THREE:The truth is that Doctor Allingham had not been able to summon the courage to make a further examination of the Clockwork man; and he had permitted himself to assume that there would be no immediate developments. So far as was possible he had allowed himself that very necessary relaxation, and he had insisted upon Gregg sharing it with him. The Clockwork man was not quite what either of them had, alternatively, hoped or feared. From Allingham's point of view, in particular, he was not that bogey of the inhuman fear which his original conduct had suggested. True, he was still an unthinkable monstrosity, an awful revelation; but since the discovery of the printed instructions it had been possible to regard him with a little more equanimity. The Clockwork man was a figment of the future, but he was not the whole future."There are the boatmen, but no boats," said Fred, as he pointed to some stalwart men who were sitting on the bank, and evidently waiting for something to turn up.
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THREE:"Not for a few thousand years," replied the Clockwork man, with a slight twisting of his lip. "Perhaps never."A few minutes later he returned alone to his library. All round him were the shelves, now packed from floor to ceiling with book cases half filled projecting into the room, and on the table lay the three volumes of the catalogue. From all round thoughts and associations and memories gathered and swarmed, and, forming into a wave of pent-up bitterness, they roared over him. Everything he cared about had crumbled and disappeared. Here was his secret garden, which from boyhood{338} he had tended and cultivated with ever-increasing care, and now each shelf was to him only a reminder of Norah, propping open the door he was resolved to shut. He had dreamed of leisure hours here, free from the sound of the grinding millstone of business, and now he only wanted to get back into the roar and thump of the wheels. He had wanted the society and companionship of men who would appreciate and sympathise, now they had shown that they did not want him, and indeed he wanted them no longer; his contractors and wholesale merchants and dealers would supply all the society he had any use for for years to come. He had let himself seek love, and he had found love, and just because it was love and no mere sensual gratification that he had sought, it had, with the full consent of all in him that was worthy of it, been plucked from him. And with its vanishing his secret garden had blossomed with bitter herbs, rosemary for rose and rue. Perhaps if he had looked he might find dim violets for remembrance, and if he waited and was patient there might spring up pansies for thoughts. But that at present was beyond the region of his desire: were he to seek for flowers, he would but seek poppies for forgetfulness.
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THREE:"I should--have turned back, my boy." After a silence the hero said more to himself than to me "Ah, if my brother were here to-night--I might live!"
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THREE:It really all passed off very tolerably, she said; do you not think so, my dear? And was it not gratifying? Just as the dear Princess shook hands with me for the second time before she drove away, holding my hand quite a long time, she said, And I hear your friends will not call you Mrs Keeling very much longer. Was not that delicately put? How common Lady Inverbroom looked beside her, but, after all, we cant all be princesses. I was told by the lady-in-waiting, who was a very civil sort of woman indeed, that Her Royal Highness was going to stay with the poor Inverbrooms next month. I can hardly believe that: I should not think it was at all a likely sort of thing to happen, but I felt I really ought to warn Mrs{249}I did not quite catch her namewhat a very poor sort of dinner her mistress would get, if she fared no better than we did. But we must keep our ears open next month to find out if it really does happen, though I dare say we shall be the first to know, for after to-day Lady Inverbroom could scarcely fail to ask us to dine and sleep again.
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THREE:
THREE:"But course is more near to the truth," said Fred, "than star. Don't you see that Bishop Berkeley wrote before railways were invented, and before people could travel as they do nowadays? Emigrants, when they went out West, went with wagons, or on horseback, or on foot. They travelled by day and rested at night. Nowdon't you see?they made their course in the daytime, when they couldn't see the stars at all; and when the stars were out, they were asleep, unless the wolves or the Indians kept them awake. They were too tired to waste any time over a twinkling star of empire, but they knew all about the course."
THREE:"I do have ideas," he admitted, thoughtfully. "I suppose I'm really what you might call an intellectual sort of chap.""How was that?" Frank asked.
