ONE:Decidedly there was something here that Mrs Keeling did not wholly comprehend, and when she did not comprehend she called it being kept in the dark. She comprehended, however, that Norah was exceedingly good-looking, and that there was a certain air about her, which she supposed came from reading books. Simultaneously she remembered Mrs Fyson asking her who it was who had come in and passed into Mr Keelings library; and on being informed that lady had said, How very odd, and at once changed the subject. Instantly she began to consider if it was very odd. But for the present she determined that nothing should mar the perfect behaviour of the Mayoress.CHAPTER IV. WEAVING THE NET.
ONE:He had grown to detest the time after dinner passed in the plushy, painted drawing-room. Hitherto, in all these years of increasing prosperity, during which the conscious effort of his brain had been directed to business and money-making, he had not objected after the work of the day to pass a quiescent hour or two before his early bedtime giving half an ear to his wifes babble, which, with her brain thickened with refreshment, always reached its flood-tide of voluble incoherence now, giving half an eye to Alice with her industrious{291} needle. All the time a vague simmer of mercantile meditation gently occupied him; his mind, like some kitchen fire with the damper pushed in, kept itself just alight, smouldered and burned low, and Alices needle was but like the bars of the grate, and his wifes prattle the mild rumble of water in the boiler. It was all domestic and normal, in accordance with the general destiny of prosperous men in middle age. Indeed, he was luckier in some respects than the average, for there had always been for him his secret garden, the hortus inclusus, into which neither his family nor his business interests ever entered. Now even that had been invaded, Norahs catalogue had become to him the most precious of his books: she was like sunshine in his secret garden or like a bitter wind, something, anyhow, that got between him and his garden beds, while here in the drawing-room in the domestic hour after dinner the fact of her made itself even more insistently felt, for she turned Lady Keelings vapidities, to which hitherto he had been impervious, into an active stinging irritation, and even poor Alices industrious needle and the ever-growing pattern of Maltese crosses on Mr Silverdales slippers was like some monotonous recurring drip of water that set his nerves on edge. This was a pretty state of mind, he told himself, for a hardheaded business man of fifty, and yet even as with all the force of resolution that was in him he tried to find something{292} in his wifes remarks that could awake a relevant reasonable reply, some rebellious consciousness in his brain would only concern itself with counting on the pink clock the hours that lay between the present moment and nine oclock next morning. And then the pink clock melodiously announced on the Westminster chime that it was half past ten, and Alice put her needle into the middle of the last Maltese cross, and Lady Keeling waddled across the room and tapped the barometer, which a marble Diana held in her chaste hand, to see if the weather promised well for the bazaar to-morrow. The evening was over, and there would not be another for the next twenty-four hours.Well, indeed! You are much too kind to them after what they did to you, Thomas. I am sorry you did that; they deserved a good slap to serve them out.
TWO:No, sir, I should like to stop.... Of course the Rape of the Lock is artificial: it belongs to its age: its got no more reality than a Watteau picture
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THREE:Oh, yes, you could. Now do just as I tell you, Alice. When youve eaten, well talk again.
TWO:"No, I would not!" But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his example, but having got in, could only stay there. The boys furnished the moral; it was not complimentary.There are several populous towns between Hakone and the base of Fusiyama. Among them may be mentioned Missimi, Noomads, and Harra, none of them containing any features of special importance after the other places our friends had seen. Consequently our party did not halt there any longer than was necessary for the ordinary demands of the journey, but pushed on to the foot of the Holy Peak. As they approached it they met many pilgrims returning from the ascent, and their general appearance of fatigue did not hold out a cheering prospect to the excursionists. But they had come with the determination to make the journey to the summit of the mountain, and were not to be frightened at trifles. They were full of enthusiasm, for the great mountain showed more distinctly every hour as they approached it, and its enormous and symmetrical cone was pushed far up into the sky, and literally pierced the clouds. At times the clouds blew away; the sunlight streamed full upon the lofty mass of ever-during stone, and seemed to warm it into a tropical heat. But the snow lying unmelted in the ravines dispelled the illusion, and they knew that they must encounter chilling winds, and perhaps biting frosts, as they ascended to the higher altitudes.
Such reflections flitted hazily through the Doctor's mind as he strove in vain to find a practical solution of the problem. What was the clock? He knew, from hearsay, that it was situated at the back of this strange being's head. Tom Driver had seen it, and described it in his clumsy fashion. Since that episode the Doctor had visualised something in the nature of an instrument affixed to the Clockwork man's head, and perhaps connected with his cerebral processes. Was it a kind of super-brain? Had there been found some means of lengthening the convolutions of the human brain, so that man's thought travelled further and so enabled him to arrive more swiftly at ultimate conclusions? That seemed suggestive. It must be that in some way the cerebral energy of man had been stored up, as electricity in a battery, and then released by mechanical processes.Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair. O maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!"The Doctor suddenly took her in his arms.[Pg 203] "But you care?" he whispered. "You consent to make me young again?"
