I

It must remain for ever a question for curious speculation as to
what action might have been taken by Doctor Allingham and Gregg in
conjunction, had they been able to pursue their investigation of the
Clockwork man upon a thorough-going scale; for while their discussions
were taking place the subject of them escaped from his confinement in
the coal cellar.

Indeed, it was hardly to be expected that he would remain there for
very long. As Gregg pointed out, such very delicate mechanism needed
constant attention, and the unexpected was always likely to occur.
There must have been some deeply-rooted automatism that gradually
released the Clockwork man from his sleep; and having awakened, the
grimy walls of the cellar no doubt struck him as distasteful. It was
not to be expected that the Doctor, in his hurry and panic, should have
succeeded in mastering the intricacies of the clock. He had merely
brought about a temporary quiescence which had gradually worked off.
It had to be borne in mind, also, that although the Clockwork man was
dependent upon adjustment in order that he should be made to work in a
right fashion, it was only too plain that he could act independently
and quite wrongly.

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.

And now that he had disappeared there was a strong chance that he would
never return, and that his personality and all that was connected with
him would dissolve from memory of man or crystallise into a legend.
That seemed a legitimate consummation of the affair, and it was the
one that Doctor Allingham finally accepted. This visitation, like
other alleged miracles in the past, had a meaning; and it was the
meaning that mattered more than the actual miracle. To discover the
significance of the Clockwork man seemed to Doctor Allingham a task
worthy of the highest powers of man.

The Doctor's conclusion may be taken as a fair expression of his
character. Naturally, the effect of such a preposterous revelation upon
a sluggish and doubting mind would be to arouse it to a kind of furious
defence of all that man has been in the past, and a scarcely less
spirited rejection of that grotesque possibility of the future which
the Clockwork man presented to the ordinary observer. Gregg, on the
other hand, may be excused, on the score of his extreme youthfulness,
for the impetuosity of his actions. His attempt to persuade the editor
of the _Wide World Magazine_ that his version of the affair, put in
the shape of a magazine story, was actually founded on fact, ended in
grotesque failure. His narrative power was not doubted; but he was
advised to work the story up and introduce a little humour before
offering it as a contribution to some magazine that did not vouch for
the truth of its tall stories. As this was beneath Gregg's dignity,
and he could find no one else to take him seriously, he shut up like an
oyster, and just in time to forestall a suspicious attitude on the part
of his friends. It was only years later, and after many experiences in
this world of hard fact and difficult endeavour, that he began to share
the Doctor's view, and to cherish the memory of the Clockwork man as a
legend rich in significance.


II

One evening Arthur Withers and Rose Lomas sat together on their
favourite stile talking in low whispers. The summer dusk lagged, and
the air about them was so still that between their softly spoken words
they could hear the talk of innumerable insects in the grass at their
feet. There had been few interruptions. So familiar had their figures
become in that position, that it had grown to be almost a tradition
among the people who passed that way during the evening to cross the
stile without disturbing the lovers. There are ways, too, of sitting
upon a stile without incommoding the casual pedestrian.

This evening there had been one or two labourers with red, wrinkled
faces, too hungry and tired to make much comment. Then Mrs. Flack had
come hurrying along with her black bag (they had to get off for her as
she was not so young as she had been), and soon afterwards the Curate,
who beamed affably, and enquired when it was to be. He was so looking
forward to uniting them.

But it was not to be yet. That was the burden of their subdued
murmurings. It couldn't be done on Arthur's present income, and he was
still less certain than ever that it could be regarded as cumulative
or even permanent. Rose understood. To her country-bred mind it was
marvellous that Arthur should succeed in adding up so many figures
during the course of a day, even though the result did not always meet
with the approval of the bank authorities. They would have to wait.

"It's such a responsibility," said Arthur, presently. "If we were to
get married, I mean. I might come home with the sack any day."

"I shouldn't mind," protested Rose, "but I couldn't bear you to feel
like that about it. We shall have to wait."

