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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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abnormal otherwise than in its relation to the development of the rest of his
body, but ...” Lewes meandered off into somewhat abstruse speculation with
regard to the significance of craniology.

Challis nodded his head and murmured: “Quite, quite,” occasionally. He

seemed glad that Lewes should continue to talk.

The lecture was interrupted by the appearance of the governess cart.

“By Jove, he has come,” ejaculated Challis in the middle of one of Lewes’s
periods. “You’ll have to see me through this, my boy. I’m damned if I know
how to take the child.”

Lewes flushed, annoyed at the interruption of his lecture. He had believed

that he had been interesting. “Curse the kid,” was the thought in his mind as
he followed Challis to the window.

II

Jessop, the groom deputed to fetch the Wonder from Pym, looked a little
uneasy, perhaps a little scared. When he drew up at the porch, the child
pointed to the door of the cart and indicated that it was to be opened for
him. He was evidently used to being waited upon. When this command had
been obeyed, he descended deliberately and then pointed to the front door.

“Open!” he said clearly, as Jessop hesitated. The Wonder knew nothing of

bells or ceremony.

Jessop came down from the cart and rang.

The butler opened the door. He was an old servant and accustomed to his
master’s eccentricities, but he was not prepared for the vision of that strange
little figure, with a large head in a parti-coloured cricket-cap, an apparition
that immediately walked straight by him into the hall, and pointed to the
first door he came to.

“Oh, dear! Well, to be sure,” gasped Heathcote. “Why, whatever——”

“Open!” commanded the Wonder, and Heathcote obeyed, weak-kneed.

The door chanced to be the right one, the door of the breakfast-room, and
the Wonder walked in, still wearing his cap.

Challis came forward to meet him with a conventional greeting. “I’m glad
you were able to come ...” he began, but the child took no notice; he looked
rapidly round the room, and not finding what he wanted, signified his desire
by a single word.

“Books,” he said, and looked at Challis.

Heathcote stood at the door, hesitating between amazement and

disapproval. “I’ve never seen the like,” was how he phrased his
astonishment later, in the servants’ hall, “never in all my born days. To see
that melon-’eaded himp in a cricket-cap hordering the master about. Well,
there——”

“Jessop says he fair got the creeps drivin’ ’im over,” said the cook. “’E says
the child’s not right in ’is ’ead.”

Much embroidery followed in the servants’ hall.

 INTERLUDE

This brief history of the Hampdenshire Wonder is marked by a stereotyped

division into three parts, an arbitrary arrangement dependent on the
experience of the writer. The true division becomes manifest at this point.
The life of Victor Stott was cut into two distinct sections, between which
there is no correlation. The first part should tell the story of his mind during
the life of experience, the time occupied in observation of the phenomena of
life presented to him in fact, without any specific teaching on the theories of
existence and progress, or on the speculation as to ultimate destiny. The
second part should deal with his entry into the world of books; into that
account of a long series of collated experiments and partly verified
hypotheses we call science; into the imperfectly developed system of
inductive and deductive logic which determines mathematics and
philosophy; into the long, inaccurate and largely unverifiable account of
human blindness and error known as history; and into the realm of idealism,
symbol, and pitiful pride we find in the story of poetry, letters, and religion.

I will confess that I once contemplated the writing of such a history. It was
Challis who, in his courtly, gentle way, pointed out to me that no man living
had the intellectual capacity to undertake so profound a work.

For some three months before I had this conversation with Challis, I had
been wrapped in solitude, dreaming, speculating. I had been uplifted in
thought, I had come to believe myself inspired as a result of my separation
from the world of men, and of the deep introspection and meditation in
which I had been plunged. I had arrived at a point, perhaps not far removed
from madness, at which I thought myself capable of setting out the true
history of Victor Stott.
Challis broke the spell. He cleared away the false glamour which was
blinding and intoxicating me, and brought me back to a condition of open-
eyed sanity. To Challis I owe a great debt.

Yet at the moment I was sunk in depression. All the glory of my vision had
faded; the afterglow was quenched in the blackness of the night that drew
out of the east and fell from the zenith as a curtain of utter darkness.

Again Challis came to my rescue. He brought me a great sheaf of notes.

