. Berridge, when the boy was out of sight, "that

child is what in America they call 'the limit,' Mrs. Berridge."



My landlady put her lips together, shook her head, and shivered

slightly. "He gives me the shudders," she said.





V



I neither read nor wrote that evening. I forgot to go out for a walk at

sunset. I sat and pondered until it was time for bed, and then I

pondered myself to sleep. No vision came to me, and I had no relevant

dreams.



The next morning at seven o'clock I saw Mrs. Stott come over the Common

to fetch her milk from the farm. I waited until her business was done,

and then I went out and walked back with her.



"I want to understand about your son," I said by way of making an

opening.



She looked at me quickly. "You know, 'e 'ardly ever speaks to me, sir,"

she said.



I was staggered for a moment. "But you understand him?" I said.



"In some ways, sir," was her answer.



I recognised the direction of the limitation. "Ah! we none of us

understand him in all ways," I said, with a touch of patronage.



"No, sir," replied Ellen Mary. She evidently agreed to that statement

without qualification.



"But what is he going to do?" I asked. "When he grows up, I mean?"



"I can't say, sir. We must leave that to 'im."



I accepted the rebuke more mildly than I should have done on the

previous day. "He never speaks of his future?" I said feebly.



"No, sir."



There seemed to be nothing more to say. We had only gone a couple of

hundred yards, but I paused in my walk. I thought I might as well go

back and get my breakfast. But Mrs. Stott looked at me as though she had

something more to say. We stood facing each other on the cart track.



"I suppose I can't be of any use?" I asked vaguely.



Ellen Mary became suddenly voluble.



"I 'ope I'm not askin' too much, sir," she said, "but there is a way you

could 'elp if you would. 'E 'ardly ever speaks to me, as I've said, but

I've been opset about that 'Arrison boy. 'E's a brute beast, sir, if you

know what I mean, and 'e" (she differentiated her pronouns only by

accent, and where there is any doubt I have used italics to indicate

that her son is referred to) "doesn't seem to 'ave the same 'old on 'im

as 'e does over others. It's truth, I am not easy in my mind about it,

sir, although 'e 'as never said a word to me, not being afraid of

anything like other children, but 'e seems to have took a sort of a

fancy to you, sir" (I think this was intended as the subtlest flattery),

"and if you was to go with 'im when 'e takes 'is walks--'e's much in the

air, sir, and a great one for walkin'--I think 'e'd be glad of your

cump'ny, though maybe 'e won't never say it in so many words. You

mustn't mind 'im being silent, sir; there's some things we can't

understand, and though, as I say, 'e 'asn't said anything to me, it's

not that I'm scheming be'ind 'is back, for I know 'is meaning without

words being necessary."



She might have said more, but I interrupted her at this point.

"Certainly, I will come and fetch him,"--I lapsed unconsciously into her

system of denomination--"this morning, if you are sure he would like to

come out with me."



"I'm quite sure, sir," she said.



"About nine o'clock?" I asked.



"That would do nicely, sir," she answered.



As I walked back to the farm I was thinking of the life of those two

occupants of the Stotts' cottage. The mother who watched her son in

silence, studying his every look and action in order to gather his

meaning; who never asked her son a question nor expected from him any

statement of opinion; and the son wrapped always in that profound

speculation which seemed to be his only mood. What a household!



It struck me while I was having breakfast that I seemed to have let

myself in for a duty that might prove anything but pleasant.





VI



There is nothing to say of that first walk of mine with the Wonder. I

spoke to him once or twice and he answered by nodding his head; even

this notice I now know to have been a special mark of favour, a

condescension to acknowledge his use for me as a guardian. He did not

speak at all on this occasion.



I did not call for him in the afternoon; I had made other plans. I

wanted to see the man Challis, whose library had been at the disposal of

this astonishing child. Challis might be able to give me further

information. The truth of the matter is that I was in two minds as to

whether I would stay at Pym through the summer, as I had originally

intended. I was not in love with the prospect which the sojourn now held

out for me. If I were to be constituted head nursemaid to Master Victor

Stott, there would remain insufficient time for the progress of my own

book on certain aspects of the growth of the philosophic method.



I see now, when I look back, that I was not convinced at that time, that

I still doubted the Wonder's learning. I may have classed it as a

freakish pedantry, the result of an unprecedented memory.



Mrs. Berridge had much information to impart on the subject of Henry

Challis. He was her husband's landlord, of course, and his was a

hallowed name, to be spoken with decency and respect. I am afraid I

shocked Mrs. Berridge at the outset by my casual "Who's this man

Challis?" She certainly atoned by her own manner for my irreverence; she

very obviously tried to impress me. I professed submission, but was not

intimidated, rather my curiosity was aroused.



