"Splendid."

"Did he look you in the eyes?"

"Once, only once, the first time I visited the house."

Challis nodded. "My own experience, exactly. And did you return that look of his?"

"Not willingly. It was, I confess, not altogether a pleasant experience."

"Ah!"

Challis was silent for a few moments, and it was Walters who took up the interrogatory.

"Challis!"

"Yes?"

"Have you, now, some feeling of, shall I say, distaste for the child? Do you feel that you have no wish to see it again?"

"Is it that exactly?" parried Challis.

"If not, what is it?" asked Walters.

"In my own case," said Challis, "I can find an a.n.a.logy only in my att.i.tude towards my 'head' at school. In his presence I was always intimidated by my consciousness of his superior learning. I felt unpleasantly ignorant, small, negligible. Curiously enough, I see something of the same expression of feeling in the att.i.tude of that feeble Crashaw to myself. Well, one makes an attempt at self-a.s.sertion, a kind of futile bragging; and one knows the futility of it--at the time. But, afterwards, one finds excuse and seeks to belittle the personality and attainment of the person one feared. At school we did not love the 'head,' and, as schoolboys will, we were always trying to run him down. 'Next time he rags me, I'll cheek him,' was our usual boast--but we never did. Let's be honest, Walters, are not you and I exhibiting much the same att.i.tude towards this extraordinary child?

Didn't he produce the effect upon you that I've described? Didn't you have a little of the 'fifth form' feeling,--a boy under examination?"

Walters smiled and screwed his mouth on one side. "The thing is so absurd," he said.

"That is what we used to say at school," replied Challis.

V

The Stotts' move to Pym was not marked by any incident. Mrs. Stott and her boy were not unduly stared upon as they left Stoke--the children were in school--and their entry into the new cottage was uneventful.

They moved on a Thursday. On Sunday morning they had their first visitor.

He came mooning round the fence that guarded the Stotts' garden from the little lane--it was hardly more than a footpath. He had a great shapeless head that waggled heavily on his shoulders, his eyes were l.u.s.treless, and his mouth hung open, frequently his tongue lagged out.

He made strange, inhuman noises. "A-ba-ba," was his nearest approach to speech.

"Now, George," called Mrs. Stott, "look at that. It's Mrs. 'Arrison's boy what Mrs. Reade's spoke about. Now, is 'e anythink like ..." she paused, "anythink like 'im?" and she indicated the cradle in the sitting-room.

"What's 'e want, 'angin' round 'ere?" replied Stott, disregarding the comparison. "'Ere, get off," he called, and he went into the garden and picked up a stick.

The idiot shambled away.

CHAPTER VI

HIS FATHER'S DESERTION

I

The strongest of all habits is that of acquiescence. It is this habit of submission that explains the admired patience and long-suffering of the abjectly poor. The lower the individual falls, the more unconquerable becomes the inertia of mind which interferes between him and revolt against his condition. All the miseries of the flesh, even starvation, seem preferable to the making of an effort great enough to break this habit of submission.

Ginger Stott was not poor. For a man in his station of life he was unusually well provided for, but in him the habit of acquiescence was strongly rooted. Before his son was a year old, Stott had grown to loathe his home, to dread his return to it, yet it did not occur to him until another year had pa.s.sed that he could, if he would, set up another establishment on his own account; that he could, for instance, take a room in Ailesworth, and leave his wife and child in the cottage. For two years he did not begin to think of this idea, and then it was suddenly forced upon him.

Ever since they had overheard those strangely intelligent self-communings, the Stotts had been perfectly aware that their wonderful child could talk if he would. Ellen Mary, pondering that single expression, had read a world of meaning into her son's murmurs of "learning." In her simple mind she understood that his deliberate withholding of speech was a reserve against some strange manifestation.

The manifestation, when it came, was as remarkable as it was unexpected.

The armchair in which Henry Challis had once sat was a valued possession, dedicated by custom to the sole use of George Stott. Ever since he had been married, Stott had enjoyed the full and undisputed use of that chair. Except at his meals, he never sat in any other, and he had formed a fixed habit of throwing himself into that chair immediately on his return from his work at the County Ground.

One evening in November, however, when his son was just over two years old, Stott found his sacred chair occupied. He hesitated a moment, and then went in to the kitchen to find his wife.

"That child's in my chair," he said.

Ellen was setting the tray for her husband's tea. "Yes ... I know," she replied. "I--I did mention it, but 'e 'asn't moved."

"Well, take 'im out," ordered Stott, but he dropped his voice.

"Does it matter?" asked his wife. "Tea's just ready. Time that's done 'e'll be ready for 'is bath."

"Why can't you move 'im?" persisted Stott gloomily. "'E knows it's my chair."

"There! kettle's boilin', come in and 'ave your tea," equivocated the diplomatic Ellen.

During the progress of the meal, the child still sat quietly in his father's chair, his little hands resting on his knees, his eyes wide open, their gaze abstracted, as usual, from all earthly concerns.

But after tea Stott was heroic. He had reached the limit of his endurance. One of his deep-seated habits was being broken, and with it snapped his habit of acquiescence. He rose to his feet and faced his son with determination, and Stott had a bull-dog quality about him that was not easily defeated.

"Look 'ere! Get out!" he said. "That's _my_ chair!"

The child very deliberately withdrew his attention from infinity and regarded the dogged face and set jaw of his father. Stott returned the stare for the fraction of a second, and then his eyes wavered and dropped, but he maintained his resolution.

"You got to get out," he said, "or I'll make you."

Ellen Mary gripped the edge of the table, but she made no attempt to interfere.

There was a tense, strained silence. Then Stott began to breathe heavily. He lifted his long arms for a moment and raised his eyes, he even made a tentative step towards the usurped throne.

The child sat calm, motionless; his eyes were fixed upon his father's face with a sublime, undeviating confidence.

Stott's arms fell to his sides again, he shuffled his feet. One more effort he made, a sudden, vicious jerk, as though he would do the thing quickly and be finished with it; then he shivered, his resolution broke, and he shambled evasively to the door.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n," he muttered. At the door he turned for an instant, swore again in the same words, and went out into the night.