“Look here,” he said, “if you can’t write a true history of that strange child,
I see no reason why you should not write his story as it is known to you, as
it impinges on your own life. After all, you, in many ways, know more of
him than any one. You came nearest to receiving his confidence.”

“But only during the last few months,” I said.

“Does that matter?” said Challis with an upheaval of his shoulders

—“shrug” is far too insignificant a word for that mountainous humping. “Is
any biography founded on better material than you have at command?”

He unfolded his bundle of notes. “See here,” he said, “here is some

magnificent material for you—first-hand observations made at the time.
Can’t you construct a story from that?”

Even then I began to cast my story in a slightly biographical form. I wrote

half a dozen chapters, and read them to Challis.

“Magnificent, my dear fellow,” was his comment, “magnificent; but no one

will believe it.”

I had been carried away by my own prose, and with the natural vanity of the
author, I resented intensely his criticism.

For some weeks I did not see Challis again, and I persisted in my futile
endeavour, but always as I wrote that killing suggestion insinuated itself:
“No one will believe you.” At times I felt as a man may feel who has spent
many years in a lunatic asylum, and after his release is for ever engaged in a
struggle to allay the doubts of a leering suspicion.

I gave up the hopeless task at last, and sought out Challis again.

“Write it as a story,” he suggested, “and give up the attempt to carry

conviction.”

And in that spirit, adopting the form of a story, I did begin, and in that form
I hope to finish.

But here as I reach the great division, the determining factor of Victor
Stott’s life, I am constrained to pause and apologise. I have become
uncomfortably conscious of my own limitations, and the feeble, ephemeral
methods I am using. I am trifling with a wonderful story, embroidering my
facts with the tawdry detail of my own imagining.

I saw—I see—no other way.

This is, indeed, a preface, yet I prefer to put it in this place, since it was at
this time I wrote it.

On the Common a faint green is coming again like a mist among the ash-
trees, while the oak is still dead and bare. Last year the oak came first.

They say we shall have a wet summer.

PART II (continued)
THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS
CHAPTER IX
 HIS PASSAGE THROUGH THE PRISON OF
KNOWLEDGE

Challis led the way to the library; Lewes, petulant and mutinous, hung in
the rear.

The Wonder toddled forward, unabashed, to enter his new world. On the
threshold, however, he paused. His comprehensive stare took in a sweeping
picture of enclosing walls of books, and beyond was a vista of further
rooms, of more walls all lined from floor to ceiling with records of human
discovery, endeavour, doubt, and hope.

The Wonder stayed and stared. Then he took two faltering steps into the
room and stopped again, and, finally, he looked up at Challis with doubt
and question; his gaze no longer quelling and authoritative, but hesitating,
compliant, perhaps a little childlike.

“’Ave you read all these?” he asked.

It was a curious picture. The tall figure of Challis, stooping, as always,

slightly forward; Challis, with his seaman’s eyes and scholar’s head, his
hands loosely clasped together behind his back, paying such scrupulous
attention to that grotesque representative of a higher intellectuality, clothed
in the dress of a villager, a patched cricket-cap drawn down over his
globular skull, his little arms hanging loosely at his sides; who,
nevertheless, even in this new, strange aspect of unwonted humility bore on
his face the promise of some ultimate development which differentiated him
from all other humanity, as the face of humanity is differentiated from the
face of its prognathous ancestor.

The scene is set in a world of books, and in the background lingers the
athletic figure and fair head of Lewes, the young Cambridge undergraduate,
the disciple of science, hardly yet across the threshold which divides him
from the knowledge of his own ignorance.

“’Ave you read all these?” asked the Wonder.

“A greater part of them—in effect,” replied Challis. “There is much

repetition, you understand, and much record of experiment which becomes,
in a sense, worthless when the conclusions are either finally accepted or
rejected.”

The eyes of the Wonder shifted and their expression became abstracted; he
seemed to lose consciousness of the outer world; he wore the look which
you may see in the eyes of Jakob Schlesinger’s portrait of the mature Hegel,
a look of profound introspection and analysis.

There was an interval of silence, and then the Wonder unknowingly gave
expression to a quotation from Hamlet. “Words,” he whispered reflectively,
and then again “words.”

II

Challis understood him. “You have not yet learned the meaning of words?”
he asked.

