The Hampdenshire Wonder

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Title: The Hampdenshire Wonder Author: J D Beresford * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0601411.txt Edition: 1 Language: English Character set encoding: Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit Date first posted: June 2006 Date most recently updated: June 2006
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Title: The Hampdenshire Wonder Author: J D Beresford

CONTENTS:

PART I. MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT

CHAPTER I.
THE MOTIVE
CHAPTER II.
NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF GINGER STOTT
CHAPTER III.
THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF GINGER STOTT

PART II. THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER

CHAPTER IV.
THE MANNER OF HIS BIRTH
CHAPTER V.
HIS DEPARTURE FROM STOKE-UNDERHILL
CHAPTER VI.
HIS FATHER'S DESERTION
CHAPTER VII.
HIS DEBT TO HENRY CHALLIS
CHAPTER VIII.
HIS FIRST VISIT TO CHALLIS COURT
INTERLUDE

PART II. (continued) THE WONDER AMONG BOOKS

CHAPTER IX.
HIS PASSAGE THROUGH THE PRISON OF KNOWLEDGE
CHAPTER X.
HIS PASTORS AND MASTERS
CHAPTER XI.
HIS EXAMINATION
CHAPTER XII.
FUGITIVE

PART III. MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER

CHAPTER XIII.
HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK
CHAPTER XIV.
THE INCIPIENCE OF MY SUBJECTION TO THE WONDER
CHAPTER XV.
THE PROGRESS AND RELAXATION OF MY SUBJECTION
CHAPTER XVI.
RELEASE
CHAPTER XVII.
IMPLICATIONS
EPILOGUE. THE USES OF MYSTERY
* * * * *

PART I. MY EARLY ASSOCIATIONS WITH GINGER STOTT

CHAPTER I.
THE MOTIVE
I
I COULD not say at which station the woman and her baby entered the train.
Since we had left London I had been engrossed in Henri Bergson's Time and Free Will, as it is called in the English translation. I had been conscious of various stoppages and changes of passengers, but my attention had been held by Bergson's argument. I agreed with his conclusion in advance, but I wished to master his reasoning.
I looked up when the woman entered my compartment, though I did not notice the name of the station. I caught sight of the baby she was carrying, and turned back to my book. I thought the child was a freak, an abnormality; and such things disgust me.
I returned to the study of my Bergson and read: "It is at the great and solemn crisis, decisive of our reputation with others, that we choose in defiance of what is conventionally called a motive, and this absence of any tangible reason is the more striking the deeper our freedom goes."
I kept my eyes on the book--the train had started again--but the next passage conveyed no meaning to my mind, and as I attempted to re-read it an impression was interposed between me and the work I was studying.
I saw projected on the page before me an image which I mistook at first for the likeness of Richard Owen. It was the conformation of the head that gave rise to the mistake, a head domed and massive, white and smooth--it was a head that had always interested me. But as I looked, my mind already searching for the reason of this hallucination, I saw that the lower part of the face was that of an infant. My eyes wandered from the book, and my gaze fluttered along the four persons seated opposite to me, till they rested on the reality of my vision. Even as these acts were being performed, I found myself foolishly saying, "I don't call this freedom."
For several seconds the eyes of the infant held mine. Its gaze was steady and clear as that of a normal child, but what differentiated it was the impression one received of calm intelligence. The head was completely bald, and there was no trace of eyebrows, but the eyes themselves were protected by thick, short lashes.
The child turned its head, and I felt my muscles relax. Until then I had not been conscious that they had been stiffened. My gaze was released, pushed aside as it were, and I found myself watching the object of the child's next scrutiny.
This object was a man of forty or so, inclined to corpulence, and untidy. He bore the evidences of failure in the process of becoming. He wore a beard that was scanty and ragged, there were bare patches of skin on the jaw; one inferred that he wore that beard only to save the trouble of shaving. He was sitting next to me, the middle passenger of the three on my side of the carriage, and he was absorbed in the pages of a half-penny paper--I think he was reading