INTERLUDE
This brief history of the Hampdenshire Wonder is marked by a stereotypeddivision into three parts, an arbitrary arrangement dependent on theexperience of the writer. The true division becomes manifest at thispoint. The life of Victor Stott was cut into two distinct sections,between which there is no correlation. The first part should tell thestory of his mind during the life of experience, the time occupied inobservation of the phenomena of life presented to him in fact, withoutany specific teaching on the theories of existence and progress, or onthe speculation as to ultimate destiny. The second part should deal withhis entry into the world of books; into that account of a long series ofcollated experiments and partly verified hypotheses we call science;into the imperfectly developed system of inductive and deductive logicwhich determines mathematics and philosophy; into the long, inaccurateand largely unverifiable account of human blindness and error known ashistory; and into the realm of idealism, symbol, and pitiful pride wefind in the story of poetry, letters, and religion.
I will confess that I once contemplated the writing of such a history.It was Challis who, in his courtly, gentle way, pointed out to me thatno man living had the intellectual capacity to undertake so profound awork.
For some three months before I had this conversation with Challis, I hadbeen wrapped in solitude, dreaming, speculating. I had been uplifted inthought, I had come to believe myself inspired as a result of myseparation from the world of men, and of the deep introspection andmeditation in which I had been plunged. I had arrived at a point,perhaps not far removed from madness, at which I thought myself capableof setting out the true history of Victor Stott.
Challis broke the spell. He cleared away the false glamour which wasblinding and intoxicating me and brought me back to a condition ofopen-eyed sanity. To Challis I owe a great debt.
Yet at the moment I was sunk in depression. All the glory of my visionhad faded; the afterglow was quenched in the blackness of a night thatdrew out of the east and fell from the zenith as a curtain of utterdarkness.
Again Challis came to my rescue. He brought me a great sheaf of notes.
"Look here," he said, "if you can't write a true history of that strangechild, I see no reason why you should not write his story as it isknown to you, as it impinges on your own life. After all, you, in manyways, know more of him than any one. You came nearest to receiving hisconfidence."
"But only during the last few months," I said.
"Does that matter?" said Challis with an upheaval of hisshoulders--"shrug" is far too insignificant a word for that mountainoushumping. "Is any biography founded on better material than you have atcommand?"
He unfolded his bundle of notes. "See here," he said, "here is somemagnificent material for you--first-hand observations made at the time.Can't you construct a story from that?"
Even then I began to cast my story in a slightly biographical form. Iwrote half a dozen chapters, and read them to Challis.
"Magnificent, my dear fellow," was his comment, "magnificent; but no onewill believe it."
I had been carried away by my own prose, and with the natural vanity ofthe author, I resented intensely his criticism.
For some weeks I did not see Challis again, and I persisted in my futileendeavour, but always as I wrote that killing suggestion insinuateditself: "No one will believe you." At times I felt as a man may feel whohas spent many years in a lunatic asylum; and after his release is forever engaged in a struggle to allay the doubts of a leering suspicion.
I gave up the hopeless task at last, and sought out Challis again.
"Write it as a story," he suggested, "and give up the attempt to carryconviction."
And in that spirit, adopting the form of a story, I did begin, and inthat form I hope to finish.
But here as I reach the great division, the determining factor of VictorStott's life, I am constrained to pause and apologise. I have becomeuncomfortably conscious of my own limitations, and the feeble, ephemeralmethods I am using. I am trifling with a wonderful story, embroideringmy facts with the tawdry detail of my own imagining.
I saw--I see--no other way.
This is, indeed, a preface, yet I prefer to put it in this place, sinceit was at this time I wrote it.
* * * * *
On the Common a faint green is coming again like a mist among theash-trees, while the oak is still dead and bare. Last year the oak camefirst.
They say we shall have a wet summer.