And the other noise, the purring and whirring, resumed this time so
close to Arthur that he instinctively, and half in fear, arose from
the stile and looked around him. But the tall hedges sweeping away on
either side made it difficult to see anyone who might be approaching
under their cover. There was a pause. Then a different sound.
Click--click--clickerty click--clicker clicker--clicker-- And so on,
becoming louder and louder until at last it stopped, and its place was
taken by the dull pitter-patter of footsteps coming nearer and nearer.
There was a little harsh snort that might have been intended for a
sigh, and then a voice.
"Oh dear, it is trying. It really is most dreadfully trying--"
The next moment the Clockwork man came into full view round the corner
of the hedge. He was swaying slightly from side to side, in his usual
fashion, and his eyes stared straight ahead of him. He did not appear
to notice Arthur, and did not stop until the latter politely stepped
aside in order to allow him to pass. Then the Clockwork man screwed his
head slowly round and appeared to become faintly apprehensive of the
presence of another being. After a preliminary ear-flapping, he opened
his mouth very wide.
"You haven't," he began, with great difficulty, "seen a hat and wig?"
"No," said Arthur, and he glanced at the Clockwork man's bald forehead
and noticed something peculiar about the construction of the back of
his head; there seemed to be some object there which he could not see
because they were facing each other. "I'm sorry," he continued, looking
rather hopelessly around him, "perhaps we could find them somewhere."
"Somewhere!" echoed the Clockwork man, "that's what seems to me
so extraordinary! Everybody says that. The idea of a thing being
_somewhere_, you know. Elsewhere than where you expect it to be. It's
so confusing."
Arthur consulted his common sense. "Can't you remember the place where
you lost them," he suggested.
A faint wrinkle of perplexity appeared on the other's forehead. He
shook his head once "Place. There, again, I can't grasp that idea.
What is a place? And how does a thing come to be in one place and not
in another?" He jerked a hand up as though to emphasise the point. "A
thing either is or it isn't. It can't be in a _place_."
"But it must be somewhere," objected Arthur, "that's obvious."
The Clockwork man looked vaguely distressed. "Theoretically," he
agreed, "what you say is correct. I can conceive it as a mathematical
problem. But actually, you know, it isn't at all obvious."
He jerked his head slowly round and gazed at the surrounding objects.
"It's such an extraordinary world. I can't get used to it at all. One
keeps on bumping into things and falling into things--things that ought
not to be there, you know."
Arthur could hardly control an eager curiosity to know what the thing
was, round and shiny, that looked like a sort of halo at the back of
the Clockwork man's head. He kept on dodging from one side to the other
in an effort to see it clearly.
"Are you looking at my clock?" enquired the Clockwork man, without
altering his tone of speech. "I must apologise. I feel quite indecent."
"But what is it for?" gasped Arthur.
"It's the regulating mechanism," said the other, monotonously, "I keep
on forgetting that you _can't_ know these things. You see, it controls
me. But, of course, it's out of order. That's how I came to be here,
in this absurd world. There can't be any other reason, I'm sure." He
looked so childishly perplexed that Arthur's sense of pity was again
aroused, and he listened in respectful silence.
"You see," the mechanical voice went on, "only about half the clock is
in action. That accounts for my present situation." There was a pause,
broken only by obscure tickings, regular but thin in sound. "I had been
feeling very run down, and went to have myself attended to. Then some
careless mechanic blundered, and of course I went all wrong." He turned
swiftly and looked hard at Arthur. "All wrong. Absolutely all wrong.
And of course, I--I--lapsed, you see."
"Lapsed!" queried Arthur.
"Yes, I lapsed. Slipped, if you like that better--slipped back about
eight thousand years, so far as I can make out. And, of course,
everything is different." His arms shot up both together in an abrupt
gesture of despair. "And now I am confronted with all these old
problems of Time and Space."
Arthur's recent reflections returned to him, and produced a little glow
in his mind. "Is there a world," he questioned, "where the problems of
Time and Space are different?"
"Of course," replied the Clockwork man, clicking slightly, "quite
different. The clock, you see, made man independent of Time and Space.
It solved everything."
"But what happens," Arthur wanted to know, "when the clock works
properly?"
"Everything happens," said the other, "exactly as you want it to
happen."
"Awfully convenient," Arthur murmured.
"Exceedingly." The Clockwork man's head nodded up and down with a
regular rhythm. "The whole aim of man is convenience." He jerked
himself forward a few paces, as though impelled against his will. "But
my present situation, you know, is extremely _in_convenient."
He waddled swiftly along, and, to Arthur's great disappointment,
disappeared round the corner of the hedge, so that it was impossible to
get more than a fleeting glimpse of that fascinating object at the back
of his head. But he was still speaking.
"I don't know what I shall do, I'm sure," Arthur heard him say, as
though to himself.