That intense vividness of perception that had been lit within him when, half an hour ago, the clock on his chimney-piece chimed, still blazed.{302} He noticed a hundred minute details in the room, his ear separated the hum of the street below into its component ingredients: there was a boy whistling, there was a motor standing with its engines still working, there was a street-cry concerning daffodils, another concerning evening papers. Memory was similarly awake: he remembered that his wife was giving a little dinner-party this evening, that Silverdale, who was setting out on his mission to the docks next day, was to be among the guests, and that Alice expected that the slippers of Maltese crosses would be back from being made up, in time for him to take them with him. He recalled, out of the well of years, how in the early days of his married life Emmeline had made him a pair of slippers which did not fit, and in the same breath remembered the exact look of her face this very morning when a message had come from her cook saying that she could not get a bit of salmon anywhere. And as each impression registered itself on eye and ear and memory, he hated it. But nothing concerning Norah came into his mind: sometimes for a moment a blank floated across it, behind which perhaps was Norah, but she produced no image on it. He could not even recollect her face: he did not know what she was like. There was the horror of it all: everything in the world but she had the vividness of nightmare, and she, the only thing that did not belong to nightmare, had gone from him.{303}After that final collapse, the Doctor had succeeded somehow in restoring him to his normal shape; and then, by miraculous chance, he discovered a hand that, when turned, had[Pg 168] the effect of producing in the Clockwork man an appearance of complete quiescence. He looked now more like a tailor's dummy than anything else; and the apparent absence of blood circulation and even respiration rendered the illusion almost perfect. He looked life-like without seeming to be alive.
INTERIOR OF A TEA-GARDEN. INTERIOR OF A TEA-GARDEN.His further suggestions were drowned by an enormous hy?na-like yawn coming from the direction of the couch. It was followed by another, even more prodigious. The room[Pg 137] fairly vibrated with the Clockwork man's uncouth expression of omnivorous appetite.[Pg 71]We went on some steps in silence and entered the gate of the house-grove; and just as Ferry would have replied we discovered before us in the mottled shade of the driveway, with her arm on Ccile's shoulders as his lay on mine, and with her eyes counting her slackening steps, Charlotte Oliver. They must have espied us already out in the highway, for they also were turned toward the house, and as we neared them Charlotte faced round with a cheery absence of surprise and said "Mr. Smith, don't we owe each other a better acquaintance? Suppose we settle up.""Yes--well--what of him?"I wish you would flirt with him yourself, Emmeline, he said, and take him away from Alice. Perhaps you do: some of these clergy flirt with every decent-looking woman within reach, and youre twice as handsome as Alice.
