Leaving Gregg at his rooms in the upper part of the town, the Doctor
drove slowly along the High Street in the direction of his own house.
Everything was quiet now, and there was no sign of further disturbance,
no indication that a miracle had taken place in the prosaic town of
Great Wymering. The Doctor noted the fact with quiet satisfaction; it
helped him to simmer down, and it was necessary, for the sake of his
digestion, that he should feel soothed and comforted.
Still, if Gregg's conjectures were anywhere near the mark, in a very
few hours it would be known all over England that the jaws of the
future had opened and disclosed this monstrosity to the eyes of the
present. There would be a great stir of excitement; the newspapers
would be full of the event. Indeed, the whole course of the world might
be altered as a result of this astounding revelation.
He would be dragged into the affair. In spite of himself, he would be
obliged to go into some sort of witness box and declare that from the
first he had thought the Clockwork man phenomenal, when, as a matter of
fact, he had merely thought him a nuisance. But, as one of those who
had first seen the strange figure on the hill, and as a medical man,
he would be expected to make an intelligent statement. One had to be
consistent about such things.
And the real truth was that he had no desire to interest himself in
the matter. It disturbed his mental equilibrium, and threatened the
validity of that carefully considered world of assumptions which
enabled him to make light, easy jests at its inconsistencies and
incongruities.
Besides, it was distressing to discover that, in middle life, he was
no longer in the vanguard of human hopes and fears; but a miserable
backslider, dating back to the time when thought and serious living had
become too difficult for comfort. Regarded in this way, nothing could
ever compensate for the wasted years, the ideals extinguished, the rich
hopes bargained for cheap doubts--unless, indeed, it was the reflection
that such was the common lot of mankind. The comfortable old world
rolled on from generation to generation, and nothing extraordinary
happened to startle people out of their complacent preoccupation
with passions, desires and ambitions. Miracles were supposed to have
happened at certain stages in world-history, but they were immediately
obliterated by a mass of controversial comment, or hushed up by those
whose axes were ground in a world that could be relied upon to go on
repeating itself.
A comfortable world! Of course, there were malcontents. When the
shoe pinched, anybody would cry out for fire from heaven. But if a
plebiscite were to be taken, it would be found that an overwhelming
majority would be in favour of a world without miracles. If, for
example, it could be demonstrated that this Clockwork man was a being
in many ways superior to the rest of mankind, he would be hounded out
of existence by a jealous and conservative humanity.
But the Clockwork man was not. He never had been, and, indeed, God
forbid he ever should be.
With that reflection illuminating his mind, the Doctor ran his car
into the garage, and with some return of his usual debonair manner,
with something of that abiding confidence in a solid earth which is a
necessary prelude to the marshalling of digestive juices, opened the
front door of his house.