The Wonder (16 page)

“Come into my study,” said Elmer, “and let us have the facts. What will you have—tea, whisky, beer?”

Challis’s résumé of the facts need not be reported. When it was accomplished, Elmer put several keen questions, and finally delivered his verdict thus:

“We must see the boy, Challis. Personally I am, of course, satisfied, but we must not give Crashaw opportunity to raise endless questions, as he can and will. There is Mayor Purvis, the grocer, to be reckoned with, you must remember. He represents a powerful Nonconformist influence. Crashaw will get hold of him—and work him if we see Purvis first. Purvis always stiffens his neck against any breach of conventional procedure. If Crashaw saw him first, well and good, Purvis would immediately jump to the conclusion that Crashaw intended some subtle attack on the Nonconformist position, and would side with us.”

“I don’t think I know Purvis,” mused Challis.

“Purvis & Co. in the Square,” prompted Elmer. “Black-and-white fellow; black moustache and side whiskers, black eyes and white face. There’s a suggestion of the Methodist pulpit about him. Doesn’t appear in the shop much, and when he does, always looks as if he’d sooner sell you a Bible than a bottle of whisky.”

“Ah, yes! I know,” said Challis. “I daresay you’re right, Elmer; but it will be difficult to persuade this child to answer any questions his examiners may put to him.”

“Surely he must be open to reason,” roared Elmer. “You tell me he has an extraordinary intelligence, and in the next sentence you imply that the child’s a fool who can’t open his mouth to serve his own interests. What’s your paradox?”

“Sublimated material. Intellectual insight and absolute spiritual blindness,” replied Challis, getting to his feet. “The child has gone too far in one direction—in another he has made not one step. His mind is a magnificent, terrible machine. He has the imagination of a mathematician and a logician developed beyond all conception, he has not one spark of the imagination of a poet. And so he cannot deal with men; he can’t understand their weaknesses and limitations; they are geese and hens to him, creatures to be scared out of his vicinity. However, I will see what I can do. Could you arrange for the members of the Authority to come to my place?”

“I should think so. Yes,” said Elmer. “I say, Challis, are you sure you’re right about this child? Sounds to me like some—some freak.”

“You’ll see,” returned Challis. “I’ll try and arrange an interview. I’ll let you know.”

“And, by the way,” said Elmer, “you had better invite Crashaw to be present. He will put Purvis’s back up, and that’ll enlist the difficult grocer on our side probably.”

When Challis had gone, Elmer stood for a few minutes, thoughtfully scratching the ample red surface of his wide, clean-shaven cheek. “I don’t know,” he ejaculated at last, addressing his empty study, “I don’t know.” And with that expression he put all thought of Victor Stott away from him, and sat down to write an exhaustive article on the necessity for a broader basis in primary education.

Challis called at the rectory of Stoke-Underhill on the way back to his own house.

“I give way,” was the characteristic of his attitude to Crashaw, and the rector suppled his back again, remembered the Derby office-boy’s tendency to brag, and made the amende honorable. He even overdid his magnanimity and came too near subservience—so lasting is the influence of the lessons of youth.

Crashaw did not mention that in the interval between the two interviews he had called upon Mr. Purvis in the Square. The ex-mayor had refused to commit himself to any course of action.

But Challis forgot the rectory and all that it connoted before he was well outside the rectory’s front door. Challis had a task before him that he regarded with the utmost distaste. He had warmly championed a cause; he had been heated by the presentation of a manifest injustice which was none the less tyrannical because it was ridiculous. And now he realised that it was only the abstract question which had aroused his enthusiastic advocacy, and he shrank from the interview with Victor Stott—that small, deliberate, intimidating child.

Henry Challis, the savant, the man of repute in letters, the respected figure in the larger world; Challis, the proprietor and landlord; Challis, the power among known men, knew that he would have to plead, to humble himself, to be prepared for a rebuff—worst of all, to acknowledge the justice of taking so undignified a position. Any aristocrat may stoop with dignity when he condescends of his own free will; but there are few who can submit gracefully to deserved contempt.

Challis was one of the few. He had many admirable qualities. Nevertheless, during that short motor ride from Stoke to his own house, he resented the indignity he anticipated, resented it intensely—and submitted.

He was allowed no respite. Victor Stott was emerging from the library window as Challis rolled up to the hall door. It was one of Ellen Mary’s days—she stood respectfully in the background while her son descended; she curtsied to Challis as he came forward.

He hesitated a moment. He would not risk insult in the presence of his chauffeur and Mrs. Stott. He confronted the Wonder; he stood before him, and over him like a cliff.

“I must speak to you for a moment on a matter of some importance,” said Challis to the little figure below him, and as he spoke he looked over the child’s head at the child’s mother. “It is a matter that concerns your own welfare. Will you come into the house with me for a few minutes?”

Ellen Mary nodded, and Challis understood. He turned and led the way. At the door, however, he stood aside and spoke again to Mrs. Stott. “Won’t you come in and have some tea, or something?” he asked.

“No, sir, thank you, sir,” replied Ellen Mary; “I’ll just wait ’ere till ’e’s ready.”

“At least come in and sit down,” said Challis, and she came in and sat in the hall. The Wonder had already preceded them into the house. He had walked into the morning-room—probably because the door stood open, though he was now tall enough to reach the handles of the Challis Court doors. He stood in the middle of the room when Challis entered.

