Sir William Macpherson earned his K.C.I.E. not so much by his thirty years of Ind as by the comparative leisure which enabled him to write that famous essay on “Brain Excitations.” He has told me since that the genesis of the theory which likens man to an induction coil came to him as the oars swung merrily back to the Ganges, he striving the while to restore the Armenian’s vitality.
“Karl,” he whispered, stirred by the impulse of the moment, “can you see your father?”
The boy looked unerringly towards the north, where Darjeeling lay, eight hundred miles distant.
“No,” he said after a slight pause, “it is dark.”
“Dark?” repeated the scientist.
“Yes, like a fog at night, you know.”
“But there is no fog, and it was quite as dark a few minutes since, when you saw Mr. Constantine in the sea.”
Karl seemed to focus his thoughts once more. Then he nestled wearily close to his friend.
“Something seems to press me back, and I am tired,” he said.
Every woman who reads this would, in all probability, like to box Macpherson’s ears. And, indeed, he had the good grace to be ashamed of himself, though, if doctors did not push individual experiments a trifle too far occasionally, the mass of humanity would be the worse for their caution. Nevertheless, though he contented himself with asking the third officer to shield the boy from the keen surface air of the sea, his mind was busy. Karl’s wonderful comprehension of root words was known to him, and he felt that the expressions “dark,” “fog,” “something seems to press me back,” even the unwonted excuse of being “tired,” were not chosen at random.
Then he remembered how a friend had taken him once, when home on furlough, to witness certain telephonic tests conducted by the Post-office engineers at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. An instrument was affixed to an appliance which registered 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 miles of resistance at will, for such high tensions are needed when sea-cables are laid. It was instructive to hear the same human voice dying away as the conductivity of the wire decreased. Again, he happened to be present when the Indo-European Telegraph Company carried out their famous experiment, and actually linked a transmitter in Paris with a receiver in Calcutta. As far away as Teheran the action of the electric indicator was sharp and distinct, but from Constantinople westwards through Vienna the current became sluggish, until the supreme effort of Paris required slow and careful manipulation ere the message emerged from chaos.
Here were unfailing indications of what Karl meant by “pressing back” and “tired.” But what was the significance of the darkness, the fog? Suddenly Macpherson asked himself:
“What was the force which fought against the thousands of miles of telegraph wire? Suppose there was no wire? Yet the force remained!”
It came to him that the child cast his bright intelligence forth in ever-spreading Hertzian waves, and that his perceptive powers diminished with distance, on the well-established ratio of the decrease of sound as the circle widens and air-waves lengthen with slower movement. Moreover, the apparent difficulty of reconciling his instant discovery of planets known only to astronomers with his inability to penetrate deeply the gloom of earth vanished when the lateral density of the air mantle was taken into account. To see the three moons of Jupiter! That was a marvel in itself. Strangely enough, Du Maurier, an artist dreamer, had attributed the power to one of the characters in his novel The Martian. But that was a phase in a spirit romance; here was a child with eyes like telescopes and ears like telephones.
Greatly was the scientist tempted to try Karl again on the nearer, and wholly unknown, physical features of Colombo. But he resisted and vigorously chafed the Armenian’s chest and back, though, to be sure, the tenacious clinging of the youth to the canvas buoy rendered such massage difficult.
Thenceforth, during the voyage home, Constantine pestered Karl with a ludicrous, dog-like fidelity. The Armenian was lean, tall, and dark, with the big, black eyes, large mouth, small ears, and prominent nose of his race. Ordinarily, he was a bumptious and exceedingly “clever” young man, the heir to crores of rupees, and a business of world-wide renown; yet the mere sight of Karl skipping towards him along the deck would stop his blatant chatter and convert him into a sort of human grey-hound, a timid animal, which had just caught sight of its master. This submissiveness amused the other passengers, annoyed Mrs. Grier, and caused Macpherson certain ponderings.
Constantine told the doctor that when he found himself in the water grasping the life-buoy his first impression was that the ship could not possibly find him. He began to cry in a frenzy, but suddenly he became reassured. After that he had no fear of being drowned, but he had a horrible premonition that a huge shark was rushing from the depths with incredible speed to devour him. The memory of this shark always returned whenever he saw Karl! The monster’s jaws opened! He could feel it crush his bones!
The boy throve splendidly aboard ship. Constantine went to England overland from Marseilles, but he met the Ganges at Tilbury, and Mrs. Grier could hardly refuse the aldermanic gold watch and absurdly heavy chain he presented to Karl. The watch had a fine inscription, too: “From Paul Constantine to Karl Grier, in memory of the s.s. Ganges, Bay of Bengal, Lat. 12.10 N.; Long. 84.40 E.”
