XI

When Mrs. Payne had the good luck to stumble on Considine's

advertisement--for, in spite of the strange complications that ensued

for the Considines the occasion was certainly fortunate for her--that

remarkable person was at her wits' ends. If she had not been a woman

of resource and character as well as a devoted mother I think she would

have given up the problem of Arthur as a bad job long before this; but

it was literally the only thing that really mattered to her in life,

and if she had abandoned the struggle I do not know what would have

become of her.

By ordinary canons Mrs. Payne could not be considered an attractive

woman. The only striking features in her plain, and rather

expressionless face were her eyes, which were of a soft and

extraordinarily beautiful grey. She had large hands and feet, no

figure to speak of, and she dressed abominably. She possessed in fact,

all the virtues and none of the graces, and was, in this respect at any

rate, the diametrical opposite of her son. Her appearance suggested

that life had given her a tremendous battering, a condition that would

have been pitiful if it were not that she also gave the impression of

having doggedly survived it; and for this reason one could not help

admiring her.

Her husband had been a business man of exceptional brilliance, of a

brilliance, indeed, that was almost pathological, and may have

accounted in part for the curious mentality of Arthur. In a short, but

incredibly active life, he had amassed a fortune that was considerable,

even in the midlands where fortunes are made. I do not know what he

manufactured, but his business was conducted in Gloucester, and the

Overton estate, which he acquired shortly before his death, lay under

the shadow of Cotswold, between its escarpment and the isolated hill of

Bredon, within twenty miles of that city. Mr. Payne had died of acute

pneumonia in a sharp struggle that was in keeping with his strenuous

mode of life. Seven months after his death his only child, Arthur, was

born.

In the care of her son, and the control of the fortune to which he

would later succeed, Mrs. Payne, who was blessed with an equal vocation

for motherhood and finance, became happily absorbed. Everything

promised well. The business in Gloucester realised more than she could

have expected, and she settled down in the placid surroundings of

Overton with no care in the world but Arthur's future.

He was a singularly beautiful child, fair-haired, with a skin that even

in manhood was dazzlingly white, and eyes that were as arresting as his

mother's: a creature of immense vitality, who shook off the usual

diseases of childhood without difficulty, and developed an early and

almost abnormal physical perfection. He was not, it is true,

particularly intelligent. He did not begin to talk until he was over

three years old; but this slowness of development was only in keeping

with his mother's physical type, and his early childhood was a period

of sheer delight to her in which no shadow of the imminent trouble

appeared.

By the time that he had reached his seventh year, Mrs. Payne was

beginning to be worried about him. His bodily health was still

magnificent, but there was a strain in his character that worried her.

It appeared that it was impossible for him to tell the truth.

Haphazard lying is no uncommon thing in children, proceeding, as it

sometimes does, from an excess of imagination and an anxiety to appear

startling; but imagination was scarcely Arthur's strong point, and his

lies were not haphazard, but deliberately planned.

To a woman of Mrs. Payne's uncompromising truthfulness this habit

appeared as a most serious failing. She could not leave it to chance,

in a vague hope that Arthur would "grow out of it." She tackled it,

heroically and directly, by earnest persuasion, and later, by

punishments. By one method and another she determined to appeal to his

moral sense, but after a couple of years of hopeless struggling she was

driven to the conclusion that this, exactly, was what he lacked. It

seemed that he had been born without one.

The thing was impossible to her, for his father had been a man of

exceptional probity and, without self-flattery, she knew that she

herself was the most transparently honest person on earth. As the boy

grew older his opportunities for showing this fatal deficiency

increased. Whatever she said or did, and however sweetly he accepted

her persuasions and punishments, it became evident that she, at any

rate, was incapable of keeping his hands from picking and stealing and

his tongue from evil speaking, lying, and slandering. The condition

was the more amazing in the face of his great natural charms. All her

friends and visitors at Overton found the boy delightful; his physical

beauty remained as wonderful as ever; on the surface he was a normal

and exceptionally attractive child; but in her heart she realised

bitterly that he was a completely a-moral being.

In nothing was this more apparent than in his behaviour towards

animals. Overton, lying as it did in the midst of a green countryside,

was a natural sanctuary for all wild creatures, in which Arthur, from

his earliest years, had always shown a peculiar interest. As a child,

he would spend many hours with the keeper, developing an instinct for

wood-craft that seemed to be the strongest in his composition. He knew

all the birds of the estate, their habits, their calls, their refuges.

