his attention, and he, too, was held motionless by that strange, appraising stare. But when he was released, his surprise found vent in words. “This,” I thought, “is the man accustomed to act.”
“A very remarkable child, ma’am” he said, addressing the thin, ascetic-looking mother.
II
The mother’s appearance did not convey the impression of poverty. She was, indeed, warmly, decently, and becomingly clad. She wore a long black coat, braided and frogged; it had the air of belonging to an older fashion, but the material of it was new. And her bonnet, trimmed with jet ornaments growing on stalks that waved tremulously—that, also, was a modern replica of an older mode. On her hands were black thread gloves, somewhat ill-fitting.
Her face was not that of a country woman. The thin, high-bridged nose, the fallen cheeks, the shadows under eyes gloomy and retrospective—these were marks of the town; above all, perhaps, that sallow greyness of the skin which speaks of confinement. …
The child looked healthy enough. Its great bald head shone resplendently like a globe of alabaster.
“A very remarkable child, ma’am,” said the rubicund man who sat facing the woman.
The woman twitched her untidy-looking black eyebrows, her head trembled slightly and set the jet fruit of her bonnet dancing and nodding.
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Very remarkable,” said the man, adjusting his spectacles and leaning forward. His action had an air of deliberate courage; he was justifying his fortitude after that temporary aberration.
I watched him a little nervously. I remembered my feelings when, as a child, I had seen some magnificent enter the lion’s den in a travelling circus. The failure on my right was, also, absorbed in the spectacle; he stared, open-mouthed, his eyes blinking and shifting.
The other three occupants of the compartment, sitting on the same side as the woman, back to the engine, dropped papers and magazines and turned their heads, all interest. None of these three had, so far as I had observed, fallen under the spell of inspection by the infant, but I noticed that the man—an artisan apparently—who sat next to the woman had edged away from her, and that the three passengers opposite to me were huddled towards my end of the compartment.
The child had abstracted its gaze, which was now directed down the aisle of the carriage, indefinitely focussed on some point outside the window. It seemed remote, entirely unconcerned with any human being.
I speak of it asexually. I was still uncertain as to its sex. It is true that all babies look alike to me; but I should have known that this child was male, the conformation of the skull alone should have told me that. It was its dress that gave me cause to hesitate. It was dressed absurdly, not in “long-clothes,” but in a long frock that hid its feet and was bunched about its body.
III
“Er—does it—er—can it—talk?” hesitated the rubicund man, and I grew hot at his boldness. There seemed to be something disrespectful in speaking before the child in this impersonal way.
“No, sir, he’s never made a sound,” replied the woman, twitching and vibrating. Her heavy, dark eyebrows jerked spasmodically, nervously.
“Never cried?” persisted the interrogator.
“Never once, sir.”
“Dumb, eh?” He said it as an aside, half under his breath.
“ ’E’s never spoke, sir.”
“Hm!” The man cleared his throat and braced himself with a deliberate and obvious effort. “Is it—he—not water on the brain—what?”
I felt that a rigour of breathless suspense held every occupant of the compartment. I wanted, and I know that every other person there wanted, to say, “Look out! Don’t go too far.” The child, however, seemed unconscious of the insult: he still stared out through the window, lost in profound contemplation.
“No, sir, oh no!” replied the woman. “ ’E’s got more sense than a ordinary child.” She held the infant as if it were some priceless piece of earthenware, not nursing it as a woman nurses a baby, but balancing it with supreme attention in her lap.
“How old is he?”
We had been awaiting this question.
“A year and nine munse, sir.”
“Ought to have spoken before that, oughtn’t he?”
“Never even cried, sir,” said the woman. She regarded the child with a look into which I read something of apprehension. If it were apprehension it was a feeling that we all shared. But the rubicund man was magnificent, though, like the lion tamer of my youthful experience, he was doubtless conscious of the aspect his temerity wore in the eyes of beholders. He must have been showing off.
“Have you taken opinion?” he asked; and then, seeing the woman’s lack of comprehension, he translated the question—badly, for he conveyed a different meaning—thus,
“I mean, have you had a doctor for him?”
The train was slackening speed.
“Oh! yes, sir.”
“And what do they say?”
The child turned its head and looked the rubicund man full in the eyes. Never in the face of any man or woman have I seen such an expression of sublime pity and contempt. …
I remembered a small urchin I had once seen at the Zoological Gardens. Urged on by a band of other urchins, he was throwing pebbles at a great lion that lolled, finely indifferent, on the floor of its playground. Closer crept the urchin; he grew splendidly bold; he threw larger and larger pebbles, until the lion rose suddenly with a roar, and dashed fiercely down to the bars of its cage.
I thought of that urchin’s scared, shrieking face now, as the rubicund man leant quickly back into his corner.
Yet that was not all, for the infant, satisfied, perhaps, with its victim’s ignominy, turned and looked at me with a cynical smile. I was, as it were, taken into its confidence. I felt flattered, undeservedly yet enormously flattered. I blushed, I may have simpered.
The train drew up in Great Hittenden station.
The woman gathered her priceless possession carefully into her arms, and the rubicund man adroitly opened the door for her.
“Good day, sir,” she said, as she got out.
“Good day,” echoed the rubicund man with relief, and we all drew a deep breath of relief with him in concert, as though we had just witnessed the safe descent of some over-daring