The brief period—the only one recorded—of amazement and submission

was over. It may be that he had doubted during those few minutes of time
whether he was well advised to enter into that world of books, whether he
would not by so doing stunt his own mental growth. It may be that the
decision of so momentous a question should have been postponed for a year
—two years; to a time when his mind should have had further possibilities
for unlettered expansion. However that may be, he decided now and finally.
He walked to the table and climbed up on a chair.

“Books about words,” he commanded, and pointed at Challis and Lewes.

They brought him the latest production of the twentieth century in many
volumes, the work of a dozen eminent authorities on the etymology of the
English language, and they seated him on eight volumes of the
Encyclopædia Britannica (India paper edition) in order that he might reach
the level of the table.

At first they tried to show him how his wonderful dictionary should be
used, but he pushed them on one side, neither then nor at any future time
would he consent to be taught—the process was too tedious for him, his
mind worked more fluently, rapidly, and comprehensively than the mind of
the most gifted teacher that could have been found for him.

So Challis and Lewes stood on one side and watched him, and he was no
more embarrassed by their presence than if they had been in another world,
as, possibly, they were.

He began with volume one, and he read the title page and the introduction,
the list of abbreviations, and all the preliminary matter in due order.

Challis noted that when the Wonder began to read, he read no faster than the
average educated man, but that he acquired facility at a most astounding
rate, and that when he had been reading for a few days his eye swept down
the column, as it were at a single glance.

Challis and Lewes watched him for, perhaps, half an hour, and then, seeing
that their presence was of an entirely negligible value to the Wonder, they
left him and went into the farther room.

“Well?” asked Challis, “what do you make of him?”

“Is he reading or pretending to read?” parried Lewes. “Do you think it
possible that he could read so fast? Moreover, remember that he has
admitted that he knows few words of the English language, yet he does not
refer from volume to volume; he does not look up the meanings of the
many unknown words which must occur in every definition.”

“I know. I had noticed that.”

“Then you think he is humbugging—pretending to read?”

“No; that solution seems to me altogether unlikely. He could not, for one
thing, simulate that look of attention. Remember, Lewes, the child is not yet
five years old.”

“What is your explanation, then?”

“I am wondering whether the child has not a memory beside which the
memory of a Macaulay would appear insignificant.”

Lewes did not grasp Challis’s intention. “Even so ...” he began.

“And,” continued Challis, “I am wondering whether, if that is the case, he

is, in effect, prepared to learn the whole dictionary by heart, and, so to
speak, collate its contents later, in his mind.”

“Oh! Sir!” Lewes smiled. The supposition was too outrageous to be taken
seriously. “Surely, you can’t mean that.” There was something in Lewes’s
tone which carried a hint of contempt for so far-fetched a hypothesis.

Challis was pacing up and down the library, his hands clasped behind him.
“Yes, I mean it,” he said, without looking up. “I put it forward as a serious
theory, worthy of full consideration.”

Lewes sneered. “Oh, surely not, sir,” he said.

Challis stopped and faced him. “Why not, Lewes; why not?” he asked, with
a kindly smile. “Think of the gap which separates your intellectual powers
from those of a Polynesian savage. Why, after all, should it be impossible
that this child’s powers should equally transcend our own? A freak, if you
will, an abnormality, a curious effect of nature’s, like the giant puff-ball—
but still——”

“Oh! yes, sir, I grant you the thing is not impossible from a theoretical point
of view,” argued Lewes, “but I think you are theorising on altogether
insufficient evidence. I am willing to admit that such a freak is theoretically
possible, but I have not yet found the indications of such a power in the
child.”

Challis resumed his pacing. “Quite, quite,” he assented; “your method is

perfectly correct—perfectly correct. We must wait.”

At twelve o’clock Challis brought a glass of milk and some biscuits, and set
them beside the Wonder—he was at the letter “B.”

“Well, how are you getting on?” asked Challis.

The Wonder took not the least notice of the question, but he stretched out a
little hand and took a biscuit and ate it, without looking up from his reading.

“I wish he’d answer questions,” Challis remarked to Lewes, later.

“I should prescribe a sound shaking,” returned Lewes.

Challis smiled. “Well, see here, Lewes,” he said, “I’ll take the
responsibility; you go and experiment, go and shake him.”

