III

In those days I was a great metaphysician. Unassisted 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 God 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-glass, 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 title 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; God 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?"