The Wonder Part 28

Unhappily, no record exists of the conversation between the Wonder and Herr Grossmann.

The Professor seems at the last moment to have had some misgiving as to the nature of the interview that was before him, and refused to have a witness to the proceedings.

Challis made the introduction, and he says that the Wonder regarded Grossmann with perhaps rather more attention than he commonly conceded to strangers; and that the Professor exhibited the usual signs of embarra.s.sment.

Altogether, Grossmann was in the library for about half an hour, and he displayed no sign of perturbation when he rejoined Challis and Elmer in the breakfast-room. Indeed, only one fact of any significance emerges to throw suspicion on Grossmann's att.i.tude during the progress of that secluded half-hour with the greatest intellect of all time--the Professor's spectacles had been broken.

He spoke of the accident with a casual air when he was in the breakfast-room, but Challis remarked a slight flush on the great scientist's face as he referred, perhaps a trifle too ostentatiously, to the incident. And although it is worthless as evidence, there is something rather suspicious in Challis's discovery of finely powdered gla.s.s in his library--a mere pinch on the parquet near the further window of the big room, several feet away from the table at which the Wonder habitually sat. Challis would never have noticed the gla.s.s, had not one larger atom that had escaped pulverisation, caught the light from the window and drawn his attention.

But even this find is in no way conclusive. The Professor may quite well have walked over to the window, taken off his spectacles to wipe them and dropped them as he, himself, explained. While the crus.h.i.+ng of some fragment of one of the lenses was probably due to the chance of his stepping upon it, as he turned on his heel to continue the momentarily interrupted conversation. It is hard to believe that so great a man as Grossmann could have been convulsed by a petty rage that found expression in some act of wanton destruction.

His own brief account of the interview accords very well with the single reference to the Wonder which exists in the literature of the world.

This reference is a footnote to a second edition of Grossmann's brochure ent.i.tled "An Explanation of Certain Intellectual Abnormalities reported in History" ("Eine Erklarung gewisser Intellektueller geschichtlich uberlieferter Anormalen Erscheinungen"). This footnote comes at the end of Grossmann's masterly a.n.a.lysis of the Heinecken case and reads: "I recently examined a similar case of abnormality in England, but found that it presented no such marked divergence from the type as would demand serious investigation."

And in his brief account of the interview rendered to Challis and Elmer, Herr Grossmann, in effect, did no more than draft that footnote.

IV

It must remain uncertain, now, whether or not Elmer would have persisted in his endeavour to exploit the Wonder to the confounding of Grossmann, despite Challis's explicit statement that he would do no more, not even if it were to save the reputation of the Royal Society. Elmer certainly had the virtue of persistence and might have made the attempt. But in one of his rare moments of articulate speech, the Wonder decided the fate of that threatened controversy beyond the possibility of appeal.

He spoke to Challis that same afternoon. He put up his tiny hand to command attention and made the one clear statement on record of his own interests and ambitions in the world.

Challis, turning from his discovery of the Professor's crushed gla.s.ses, listened in silence.

"This Grossmann," the Wonder said, "was not concerned in my exemption?"

Challis shook his head. "He is the last," the Wonder concluded with a fine brevity. "You and your kind have no interest in truth."

That last statement may have had a double intention. It is obvious from the Wonder's preliminary question,--which had, indeed, also the quality of an a.s.sertion,--how plainly he had recognised that Grossmann had been introduced under false pretences. But, it is permissible to infer that the p.r.o.nouncement went deeper than that. The Wonder's logic penetrated far into the mysteries of life and he may have seen that Grossmann's att.i.tude was warped by the human limitations of his ambition to s.h.i.+ne as a great exponent of science; that he dared not follow up a line of research which might end in the invalidation of his great theory of heredity.

Victor Stott had once before expounded his philosophy and Challis, on that occasion, had deliberately refused to listen. And we may guess that Grossmann, also, might have received some great illumination, had he chosen to pay deference to a mind so infinitely greater than his own.

CHAPTER XIII

FUGITIVE

Meanwhile a child of five--all unconscious that his quiet refusal to partic.i.p.ate 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, alphabetically arranged, one card under the t.i.tle 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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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 gra.s.s the sheep came back with close-cropped, ungainly bodies to a land that was yellow with b.u.t.tercups. But when one looked again, their wool hung about them, and they were s.n.a.t.c.hing 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.

PART THREE

MY a.s.sOCIATION WITH THE WONDER

PART THREE

MY a.s.sOCIATION WITH THE WONDER

CHAPTER XIV

HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK

I

The circ.u.mstance that had intrigued me for so long was determined with an abruptness only less remarkable than the surprise of the onset. Two deaths within six months brought to me, the first, a competence, the second, release from gall and bitterness. For the first time in my life I was a free man. At forty one can still look forward, and I put the past behind me and made plans for the future. There was that book of mine still waiting to be written.

It was wonderful how the detail of it all came back to me--the plan of it, the thread of development, even the very phrases that I had toyed with. The thought of the book brought back a train of a.s.sociations.

There was a phrase I had coined as I had walked out from Ailesworth to Stoke-Underhill; a chapter I had roughed out the day I went to see Ginger Stott at Pym. It seemed to me that the whole conception of the book was a.s.sociated in some way with that neighbourhood. I remembered at last that I had first thought of writing it after my return from America, on the day that I had had that curious experience with the child in the train. It occurred to me that by a reversal of the process, I might regain many more of my original thoughts; that by going to live, temporarily perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Ailesworth, I might revive other a.s.sociations.

The picture of Pym presented itself to me very clearly. I remembered that I had once thought that Pym was a place to which I might retire one day in order to write the things I wished to write. I decided to make the dream a reality, and I wrote to Mrs. Berridge at the Wood Farm, asking her if she could let me have her rooms for the spring, summer, and autumn.

II

I was all aglow with excitement on the morning that I set out for the Hampden Hills. This was change, I thought, freedom, adventure. This was the beginning of life, my real entry into the joy of living.

The world was alight with the fire of growth. May had come with a clear sky and a torrent of green was flowing over field, hedge, and wood. I remember that I thanked "whatever G.o.ds there be," that one could live so richly in the enjoyment of these things.

III