“My Dear Young Friend,” said Father Time, as he laid his hand gently
upon my shoulder, “you are entirely wrong.”
Then I looked up over my shoulder from the table at which I was sitting
and I saw him.
But I had known, or felt, for at least the last half-hour that he was
standing somewhere near me.
You have had, I do not doubt, good reader, more than once that strange
uncanny feeling that there is some one unseen standing beside you, in a
darkened room, let us say, with a dying fire, when the night has grown
late, and the October wind sounds low outside, and when, through the
thin curtain that we call Reality, the Unseen World starts for a moment
clear upon our dreaming sense.
You _have_ had it? Yes, I know you have. Never mind telling me about it.
Stop. I don’t want to hear about that strange presentiment you had the
night your Aunt Eliza broke her leg. Don’t let’s bother with _your_
experience. I want to tell mine.
“You are quite mistaken, my dear young friend,” repeated Father Time,
“quite wrong.”
“_Young_ friend?” I said, my mind, as one’s mind is apt to in such a
case, running to an unimportant detail. “Why do you call me young?”
“Your pardon,” he answered gently--he had a gentle way with him, had
Father Time. “The fault is in my failing eyes. I took you at first sight
for something under a hundred.”
“Under a hundred?” I expostulated. “Well, I should think so!”
“Your pardon again,” said Time, “the fault is in my failing memory. I
forgot. You seldom pass that nowadays, do you? Your life is very short
of late.”
I heard him breathe a wistful hollow sigh. Very ancient and dim he
seemed as he stood beside me. But I did not turn to look upon him. I had
no need to. I knew his form, in the inner and clearer sight of things,
as well as every human being knows by innate instinct, the Unseen face
and form of Father Time.
I could hear him murmuring beside me, “Short--short, your life is
short”; till the sound of it seemed to mingle with the measured ticking
of a clock somewhere in the silent house.
Then I remembered what he had said.
“How do you know that I am wrong?” I asked. “And how can you tell what I
was thinking?”
“You said it out loud,” answered Father Time. “But it wouldn’t have
mattered, anyway. You said that Christmas was all played out and done
with.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “that’s what I said.”
“And what makes you think that?” he questioned, stooping, so it seemed
to me, still further over my shoulder.
“Why,” I answered, “the trouble is this. I’ve been sitting here for
hours, sitting till goodness only knows how far into the night, trying
to think out something to write for a Christmas story. And it won’t go.
It can’t be done--not in these awful days.”
“A Christmas Story?”
“Yes. You see, Father Time,” I explained, glad with a foolish little
vanity of my trade to be able to tell him something that I thought
enlightening, “all the Christmas stuff--stories and jokes and
pictures--is all done, you know, in October.”