ringing like a bell through the night

|||       In the silence time passed.




I saw that sentence in Raymond Chandler's 1943 novel, The Lady In The Lake.


I thought it was a really good sentence.


In the silence time passed.


Some people would have written,


In the silence, time passed.


But Chandler wrote,


In the silence time passed.


It passed in the dry whirr of the electric clock on the mantel, in the far-off toot of an auto horn on Aster Drive, in the hornet drone of a plane over the foothills across the canyon, in the sudden lurch and growl of the electric refrigerator in the kitchen.
_______________
This comes from Chapter Fifteen.


----------------- [excerpts] -----------------


|||       I sat there in the car a little while, thinking, looking out to sea and admiring the blue gray fall of the foothills towards the ocean.  I was trying to  make up my mind whether to try handling Lavery with a feather or go on using the back of my hand and edge of my tongue. 


I decided I could lose nothing by the soft approach. 


If that didn't produce for me -- and I didn't think it would -- nature could take its course and we could bust up the furniture.




|||       The air was clearer than yesterday.  The morning was full of peace....


The venetian blinds were down across the front windows and the place had a sleepy look....




|||       I gave the door a little push and it moved inward with a light click.  The room beyond was dim, but there was some light from west windows.  Nobody answered my ring.  I didn't ring again....





|||       I fixed the door about as I had found it and stood there and listened....


------------------------ [end, excerpts] -------------


This kind of writing, the unfolding of images and speculations reminds me of a Stevie Nicks song.  Which Stevie Nicks song?  Any one of them, because of the haunting enchantedness, the isolated questioning of the human mind and heart and intuition...


"the morning was full of peace"


"some light from west windows"




The sturdy aloneness of his short sentences:


"Nobody answered my ring.


I didn't ring again."


Just like the white-winged dove,


Sings a song sounds like she's singin'


Oo!  Baby, oo!  Oo!





And the days go by
Like a strand in the wind
In the web that is my own
I begin again ...




|||       I fixed the door about as I had found it and stood there and listened....  In the silence time passed.  It passed in the dry whirr of the electric clock on the mantel, in the far-off toot of an auto horn on Aster Drive, in the hornet drone of a plane over the foothills across the canyon, in the sudden lurch and growl of the electric refrigerator in the kitchen.





I went farther into the room and stood peering around and listening and hearing nothing except those fixed sounds belonging to the house and having nothing to do with the humans in it.  I started along the rug towards the archway at the back.




A hand in a glove appeared on the slope of the white metal railing, at the edge of the archway, where the stairs went down. 


It appeared and stopped.




Dreams unwind
Love's a state of mind
Dreams unwind
Love's a state of mind...    





-30-