There was a date, but Karl was saved from mind-searchings by the fact that his mother placed the gift in her bank, to await later years.
And then Karl went to school. Just picture this sturdy little human dynamo, with his superhuman eyes and ears, sitting down in class with a number of youthful Edinburgh contemporaries! Yet it was impossible for his parents to encourage the growth of his spiritual faculties (as we may describe them) at the expense of the equipment needed to fit him for the citizenship of the world. So he learnt the exact locality of the North Cape in Lapland, the value of the common denominator, and the great utility of the algebraic x. And, as he pored over books, so the hidden spark dimmed.
At first he was wont to startle his companions no less than his tutors. When a master was explaining that the moon was a satellite of the earth, and was popularly known as a destroyed world, owing to the arid mountains and volcanic chasms with which her bright face is decorated, it was slightly ridiculous to be told by a boy of eleven, all aglow with interest--“Oh, yes, sir. I saw the lunar mountains quite plainly last night. And there are several great pits as black as ink.”
“Nonsense, Grier!” would the master say sharply, and Karl would be stilled for the hour. Hence, he kept to himself the daily knowledge he had of the hours of high water in the Forth, many miles away.
Once, by chance, the same master had arranged to take his class on a boating excursion up the Forth, and the question of tide arose. Karl volunteered the information that the tide would be high about three o’clock. Examined as to his accuracy (he was a careless young dog in matters of spelling or arithmetic) he admitted that he had no actual knowledge save the “feeling.”
Fortunately, Mr. David Malcolm, the master, was a man prone to take stock of the young idea, so he wrote to Mrs. Grier, and received a positive shock when that sensible and level-headed woman gave him the assurance of evidence that her son was not romancing. Indeed, it may be assumed without fear of contradiction that to Mr. Malcolm’s growing appreciation of the boy’s powers was due, in great measure, their retention. Even under his kindly sway Karl was rapidly assimilating to the mold of the school. Games, lessons, discipline, the smaller issues of daily intercourse with other boys, were coating the inner perceptiveness with a dense membrane. Again, at this period Karl almost lost his universal language key. Declensions and conjugations choked intuitive knowledge, and, to all seeming, when his father brought him to Oxford at the age of eighteen, young Grier was only a lively, intelligent, and muscular undergrad--exceptionally bright, perhaps, but in no wise the “phee-nomenon” Sir William Macpherson had dubbed him.
But Dame Nature, not to be balked in the development of her prodigy, arranged matters with that happy knack of hers whereby she cloaks design under the guise of accident.
Grier had been at Oxford two years when a menagerie visited the classical city on the Isis. Although wild beast shows are not regarded by the authorities as essential aids to Oxonian success, Karl and others visited the evil-smelling place. Now, a man will remember through his nose and finger-tips when other more highly trained senses fail. The first sniff of the closely packed laager of caravans brought to Grier’s mind a series of vivid pictures of early days in the Himalayan foot-hills. He lost himself a little, but his dreams were interrupted by a scene which yielded an exciting paragraph for next morning’s newspapers.
A defective iron screen enabled a gorilla to get at a black panther. The two beasts had a peculiar antipathy to each other, and the showman placed them close together for effect. Like many another dramatist he obtained a “curtain” he had not bargained for. Once the way was clear, by reason of the giving way of the corroded lattice, the animals met in Homeric combat. It was a fine fight, but it did not last long, for the gorilla tore the panther’s head off.
The other denizens of the menagerie, aroused from lethargy by the mortal defiances hurled forth by cat and ape, scented the battle and spoke in strange tongues. And behold! Karl knew what they were saying! He heard the lion and tiger roaring “Kill!” the deer and buffaloes shrieking “Run!” the monkey tribe chattering “Climb, brother, and reach from above!” Above all resounded the raging challenge of the elephant, who, when he is stirred, is the real master of the jungle. Whips, hay-forks, and heavy bars of iron soon ended the disturbance. A number of fainting women were carried out into the fresh air, and Karl, to his intense chagrin, for he was a great dandy in those days, found that his nose had bled freely during the hubbub. When Mr. Verdant Green was “up” his friends would have asked who had tapped his claret, but Karl’s companions were anxious to learn the identity of the gentleman who had “punched him on the boko!” Youth is perennial though it may change its idioms. It was disappointing to learn that the gore arose from natural causes. The slaying of the panther had evoked the boys’ fighting instincts! Pugilism--to use the naked hands on a foe--that was the ideal! Had not the gorilla thought so?