"I wonder why I'm not clever," Arthur remarked, after a long pause.
Rose clutched him indignantly towards her.

"Oh, you are. The things you say. The things you think! I never knew."

And although he shook his head vigorously, Arthur inwardly contemplated
that region in his mind wherein existed all the matters that comprised
a knowledge quite irrelevant to the practical affairs of life but very
useful for the purpose of living.

"I _do_ have ideas," he admitted, thoughtfully. "I suppose I'm really
what you might call an intellectual sort of chap."

"Dreadfully," said Rose, without a trace of disrespect. "The books you
read!"

"Of course, I'm only a sort of amateur," Arthur continued, modestly.
"But I do like books, and I can generally get at what a chap's driving
at--in a way."

He stared hard at a grasshopper, who seemed to be considering the
possibility of an enormous leap, for his great hind legs were taut and
his long feelers caressed the air. "Sometimes I think the chaps who
write books must be a bit like me--in a way. They seem to like the same
things as I do. There's a lot about beauty in most books, and I like
beauty, don't you?"

"Yes," breathed Rose, wondering what exactly he meant.

The grasshopper hopped and landed with a quite distinct thud, almost at
their feet. They both looked at it without thinking about it at all.
But its advent produced a pause.

"In the books I've read," Arthur resumed, "there's generally a chap
whom you might regard as being not much good at anything and yet pretty
decent."

"Heroes," suggested Rose, whose knowledge of literature was not very
wide.

"Sometimes. Chaps people don't understand. That's because they like
beauty more than anything else, and not many people really care about
beauty. They only think of it when they see a sunset or look at
pictures. If you can forget beauty, then you're alright. Nobody thinks
you're strange. You don't have any difficulties."

The slight stirring of Rose's body, and a sigh so low that Arthur
scarcely heard it, seemed to suggest that matters were becoming rather
too deep for comprehension. The grasshopper sprung again, and this time
landed upon the stile, where he remained for a long while, as though
wondering what perversion of the common sense natural to grasshoppers
could have prompted him to choose so barren a landing place. During
the long pause Rose did not see the look of strained perplexity upon
Arthur's face.

"But they always get married," he said, suddenly. "The chaps in books,
I mean. They always get married in the end."

"Oh, Arthur!" Her hand went up to pull down his, for the moment,
unwilling head. "Oh, Arthur, we will get married some day."

"You're so pretty," he whispered. "You're so very beautiful."

"Oh, am I? Do you think so? I'm so glad--I'm so sorry."

Her tears gushed forth, inexplicably, even to Arthur, who thought he
understood so much that was difficult to understand. He had let loose
his feeling without any real knowledge of its depth, or that which it
aroused in Rose.

"I can't bear you not to have me," she sobbed. "It's cruel. It ought to
be arranged. People ought to understand."

Arthur was startled back to common sense. "They don't," he whispered,
as they held one another in trembling arms. "If they did they would be
like us."

And then he remembered a possible sequel to the search for beauty.

"Besides," he added, in a formal whisper, "there's the children."


III

Along the path that led from Bapchurch to Great Wymering there walked
two persons, slowly, and with an air of having talked themselves into
embarrassed silence. Their steps were gradually bringing them to the
stile upon which Arthur and Rose sat.

"That last remark of yours cut me to the quick," said the Doctor, at
last.

"I meant it to," said Lilian, firmly. "I want you to be cut to the
quick. It's our only chance."

"Of what?" enquired the Doctor, conscious of masculine stupidity.

"Of loving somehow. Oh, don't you understand? I want to care for you,
but you're making it impossible. You _will_ jest about the things
sacred to me. Your flippant tongue destroys everything. It's as I
said just now. I like my friends to be humorous; but my lover must be
serious."

"But I can't help it," pleaded the Doctor. "Take away my humour and I'm
frightened at what's left of myself. There's nothing but an appalling
chaos."

