er, 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.

Arth