The Hampdenshire Wonder | Page 3

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 aviator.

IV
As the train moved on, we six, who had been fellow-passengers for
some thirty or forty minutes before the woman had entered our
compartment, we who had not till then exchanged a word, broke
suddenly into general conversation.
"Water on the brain; I don't care what any one says," asserted the
rubicund man.
"My sister had one very similar," put in the failure, who was sitting
next to me. "It died," he added, by way of giving point to his instance.
"Ought not to exhibit freaks like that in public," said an old man
opposite to me.
"You're right, sir," was the verdict of the artisan, and he spat carefully
and scraped his boot on the floor; "them things ought to be kep'
private."
"Mad, of course, that's to say imbecile," repeated the rubicund man.
"Horrid head he'd got," said the failure, and shivered histrionically.
They continued to demonstrate their contempt for the infant by many
asseverations. The reaction grew. They were all bold now, and all
wanted to speak. They spoke as the survivors from some common peril;
they were increasingly anxious to demonstrate that they had never
suffered intimidation, and in their relief they were anxious to laugh at
the thing which had for a time subdued them. But they never named it
as a cause for fear. Their speech was merely innuendo.
At the last, however, I caught an echo of the true feeling.
It was the rubicund man who, most daring during the crisis, was now
bold enough to admit curiosity.
"What's your opinion, sir?"