"Because you are afraid of life," said Lilian. "Men have laughed their
way through the ages; women have wept and lived. I can't share your
world of assumptions and rule of thumb laws. To me love is a chaos, a
dear confusion--a divine muddle. It's creation itself, an indefinite
proceeding beginning with God."

The Doctor harked back in his mind to the beginning of their talk. "But
you objected to my house," he mused, "that was how the discussion
arose. And now we've got somewhere up in the stars."

Lilian glanced up at them. "If only we could keep there! By their
habitations are men known. A house ought to be a sort of resting place.
No more. Once you elaborate it, it becomes a prison, with hard labour
attached."

"But where does all this lead?" pondered the Doctor, half falling in
with her mood. "Why not make some things permanent and as good as they
can be?"

"Because they are only part of ourselves, only so many additions to the
human organism, extra bits of brain. We're slowly discovering that.
Humanity daren't be permanent, except in its fundamentals, and all the
fundamentals have to do with living and being. Just think what would
happen if the blood in your veins became permanent?"

"Death," said the Doctor, speaking from knowledge rather than from
symbolical conviction.

"Well, then," resumed Lilian, triumphantly, "isn't all this possession
of things, all this wanting to have and keep, a sort of death,
beginning from the extremities? Wouldn't it be awful if the human body
didn't change, if we got fixed in some way, didn't grow old or lose our
hair, or have influenza?"

The Doctor paused in his walk. How strange that Lilian should say that!
It almost seemed as though she must have heard about the Clockwork man!

And then they both stopped, and at the same moment saw Rose and Arthur
seated on the stile.

"Let's go back," whispered Lilian, and they turned and retraced their
steps. The sight of the lovers sealed their lips. Doctor Allingham
struggled for a few moments with a strange sense of bigness wanting
to escape. Almost it was a physical sensation; as though the nervous
energy in his brain had begun to flow independently of the controls
that usually guided it through the channels graven by knowledge and
experience. It was Lilian who spoke next, and there was a note of pain
in her voice.

"Oh, why are we troubled like this? Why can't we be like _them_? We
shan't ever get any nearer happiness this way. We shan't ever be better
than those two. We've simply got a few more thoughts, a little more
knowledge--and it may be quite the wrong kind of knowledge."

"Then why--" began the Doctor, as though this begged the whole question.

"Oh, wait," said Lilian, "I had to have it out with you. I had to talk
of these things, as though talking's any good! I couldn't let you just
take me for granted. Don't you see? I suppose all this talk between us
is nothing but an extension of the age-long process of mating. I'm just
like the primitive woman running away from her man."

The Doctor paused in his walk and took hold of her elbows. "Does that
mean that you've been playing with me all this time?"

"Coquette," smiled Lilian, "only it's not been conscious until this
moment. Somehow those two reminded me. There's always this dread of
capture with us women, and nowadays it's more complicated and extended.
Yes, thought does give us longer life. Everything has a larger prelude.
I've been afraid of your big house, which will be such a nuisance to
look after. I've been afraid of a too brief honeymoon, and then of
you becoming a cheerful companion at meals and a regular winder up of
clocks." She laughed hysterically. "And then you might do woodcarving
in the winter evenings."

"Not on your life," roared the Doctor. "At the worst I shall bore you
with my many-times-told jests."

"And at the best I shall learn to put up with them," said Lilian.
"That's where my sense of humour will come in."

The Doctor suddenly took her in his arms. "But you care?" he
whispered. "You consent to make me young again?"

She stirred curiously in his arms, her mind newly alert.

"Oh, I never thought of that. How stupid we clever people are! I never
thought that being a lover would make you young."

"Ignoramus," laughed the Doctor. "A woman's first child is always her
husband."

"You and your epigrams!"

"You and your thoughts!"

She joined in his mirth. A little later it was before she had the last
word.

"Creation," she whispered, "I don't believe it's happened yet. That
seven days and seven nights is still going on. Man has yet to be
created, and woman must help to create him."
