It was gloaming now. The few visible stars shone with a peculiar individual brightness, and looked strangely pendulous in the fading blue sky. He leaned back and gazed at the depths above him. This time of the day was always puzzling. You could never tell exactly at what moment the sky really changed into the aspect of evening, and then, night. Yet there must be some subtle moment when each star was born. Perhaps by looking hard enough it would be possible to become aware of these things. It would be like watching a bud unfold. Slow change was an impenetrable mystery, for actually things seemed to happen too quickly for you to notice them. Or rather, you were too busy to notice them. Spring was like that. Every year you made up your[Pg 76] mind to notice the first blossoming, the initial tinge of green; but always it happened that you awoke one morning and found that some vast change had taken place, so that it really seemed like a miracle.All the while that I recount these scenes there come to me soft orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music which I heard first--and last--in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into a roof; wail and huzza, camp-fire, litter and grave; battlefield stench; fiddle and flame; and ever in the midst these impromptu merrymakings to keep us from going stark mad, one and all,--as so many literally did.
FORE:Had Alice been in a condition to observe any windows and the lights in them, except those of the dark study and the illuminated bedroom at the Vicarage, she would have seen that, late as it was, there was a patch of gravel on the garden-wall outside her fathers library window which smouldered amid the darkness of the night and showed there was another wakeful inhabitant in the house. He had gone to his room very shortly after Alices disappearance from the drawing room, leaving his wife talking about table linen to Hugh. He, like Alice, wanted, though more dimly than she, the expansion of solitude. But when he got into that retreat, he found he was not quite alone in it. He had intended to look through the Leonardo publication which had just arrived, and for which he thought he thirsted. But it still lay unturned on the table. He had but unpacked and identified it, and in ten minutes had forgotten about it altogether. Another presence haunted the room and disquieted him.
THREE:"O--oh, nothing!"He bowed his head with a marvellous proud meekness, and left her.
FORE:But I do mind that. It was idiotic of me, and it was ungrateful of me. I should have known you better than that.
"No." A silence followed; then he said, "You know the reason, I think.""The functioning principle," said the Clockwork man, "is distributed throughout, but the clock" His words ran on incoherently for a few moments and ended in an abrupt explosion that nearly lifted him out of his seat. "Beg pardonwhat I mean to say is that the clockwallabaloowumwum""What! You believe it then? You, who have not seen this mysteryyou believe it?"I was just going to leave this note at your office, Sir Thomas, said Lord Inverbroom. May I give it you instead and save myself a further walk? It is just the acknowledgment of your letter about the termination of our lease. Perhaps you will glance at it, to see that it is in order.I imagine so, as I was opening the bazaar, said Mrs Keeling, with some dignity.
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