Once in the shadow of the woods, he himself was a wild animal, a

creature of faunish activity and grace. Mrs. Payne always encouraged

this passion of his as a natural and admirable thing, until, one day,

the keeper, who was no more humane than the majority of keepers, came

to her with a shocking story of Arthur's cruelty: an enormity that it

would have taken the mind of a devil, rather than a man, to imagine.

When she taxed the boy with it he only laughed. She thrashed the

matter out; she pointed out to him that he had done a devilish thing;

but in the end she had to give it up, for it became clear to her that

he was trying as hard as he could to see her point of view but

couldn't, simply because it wasn't in him. She began to realise slowly

and reluctantly that it was no good for her to appeal to something that

didn't exist. The boy had been born with a body a little above the

normal, and a mind a little below the average, but nature had cruelly

denied him the possession of a soul, and neither her prayers nor her

devotion could give him what he congenitally lacked.

She wondered whether the isolation of his life at Overton had anything

to do with it, whether contact with other children of his own age would

reduce him to the normal. She took the risk, and sent him at the age

of twelve, to a preparatory school in Cheltenham. Before the first

term was half over they sent for her and asked her to remove him. The

head master confessed that the case was beyond him. On the surface the

boy was one of the most charming in the whole school, but his heart was

an abyss of the most appalling blackness. Mrs. Payne entreated him to

tell her the worst. He hedged, said that it wasn't just one thing that

was wrong, but everything--everything. She asked him if he had ever

known a case that resembled Arthur's. No, he thanked Heaven that he

hadn't. Could he advise her what to do? Lamely he suggested a tutor,

and then, as an afterthought, a mental specialist.

The word sent a chill into Mrs. Payne's heart. The idea that this

bright, delightful child, the idol of her hopes, was the victim of some

obscure form of moral insanity frightened her. But she was a woman of

courage and determined to know the worst. She took him to a specialist

in London.

Arthur thoroughly enjoyed this desolating trip. The specialist talked

vaguely, leaving her nothing but the faintest gleam of hope. There

were more things in heaven and earth, he said, than were dreamed of in

the philosophy of the most distinguished alienists. He talked

indefinitely of internal secretions. It was possible, he said--and

underlined the word--possible, just barely possible, that in a year or

two--to put it bluntly, at the time of puberty--the boy's disposition

might suddenly and unaccountably change. He implored her not to count

on it, and assured her that, for the present, medical science could do

no more. If, by any chance, his prophecy should be fulfilled, he

begged Mrs. Payne to let him know. The case, if she would pardon the

use of this objectionable word, was one of the greatest professional

interest.

She took Arthur back to Overton and waited desperately. Tutor

succeeded tutor. Each of them found Arthur charming and impossible.

For herself she saw no change in him that was not physical. By this

time she had abandoned any idea of finding him a profession. At the

same time, she was anxious to make him capable of managing the Overton

estate, and though she dared not send him to one of the ordinary

agricultural colleges for fear of a repetition, on a larger scale, of

the Cheltenham disaster, she thought that it might be possible to find

a capable land-agent who would give him some kind of training and put

up with his idiosyncrasy for the sake of a substantial fee.

While searching for a suitable instructor she happened to see

Considine's advertisement. The fact that he gave the name of a great

landowner, Lord Halberton, as a reference, convinced her that the

opportunity was genuine, and the prospectus promised instruction in all

the subjects that would be most useful to Arthur. The fact that only a

small number of pupils was to be taken, and that the place should be

regarded as a friendly country-house rather than as a school, attracted

her; but the part of the advertisement that finally persuaded her to a

faint glimmer of hope was Considine's artfully worded final paragraph:

"Special care is given to backward or difficult pupils."

Like all sufferers from incurable diseases she was only too ready to

place confidence in any person who laid claim to special knowledge.

She began to wonder if Considine was such a specialist. She wrote to

him, looking for a miracle to save her from her afflictions.

Considine replied formally. He did not jump at the idea of taking

Arthur, a fact which convinced her that education at Lapton Manor was

something of a privilege, and this made her disregard the fact that the

privilege was expensive. Still, his note was direct and business-like.

He made it clear that if he were willing to take backward or difficult

boys he expected to be paid a little more for his trouble, but the

confident tone in which he wrote suggested that he was a man who knew

his business.

He did know his business. Considine was a clear-headed and capable

person with a degree of confidence in himself that went a long way

towards assuring his success. He proposed, finally, that it would be

more satisfactory for both of them if Mrs. Payne were to visit him at

Lapton and see the place and its owners for herself. Then they could

talk the matter over, and define the peculiar difficulties of Arthur's

case. More and more impressed, she accepted the proposal. Considine

met her train at Totnes with a dogcart and drove her to Lapton Manor.