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I slept on the floor of the house, but the night was so bitter cold that I got up by the fire several times, and when it burned low I rekindled it with an old mantel-clock and the wreck of a bedstead which stood in a corner of the room the only act of vandalism that I recall done by myself personally during the war.
I was base enough to take out my watch, a very fine Poitevin, and make an advertisement of that pledge under pretence of comparing time with the mantel-clock. This precious manoeuvre appeared quite successful. Very soon my ideas of apprehension and defiance were followed by other thoughts of a very different kind.
One doesn't want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you know, but just the reverse." He glanced at his pretty French mantel-clock. "That clock's wrong again. That clock hardly ever knows what time it is; and when it does know, it lies about it which amounts to the same thing. Alfred!" There was no answer. "Alfred!... Good servant, but as uncertain as the clock."
"I should like to know the time," he growled. "It's only fair." "To be sure," assented Indiman, and he pushed his watch, face upward, into the middle of the table. The dial indicated half-past seven, at which I was somewhat surprised, for I had not thought it so late. But my own watch had run down, and it will be remembered that Indiman had stopped the mantel-clock the night before.
Thus there is a natural rhythm to a man's walk, depending on the length of his legs, which beat more or less rapidly as they are longer or shorter, like metronomes differently adjusted, or the pendulums of different time-keepers. Commodore Nutt is to M. Bihin in this respect as a little, fast-ticking mantel-clock is to an old-fashioned, solemn-clicking, upright time-piece.
In Sponge's room for instance, there were hip-baths, and foot-baths, a shower-bath, and hot and cold baths adjoining, and mirrors innumerable; an eight-day mantel-clock, by Moline of Geneva, that struck the hours, half-hours, and quarters: cut-glass toilet candlesticks, with silver sconces; an elegant zebra-wood cabinet; also a beautiful davenport of zebra-wood, with a plate-glass back, containing a pen rug worked on silver ground, an ebony match box, a blue crystal, containing a sponge pen-wiper, a beautiful envelope-case, a white-cornelian seal, with 'Hanby House' upon it, wax of all colours, papers of all textures, envelopes without end every imaginable requirement of correspondence except a pen that would write.
Yet that was the only poem she heard. The title of the next one, John said as he lifted it, was, "If I should love again;" but Barbara asked a dreamy question of a very general character; he replied, then asked one in turn; they discussed she introducing the topic the religious duty and practicability of making all one's life and each and every part of it good poetry, and the inner and outer conditions essential thereunto; and when two strange ladies came in and promptly went out again John glanced at the mantel-clock, exclaimed his surprise at the hour, and gathering up the manuscript, rose to say his parting word.
I slept on the floor of the house, but the night was so bitter cold that I got up by the fire several times, and when it burned low I rekindled it with an old mantel-clock and the wreck of a bedstead which stood in a corner of the room the only act of vandalism that I recall done by myself personally during the war.
The chamber was in darkness and it seemed absolutely impossible for me to light a lamp because I thought I could not take the time for fear the infernal machine would go off in those few seconds. I threw myself on the floor and listened under the bed. The noise came from above. But where? I sprang to the fireplace, hoping that, against my orders, someone had started the mantel-clock.
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