"Billy," I said, "I"ve just seen a Good One too. She was dancing about on the water."
"Oh, rot!" cried Billy. "Mine"s the One! Come on, I say! I"m certain she won"t wait. She looked as though she wouldn"t sit still for a single minute."
"What is she like, Billy?" I asked as we hurried away.
"She"s--_oh, she"s the exact image of my mater_!" he said.
Billy"s mater had died about a year ago. At the age of twelve I had been deeply in love with her, and to this hour her image remains with me as the type of all that is most lovely and commendable in woman. O Billy"s mater, will these eyes ever see you again? How glad I am to remember you! I know where you lie buried, but I doubt if there lives another soul who could find your resting-place. Harshly were you judged and conveniently were you forgotten! But I will scatter lilies on your grave this very night.
Well, we ran with all our might. Scarlet Feather, Gray m.u.f.f, and the dancing "good one" on the surface of the water were clean forgotten as if they had never existed--as perhaps one of them never did. "_Just_ like my mater!" Billy kept gasping. "Hurry up! I tell you she won"t wait! She"s on the seat watching the water; no, not _that_ seat. It"s round the next bend but one."
We turned the bend and came in sight of the seat where Billy had seen what he saw. The seat was empty. We looked round us: not a soul was in sight. We checked our pace and in utter silence, and very slowly, crept up to the empty seat, gazing round us as we walked. Was there ever such a melancholy walk! Oh, what a _Via Dolorosa_ we found it! Arrived at the seat, Billy felt it all over with his hands and, finding nothing, flung himself face downwards on the turf and uttered the most lamentable cry I have ever heard.
"I knew she wouldn"t wait," he moaned. "Oh, why weren"t we quicker! Oh, why didn"t I ask her the time the minute I saw her!"
As, shattered and silent, we crawled back to school, continually loitering to gaze at a world that was all hateful, I realised with a feeling of awe that I had become privy to something deep in Billy"s soul. And I inwardly resolved that, so far as I could, I would set the matter right, and put friendship on a footing of true equality, by telling Billy the deepest secret of _mine_.
"Billy," I said, as we lay wakeful in the small hours of the next morning, "come and stay with us next holidays, _and I will show you something_."
"What is it?"
"You wait and see."
The great adventure was over. It had ended in disaster and tears. Never again did Billy and I ask any human being to tell us the time.
III
In those days I was a great metaphysician. Una.s.sisted by any philosopher, ancient or modern, I had made a discovery in the metaphysical line. This discovery was _my_ secret.
In the church-tower of the village where I was nurtured there was an ancient and curious clock, said to have been brought from Spain by a former owner of the parish. This clock was worked by an enormous pendulum which hung down, through a slit in the ceiling, into the body of the church, swinging to and fro at the west end of the nave. Its motion was even and beautiful; and the sight of it fascinated me continually through the hours of divine service. To those who were not attentive, the pendulum was inaudible; but if you listened you could detect a gentle tick, tock, between the pauses of the hymns or the parson"s voice. "Let us pray," said the parson. "Tick," whispered the pendulum. "We beseech Thee--" cried the clerk, (tick!);--"to hear us, good Lord" (tock!). The clerk had unconsciously fallen into the habit of timing his cadence in the responses to correspond with these whispers of the pendulum. For my part, I used to think that this correspondence was the most beautiful arrangement in the universe. I loved the even motion of the pendulum; but I loved the faithful whispers more. To this day I have only to shut my eyes on entering a village church, and sit still for half a minute, and sure enough, stealing through the silence, comes the "tick, tock" of that ancient pendulum.
Of all the religious instruction I received during the eight or nine years we attended that church I confess I have not the faintest recollection. I cannot remember whether the sermons were good or bad, long or short, high, low, or broad. I know they never wearied me, for I never listened to a word that was said. The pendulum saw to that. There were two parsons in our time. The first, I have heard, was a very good man, but by no effort of memory can I recall what he was like. The second I do remember, and could draw his face on this sheet of paper, were I to try. I respected and admired him, not, I am sorry to say, for the purity of his life or his faithfulness in preaching the Gospel, but because he had fought and licked our gardener, whom I detested, outside the village Pub. With a little concentration of mind I can reconstruct the scene in church during this parson"s tenure of office. I can see the rascal eminent in his pulpit, plodding through his task. I can hear the thud of the hymn-book which my father used to toss into the clerk"s pew when he thought the sermon had lasted long enough: immediately the sermon stops and a great bull-voice roars out, "Now to G.o.d the Father,"
and so on. But all such incidents are as a fringe to the main theme of my memory--the restless curve of the swinging disc, and the whispered syllables of Time.
The question that haunted me was this: Did the pendulum _stop_ on reaching the highest point of the ascending arc? Did it pause before beginning the descent? And if it stopped, did _time_ stop with it? I answered both questions in the affirmative. Well, then, what was a _second_? Did the stoppage at the end of the swing make the second, or was the second made by the swing, the movement between the two points of rest? I concluded that it was the stoppage. For, mark you, it _takes_ a second for the pendulum to reach the stopping point on either side; therefore there can be no second till that point is reached; the second must _wait_ for the stoppage to do the business. I saw no other way of getting _any_ seconds. And if no seconds, no minutes; and if no minutes, no hours, no days, and therefore no time at all--which is absurd.