Lewes looked through the folding doors at the picture of the Wonder, intent
on his study of the great dictionary. “Since you’ve franked me,” he said,
“I’ll do it—but not now. I’ll wait till he gives me some occasion.”

“Good,” replied Challis, “my offer holds ... and, by the way, I have no
doubt that an occasion will present itself. Doesn’t it strike you as likely,
Lewes, that we shall see a good deal of the child here?”
They stood for some minutes, watching the picture of that intent student,
framed in the written thoughts of his predecessors.

III

The Wonder ignored an invitation to lunch; he ignored, also, the tray that
was sent in to him. He read on steadily till a quarter to six, by which time he
was at the end of “L,” and then he climbed down from his Encyclopædia,
and made for the door. Challis, working in the farther room, saw him and
came out to open the door.

“Are you going now?” he asked.

The child nodded.

“I will order the cart for you, if you will wait ten minutes,” said Challis.

The child shook his head. “It’s very necessary to have air,” he said.

Something in the tone and pronunciation struck Challis, and awoke a long
dormant memory. The sentence spoken, suddenly conjured up a vision of
the Stotts’ cottage at Stoke, of the Stotts at tea, of a cradle in the shadow,
and of himself, sitting in an uncomfortable armchair and swinging his stick
between his knees. When the child had gone—walking deliberately, and
evidently regarding the mile-and-a-half walk through the twilight wood and
over the deserted Common as a trivial incident in the day’s business—
Challis set himself to analyse that curious association.

As he strolled back across the hall to the library, he tried to reconstruct the
scene of the cottage at Stoke, and to recall the outline of the conversation he
had had with the Stotts.
“Lewes!” he said, when he reached the room in which his secretary was
working, “Lewes, this is curious,” and he described the associations called
up by the child’s speech. “The curious thing is,” he continued, “that I had
gone to advise Mrs. Stott to take a cottage at Pym, because the Stoke
villagers were hostile, in some way, and she did not care to take the child
out in the street. It is more than probable that I used just those words, ‘It is
very necessary to have air,’ very probable. Now, what about my memory
theory? The child was only six months old at that time.”

Lewes appeared unconvinced. “There is nothing very unusual in the

sentence,” he said.

“Forgive me,” replied Challis, “I don’t agree with you. It is not phrased as a
villager would phrase it, and, as I tell you, it was not spoken with the local
accent.”

“You may have spoken the sentence to-day,” suggested Lewes.

“I may, of course, though I don’t remember saying anything of the sort, but
that would not account for the curiously vivid association which was
conjured up.”

Lewes pursed his lips. “No, no, no,” he said. “But that is hardly ground for
argument, is it?”

“I suppose not,” returned Challis thoughtfully; “but when you take up

psychology, Lewes, I should much like you to specialise in a careful inquiry
into association in connection with memory. I feel certain that if one can
reproduce, as nearly as may be, any complex sensation one has
experienced, no matter how long ago, one will stimulate what I may call an
abnormal memory of all the associations connected with that experience.
Just now I saw the interior of that room in the Stotts’ cottage so clearly that
I had an image of a dreadful oleograph of Disraeli hanging on the wall. But,
now, I cannot for the life of me remember whether there was such an
oleograph or not. I do not remember noticing it at the time.”
“Yes, that’s very interesting,” replied Lewes. “There is certainly a wide
field for research in that direction.”

“You might throw much light on our mental processes,” replied Challis.

(It was as the outcome of this conversation that Gregory Lewes did, two
years afterwards, take up this line of study. The only result up to the present
time is his little brochure Reflexive Associations, which has hardly added to
our knowledge of the subject.)

IV

Challis’s anticipation that he and Lewes would be greatly favoured by the

Wonder’s company was fully realised.

The child put in an appearance at half-past nine the next morning, just as
the governess cart was starting out to fetch him. When he was admitted he
went straight to the library, climbed on to the chair, upon which the volumes
of the Encyclopædia still remained, and continued his reading where he had
left off on the previous evening.

He read steadily throughout the day without giving utterance to speech of

any kind.

Challis and Lewes went out in the afternoon, and left the child deep in
study. They came in at five o’clock, and went to the library. The Wonder,
however, was not there.

Challis rang the bell.

“Has little Stott gone?” he asked when Heathcote came.

“I ’aven’t seen ’im, sir,” said Heathcote.

