The Hampdenshire Wonder | Page 2

the Police News--which was interposed between him and the child in the corner diagonally opposite to that which I occupied.
The man was hunched up, slouching, his legs crossed, his elbows seeking support against his body; he held with both hands his paper, unfolded, close to his eyes. He had the appearance of being very myopic, but he did not wear glasses.
As I watched him, he began to fidget. He uncrossed his legs and hunched his body deeper into the back of his seat. Presently his eyes began to creep up the paper in front of him. When they reached the top, he hesitated a moment, making a survey under cover, then he dropped his hands and stared stupidly at the infant in the corner, his mouth slightly open, his feet pulled in under the seat of the carriage.
As the child let him go, his head drooped, and then he turned and looked at me with a silly, vacuous smile. I looked away hurriedly; this was not the man with whom I cared to share experience.
The process was repeated. The next victim was a big, rubicund, healthy-looking man, clean shaved, with light-blue eyes that were slightly magnified by the glasses of his gold-mounted spectacles. He, too, had been reading a newspaper--the Evening Standard--until the child's gaze claimed 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 a 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