Little Hugo grasped the iron wall of his miniature prison. He pulled
himself toward it. His skirt caught in the floor. He pulled harder. The
pen moved toward him. A high soprano came from Mrs. Nolan. "He's moved
it! I don't think I could move it myself! I tell you, I'm going to ask
the doctor to examine him. You shouldn't let a child be like that."
Mrs. Danner, filled with consternation, sought refuge in prevarication.
"Nonsense," she said as calmly as she could. "All we Douglases are like
that. Strong children. I had a grandfather who could lift a cider keg
when he was five--two hundred pounds and more. Hugo just takes after
him, that's all."
Mrs. Nolan was annoyed. Partly because she was jealous of Hugo's
prowess--her own children had been feeble and dull. Partly because she
was frightened--no matter how strong a person became, a baby had no
right to be so powerful. Partly because she sensed that Mrs. Danner was
not telling the whole truth. She suspected that the Danners had found a
new way to raise children. "Well," she said, "all I have to say is that
it'll damage him. It'll strain his little heart. It'll do him a lot of
harm. If I had a child like that, I'd tie it up most of the time for the
first few years."
"Kate," Mrs. Danner said unpleasantly, "I believe you would."
Mrs. Nolan shrugged. "Well--I'm glad none of my children are freaks,
anyhow."
"I'll get your sugar."
In the afternoon the minister called. He talked of the church and the
town until he felt his preamble adequate. "I was wondering why you
didn't bring your child to be baptized, Mrs. Danner. And why you
couldn't come to church, now that it is old enough?"
"Well," she replied carefully, "the child is rather--irritable. And we
thought we'd prefer to have it baptized at home."
"It's irregular."
"We'd prefer it."
"Very well. I'm afraid--" he smiled--"that you're a
little--ah--unfamiliar with the upbringing of children. Natural--in the
case of the first-born. Quite natural. But--ah--I met Mrs. Nolan to-day.
Quite by accident. And she said that you kept the child--ah--in an iron
pen. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to me--"
"Did it?" Mrs. Danner's jaw set squarely.
But the minister was not to be turned aside lightly. "I'm afraid, if
it's true, that we--the church--will have to do something about it. You
can't let the little fellow grow up surrounded by iron walls. It will
surely point him toward the prison. Little minds are tender
and--ah--impressionable."
"We've had a crib and two pens of wood," Mrs. Danner answered tartly.
"He smashed them all."
"Ah? So?" Lifted eyebrows. "Temper, eh? He should be punished.
Punishment is the only mould for unruly children."
"You'd punish a six-months-old baby?"
"Why--certainly. I've reared seven by the rod."
"Well--" a blazing maternal instinct made her feel vicious. "Well--you
won't raise mine by a rod. Or touch it--by a mile. Here's your hat,
parson." Mrs. Danner spent the next hour in prayer.
The village is known for the speed of its gossip and the sloth of its
intelligence. Those two factors explain the conditions which preluded
and surrounded the dawn of consciousness in young Hugo. Mrs. Danner's
extemporaneous fabrication of a sturdy ancestral line kept the more
supernatural elements of the baby's prowess from the public eye. It
became rapidly and generally understood that the Danner infant was
abnormal and that the treatment to which it was submitted was not usual.
At the same time neither the gossips of Indian Creek nor the slightly
more sage professors of the college exercised the wit necessary to
realize that, however strong young Hugo might become, it was neither
right nor just that his cradle days be augurs of that eventual estate.
On the face of it the argument seemed logical. If Mrs. Danner's forbears
had been men of peculiar might, her child might well be able to chin
itself at three weeks and it might easily be necessary to confine it in
a metal pen, however inhumane the process appeared.
Hugo was sheltered, and his early antics, peculiar and startling as they
were to his parents, escaped public attention. The little current of
talk about him was kept alive only because there was so small an array
of topics for the local burghers. But it was not extraordinarily
malicious. Months piled up. A year passed and then another.
Hugo was a good-natured, usually sober, and very sensitive child.
Abednego Danner's fear that his process might have created muscular
strength at the expense of reason diminished and vanished as Hugo
learned to walk and to talk, and as he grasped the rudiments of human
behaviour. His high little voice was heard in the house and about its
lawns.
They began to condition him. Throughout his later life there lingered in
his mind a memory of the barriers erected by his family. He was told not
to throw his pillow, when words meant nothing to him. Soon after that,
he was told not to throw anything. When he could walk, he was forbidden
to jump. His jumps were shocking to see, even at the age of two and a
half. He was carefully instructed on his behaviour out of doors. No move
of his was to indicate his difference from the ordinary child.
He was taught kindness and respect for people and property. His every
destructive impulse was carefully curbed. That training was possible
only because he was sensitive and naturally susceptible to advice.
Punishment had no physical terror for him, because he could not feel it.
But disfavour, anger, vexation, or disappointment in another person
reflected itself in him at once.
When he was four and a half, his mother sent him to Sunday school. He
was enrolled in a class that sat near her own, so she was able to keep a
careful eye on him. But Hugo did not misbehave. It was his first contact
with a group of children, his first view of the larger cosmos. He sat
quietly with his hands folded, as he had been told to sit. He listened
to the teacher's stories of Jesus with excited interest.
On his third Sunday he heard one of the children whisper: "Here comes
the strong boy."