The Hampdenshire Wonder | Page 2

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 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