That night Karl found he could not sleep, so he rose and threw wide a window. His chambers overlooked the College quadrangle with its well-kept lawn, and, in this time of high summer, the exquisite profiles of Oxford were blended with the soft luxuriance of the trees guarding the peaceful precincts.
Karl was now a tall and graceful young man. A devoted follower of the favorite University sports, he was studious withal, and his natural bent inclined him more to the uncompromising tenets of science than to the literature and dogma of the classics. While following the routine laid down by his father’s advisers, he read deeply in the less popular branches of knowledge. Lectures on anthropology, comparative anatomy, philology and physics--subjects which certainly provided a varied intellectual pasturage--invariably counted him among note-takers. Hence, it is not to be wondered at if, on this particular night, he should give earnest thought to the half-forgotten and long-disused powers of his childhood, powers called back into vivid existence by the roaring of a few beasts!
He recalled, quite clearly, the incident in which his friendship with little Maggie Hutchinson figured so dramatically. Again, with the photographic trick of memory, he conjured up the Darjeeling valley. He saw the green slopes dotted here and there with planters’ bungalows, the tea-gardens, resembling gooseberry bushes in the first tender shoots, the winding roads, the tropical foliage. Yielding to a whimsical surprise at the accuracy of his impressions, he endeavored to reconstruct some of the incidents of the raid, but he quickly discovered that beyond following events in ordered sequence of recollection he could achieve nothing outside the range of what appeared to be a very precise and realistic memory.
“I wonder where Miss Margaret is now,” he murmured, with a smiling glance skywards. “She must be a demure young lady of eighteen or thereabouts. I think my mother said she was in Berlin, having developed a great talent for playing the violin. Berlin! That is a long way from Oxford, and Maggie is abed, sound asleep, little dreaming that a young man in England is picturing her in a Kate Greenaway costume of fourteen years ago.”
So in this fanciful mood, the notion suddenly seized him that he would like to see Maggie Hutchinson. What he really meant was that he would be glad to meet her again, and exchange juvenile reminiscences of early days in India. It is important to insist on this point, as his undoubted intention, or desire, when contrasted with that which did really happen, goes far to prove telegnomy a sense and not a mental state.
Remember, he fancied the girl was in Berlin and in bed, and, being an extremely considerate person, Karl would certainly not have wished to disturb her, even if such a thing were sanely possible.
He thought the external light fled with exceeding rapidity. There was an instant’s gloom, and then he was looking at a sunlit scene. The surroundings were quite novel to his eyes. He seemed to be standing on a spacious veranda of a very fine hotel. The flooring, the walls, the pillars, were all of wood, and Karl had never seen a hotel built of that material. Hundreds of well-dressed people were seated around small tables, waiters were flitting to and fro; on an empty table near him he noticed an “engaged” card, and even a menu du diner of the previous day. (It was nearly one o’clock when he went to the window.) Beyond a crowded lawn were a theater, a band-stand, and a raised promenade bordering the sea.
He stared about him with the frank curiosity of the stranger. On the right, the hotel buildings shut off the view, but, on the left, the veranda ran a long way. It was bounded, apparently, by the turnstiles of a railway station, and he read, quite distinctly, a prominent notice: “Trains depart for New York every ten minutes between 6 p.m. and midnight.”
Away in the distance he saw a gigantic red brick building bearing the gilded sign “Atlantic Hotel,” and he was about to stoop and pick up the menu card--thinking to discover his whereabouts by that means--when his attention was drawn to two persons who separated themselves from a laughing party grouped near the band-stand. The couple, a tall, slightly-built foreign-looking man, and a very pretty girl, whose costume and figure alike bespoke her youth, slowly drew nearer to the hotel veranda.
Grier experienced no amazement when he recognized in the man, Constantine, the Armenian. The young lady was unknown to him at first, until some gesture, accompanied with a smile and a quick upward glance of the eyes, recalled Mrs. Hutchinson, and he reflected that Maggie’s mother must have looked like that when she was eighteen.
So this was Maggie herself! How extraordinary! But what was Constantine saying that her face should flame and her big brown eyes survey him so scornfully. They were both talking vehemently. In his eagerness Karl bent forward to listen. He was inclined to step from off the veranda and join them. Perhaps Constantine, the Armenian, required to be kicked.
At that instant he was conscious of a sharp pain in his left hand. He was plunged into a dark void, and he came to his ordinary senses to find that he had escaped from falling through the window into the quadrangle only because he had pressed his left hand heavily on the top of a pointed stick used to support some flowers in a window-box.