I found great peace in this conclusion; but none the less I continued to support it by collateral reasonings, and by observation. In particular I determined, for reasons of my own, to make a careful survey of the hands of the clock. With this object I borrowed my father"s field-gla.s.s, and, retiring to a convenient point of observation, focussed it on the clock-face. Instantly a startling phenomenon sprang into view. I saw that the big hand of the clock, instead of moving evenly as it seemed to do when viewed by the naked eye, was visibly _jerking_ on its way, in time with the seconds that were being ticked off by the pendulum inside.
By George, the hand was going jerk, jerk! The pendulum and the hand were moving together! Jerk went the hand: then a pause. What"s happening now?
thought I. Why the pendulum has just ticked and is going to tock. Tock it goes and--there you are!--jerk goes the hand again. "Why, of course,"
I said to myself, "that proves it. The hand _stops_, as well as the pendulum. The evidence of the hand corroborates the evidence of the pendulum. The seconds _must_ be the stoppages. They can"t be anything else. There"s nothing else for them to be. I"ll tell Billy Burst this very day! But no, I won"t. I"ll wait till the holidays and _show_ it him."
Such was the secret which I resolved to impart to Billy in return for what he had disclosed to me.
Some months after this amazing discovery Billy came down for the holidays. He arrived late in the afternoon, and I could hardly restrain my impatience while he was having his tea. Hardly had he swallowed the last mouthful when I had him by the jacket. "Come on, Billy," I cried.
"I"m going to show you something"--and we ran together to the church.
Arrived there, I placed him in front of the pendulum, which seemed to be swinging that afternoon with an even friendlier motion than usual.
"There!" I said, "look at him."
Billy stood spell-bound. Oh, you should have seen his face! You should have seen his eyes slowly moving their lambent lights as they followed the rhythm of the pendulum from side to side. If Billy was hypnotised by the pendulum, I was hypnotised by Billy. Suddenly he clutched my arm in his wonted way.
"I say," he whispered, "_it knows us_. Here, old chap" (addressing the pendulum), "you know us, don"t you? You"re glad to see us, aren"t you?"
"Tick, tock," said the pendulum.
"Can"t he talk--just!" said Billy. "Look at his eye! He winked at me that time, I"ll swear." And, by the Powers, the very next time the pendulum reached the top of the arc I saw the crumpled metal in the middle of the disc double itself up and wink at _me_ also, plain as plain.
"Billy," I said, "if we stare at him much longer we shall both go cracked. Let"s go into the churchyard. I"ve something else to show you."
So to the churchyard we went, and there, among the mouldering tombstones, I expounded to Billy my new theory as to the nature of Time, reserving the crowning evidence until Billy had grasped the main principle.
"So you see," I concluded, "the seconds are the stoppages."
"There aren"t any stoppages," said he. "Pendulums don"t stop."
"How can they go down after coming up unless they stop between?" I asked.
"Wait till you get to the Higher Mathematics."
"Then where do the seconds come in?"
"They don"t _come_ in: they _are_ in all along."
"Then," I said triumphantly, "look at that clock face. Can"t you see how the big hand goes jerk, jerk?"
"Well, what of that?"
"What of that? Why, if the seconds aren"t the stoppages, what becomes of time between the jerks?"
"Why," answered Billy, "_it"s plugging ahead all the time_."
"All _what_ time?" I countered, convinced now that I had him in a vicious circle.
"Blockhead!" cried Billy. "Don"t you remember what that old Johnny told us in the Park? There"s all the difference in the world between _the_ time and _time_."
"I"ll bet you can"t tell me what the difference is."
"Yes, I can. It"s the difference between the pendulum and the clock-hand. Look at the jerking old idiot! _That_ thing can"t talk; _that_ thing can"t wink; _that_ thing doesn"t know us. Why, you silly, it only does what the pendulum tells it to do. The pendulum _knows_ what it"s doing. But _that_ thing doesn"t. Here, let"s go back into the church and have another talk with the jolly old chap!"
Ten years later when Billy, barely twenty-three, had half finished a book which would have made him famous, I handed him an essay by a distinguished philosopher, and requested him to read it. The t.i.tle was "On translating Time into Eternity." When Billy returned it, I asked him how he had fared. "Oh," he answered, "I translated time into eternity without much difficulty. _But it was plugging ahead all the time._"
Shortly after that, Billy rejoined his mater--a victim to the same disease. Poor Billy! You brought luck to others; G.o.d knows you had little yourself. He died in a hospital, without kith or kin to close his eyes. The Sister who attended him brought me a small purse which she said Billy had very urgently requested her to give me. On opening the purse I found in it a gold coin, marked with a cross. The nurse also told me that an hour before he died Billy sat up suddenly in his bed and, opening his eyes very wide, said in a singing voice:
"If you please, Sir, would you mind telling me the time?"