“Just find out if any one opened the door for him, will you?” said Challis.
“He couldn’t possibly have opened that door for himself.”

“No one ’asn’t let Master Stott hout, sir,” Heathcote reported on his return.

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure, sir. I’ve made full hinquiries,” said Heathcote with dignity.

“Well, we’d better find him,” said Challis.

“The window is open,” suggested Lewes.

“He would hardly ...” began Challis, walking over to the low sill of the
open window, but he broke off in his sentence and continued, “By Jove, he
did, though; look here!”

It was, indeed, quite obvious that the Wonder had made his exit by the
window; the tiny prints of his feet were clearly marked in the mould of the
flowerbed; he had, moreover, disregarded all results of early spring
floriculture.

“See how he has smashed those daffodils,” said Lewes. “What an infernally
cheeky little brute he is!”

“What interests me is the logic of the child,” returned Challis. “I would

venture to guess that he wasted no time in trying to attract attention. The
door was closed, so he just got out of the window. I rather admire the spirit;
there is something Napoleonic about him. Don’t you think so?”

Lewes shrugged his shoulders. Heathcote’s expression was quite non-

committal.

“You’d better send Jessop up to Pym, Heathcote,” said Challis. “Let him
find out whether the child is safe at home.”

Jessop reported an hour afterwards that Master Stott had arrived home quite
safely, and Mrs. Stott was much obliged.
V

“What can I give that child to read to-day?” asked Challis at breakfast next
morning.

“I should reverse the arrangement; let him sit on the Dictionary and read the
Encyclopædia.” Lewes always approached the subject of the Wonder with a
certain supercilious contempt.

“You are not convinced yet that he isn’t humbugging?”

“No! Frankly, I’m not.”

“Well, well, we must wait for more evidence, before we argue about it,”
said Challis, but they sat on over the breakfast-table, waiting for the child to
put in an appearance, and their conversation hovered over the topic of his
intelligence.

“Half-past ten?” Challis ejaculated at last, with surprise. “We are getting
into slack habits, Lewes.” He rose and rang the bell.

“Apparently the Stott infant has had enough of it,” suggested Lewes.
“Perhaps he has exhausted the interest of dictionary illustrations.”

“We shall see,” replied Challis, and then to a deferentially appearing

Heathcote he said: “Has Master Stott come this morning?”

“No, sir. Leastways, no one ’asn’t let ’im in, sir.”

“It may be that he is mentally collating the results of the past two days’
reading,” said Challis, as he and Lewes made their way to the library.
“Oh!” was all Lewes’s reply, but it conveyed much of impatient contempt
for his employer’s attitude.

Challis only smiled.

When they entered the library they found the Wonder hard at work, and he
had, of his own initiative, adopted the plan ironically suggested by Lewes,
for he had succeeded in transferring the Dictionary volumes to the chair,
and he was deep in volume one, of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia
Britannica.

The library was never cleared up by any one except Challis or his deputy,
but an early housemaid had been sent to dust, and she had left the casement
of one of the lower lights of the window open. The means of the Wonder’s
entrance was thus clearly in evidence.

“It’s Napoleonic,” murmured Challis.

“It’s most infernal cheek,” returned Lewes in a loud voice, “I should not be
at all surprised if that promised shaking were not administered to-day.”

The Wonder took no notice. Challis says that on that morning his eyes were
travelling down the page at about the rate at which one could count the
lines.

“He isn’t reading,” said Lewes. “No one could read as fast as that, and most
certainly not a child of four and a half.”

“If he would only answer questions....” hesitated Challis.

“Oh! of course he won’t do that,” said Lewes. “He’s clever enough not to
give himself away.”

The two men went over to the table and looked down over the child’s
shoulder. He was in the middle of the article on algebra.
Lewes made a gesture. “Now do you believe he’s humbugging?” he asked
confidently, and made no effort to modulate his voice.

Challis drew his eyebrows together. “My boy,” he said, and laid his hand
lightly on Victor Stott’s shoulder, “can you understand what you are reading
there?”

But no answer was vouchsafed. Challis sighed. “Come along, Lewes,” he

said; “we must waste no more time.”

Lewes wore a look of smug triumph as they went to the farther room, but he
was clever enough to refrain from expressing his triumph in speech.

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.
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