“Won’t you sit down?” said Challis.

The Wonder shook his head.

“I don’t know if you are aware,” began Challis, “that there is a system of education in England at the present time, which requires that every child should attend school at the age of five years, unless the parents are able to provide their children with an education elsewhere.”

The Wonder nodded.

Challis inferred that he need proffer no further information with regard to the Education Act.

“Now, it is very absurd,” he continued, “and I have, myself, pointed out the absurdity; but there is a man of some influence in this neighbourhood who insists that you should attend the elementary school.” He paused, but the Wonder gave no sign.

“I have argued with this man,” continued Challis, “and I have also seen another member of the Local Education Authority—a man of some note in the larger world—and it seems that you cannot be exempted unless you convince the Authority that your knowledge is such that to give you a Council school education would be the most absurd farce.”

“Cannot you stand in loco parentis?” asked the Wonder suddenly, in his still, thin voice.

“You mean,” said Challis, startled by this outburst, “that I am in a sense providing you with an education? Quite true; but there is Crashaw to deal with.”

“Inform him,” said the Wonder.

Challis sighed. “I have,” he said, “but he can’t understand.” And then, feeling the urgent need to explain something of the motives that govern this little world of ours—the world into which this strangely logical exception had been born—Challis attempted an exposition.

“I know,” he said, “that these things must seem to you utterly absurd, but you must try to realise that you are an exception to the world about you; that Crashaw or I, or, indeed, the greatest minds of the present day, are not ruled by the fine logic which you are able to exercise. We are children compared to you. We are swayed even in the making of our laws by little primitive emotions and passions, self-interests, desires. And at the best we are not capable of ordering our lives and our government to those just ends which we may see, some of us, are abstractly right and fine. We are at the mercy of that great mass of the people who have not yet won to an intellectual and discriminating judgment of how their own needs may best be served, and whose representatives consider the interests of a party, a constituency, and especially of their own personal ambitions and welfare, before the needs of humanity as a whole, or even the humanity of these little islands.

“Above all, we are divided man against man. We are split into parties and factions, by greed and jealousies, petty spites and self-seeking, by unintelligence, by education, and by our inability—a mental inability—‘to see life steadily and see it whole,’ and lastly, perhaps chiefly, by our intense egotisms, both physical and intellectual.

“Try to realise this. It is necessary, because whatever your wisdom, you have to live in a world of comparative ignorance, a world which cannot appreciate you, but which can and will fall back upon the compelling power of the savage—the resort to physical, brute force.”

The Wonder nodded. “You suggest——?” he said.

“Merely that you should consent to answer certain elementary questions which the members of the Local Authority will put to you,” replied Challis.”I can arrange that these questions be asked here—in the library. Will you consent?”

The Wonder nodded, and made his way into the hall, without another word. His mother rose and opened the front door for him.

As Challis watched the curious couple go down the drive, he sighed again, perhaps with relief, perhaps at the impotence of the world of men.

There were four striking figures on the Education Committee selected by the Ailesworth County Council.

The first of these was Sir Deane Elmer, who was also chairman of the Council at this time. The second was the vice-chairman, Enoch Purvis, the ex-mayor, commonly, if incorrectly, known as “Mayor” Purvis.

The third was Richard Standing, J.P., who owned much property on the Quainton side of the town. He was a bluff, hearty man, devoted to sport and agriculture; a Conservative by birth and inclination, a staunch upholder of the Church and the Tariff Reform movement.

The fourth was the Rev. Philip Steven, a co-opted member of the Committee, head master of the Ailesworth Grammar School. Steven was a tall, thin man with bent shoulders, and he had a long, thin face, the length of which was exaggerated by his square brown beard. He wore gold-mounted spectacles which, owing to his habit of dropping his head, always needed adjustment whenever he looked up. The movement of lifting his head and raising his hand to his glasses had become so closely associated, that his hand went up even when there was no apparent need for the action. Steven spoke of himself as a Broad Churchman, and in his speech on prize-day he never omitted some allusion to the necessity for “marching” or “keeping step” with the times. But Elmer was inclined to laugh at this assumption of modernity. “Steven,” he said, on one occasion, “marks time and thinks he is keeping step. And every now and then he runs a little to catch up.” The point of Elmer’s satire lay in the fact that Steven was usually to be seen either walking very slowly, head down, lost in abstraction; or—when aroused to a sense of present necessity—going with long-strides as if intent on catching up with the times without further delay. Very often, too, he might be seen running across the school playground, his hand up to those elusive glasses of his. “There goes Mr. Steven, catching up with the times,” had become an accepted phrase.

There were other members of the Education Committee, notably Mrs. Philip Steven, but they were subordinate. If those four striking figures were unanimous, no other member would have dreamed of expressing a contrary opinion. But up to this time they had not yet been agreed upon any important line of action.

This four, Challis and Crashaw met in the morning-room of Challis Court one Thursday afternoon in November. Elmer had brought a stenographer with him for scientific purposes.

“Well,” said Challis, when they were all assembled. “The—the subject—I mean, Victor Stott is in the library. Shall we adjourn?” Challis had not felt so nervous since the morning before he had sat for honours in the Cambridge Senate House.

In the library they found a small child, reading.

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.