Mrs. Berridge was not able to tell me the one thing I most desired to

know, whether the lord of Challis Court was in residence; but it was not

far to walk, and I set out about two o'clock.





VII



Challis was getting into his motor as I walked up the drive. I hurried

forward to catch him before the machine was started. He saw me coming

and paused on the doorstep.



"Did you want to see me?" he asked, as I came up.



"Mr. Challis?" I asked.



"Yes," he said.



"I won't keep you now," I said, "but perhaps you could let me know some

time when I could see you."



"Oh, yes," he said, with the air of a man who is constantly subjected to

annoyance by strangers. "But perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me what

it is you wish to see me about? I might be able to settle it now, at

once."



"I am staying at the Wood Farm," I began. "I am interested in a very

remarkable child----"



"Ah! take my advice, leave him alone," interrupted Challis quickly.



I suppose I looked my amazement, for Challis laughed. "Oh, well," he

said, "of course you won't take such spontaneous advice as that. I'm in

no hurry. Come in." He took off his heavy overcoat and threw it into the

tonneau. "Come round again in an hour," he said to the chauffeur.



"It's very good of you," I protested, "I could come quite well at any

other time."



"I'm in no hurry," he repeated. "You had better come to the scene of

Victor Stott's operations. He hasn't been here for six weeks, by the

way. Can you throw any light on his absence?"



I made a friend that afternoon. When the car came back at four o'clock,

Challis sent it away again. "I shall probably stay down here to-night,"

he said to the butler, and to me: "Can you stay to dinner? I must

convince you about this child."



"I have dined once to-day," I said. "At half-past twelve. I have no

other excuse."



"Oh! well," said Challis, "you needn't eat, but I must. Get us

something, Heathcote," he said to the butler, "and bring tea here."



Much of our conversation after dinner was not relevant to the subject of

the Wonder; we drifted into a long argument upon human origins which has

no place here. But by that time I had been very well informed as to all

the essential facts of the Wonder's childhood, of his entry into the

world of books, of his earlier methods, and of the significance of that

long speech in the library. But at that point Challis became reserved.

He would give me no details.



"You must forgive me; I can't go into that," he said.



"But it is so incomparably important," I protested.



"That may be, but you must not question me. The truth of the matter is

that I have a very confused memory of what the boy said, and the little

I might remember, I prefer to leave undisturbed."



He piqued my curiosity, but I did not press him. It was so evident that

he did not wish to speak on that head.



He walked up with me to the farm at ten o'clock and came into my room.



"We need not keep you out of bed, Mrs. Berridge," he said to my

flustered landlady. "I daresay we shall be up till all hours. We promise

to see that the house is locked up." Mr. Berridge stood a figure of

subservience in the background.



My books were still heaped on the floor. Challis sat down on the

window-sill and looked over some of them. "Many of these Master Stott

probably read in my library," he remarked, "in German. Language is no

bar to him. He learns a language as you or I would learn a page of

history."



Later on, I remember that we came down to essentials. "I must try and

understand something of this child's capacities," I said in answer to a

hint of Challis's that I should leave the Wonder alone. "It seems to me

that here we have something which is of the first importance, of greater

importance, indeed, than anything else in the history of the world."



"But you can't make him speak," said Challis.



"I shall try," I said. "I recognise that we cannot compel him, but I

have a certain hold over him. I see from what you have told me that he

has treated me with most unusual courtesy. I assure you that several

times when I spoke to him this morning he nodded his head."



"A good beginning," laughed Challis.



"I can't understand," I went on, "how it is that you are not more

interested. It seems to me that this child knows many things which we

have been patiently attempting to discover since the dawn of

civilisation."



"Quite," said Challis. "I admit that, but ... well, I don't think I want

to know."



"Surely," I said, "this key to all knowledge----"



"We are not ready for it," replied Challis. "You can't teach metaphysics

to children."



Nevertheless my ardour was increased, not abated, by my long talk with

Challis.



"I shall go on," I said, as I went out to the farm gate with him at

half-past two in the morning.



"Ah! well," he answered, "I shall come over and see you when I get

back." He had told me earlier that he was going abroad for some months.



We hesitated a moment by the gate, and instinctively we both looked up

at the vault of the sky and the glimmering dust of stars.



The same thought was probably in both our minds, the thought of the

insignificance of this little system that revolves round one of the

lesser lights of the Milky Way, but that thought was not to be expressed

save by some banality, and we did not speak.



"I shall certainly look you up when I come back," said Challis.



"Yes; I hope you will," I said lamely.



I watched the loom of his figure against the vague background till I

could distinguish it no longer.



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