TIME HALTS
He looked at his watch a second time, and found that it was later than
he had supposed--eleven o'clock. In the act of winding it, however, he
paused; something he had forgotten came back to him, and a curious
smile broke over his face. He stroked his beard, glanced at the ceiling
where the moths still banged and buzzed, then strolled over to the open
window, and said "Hm!" He put his head and shoulders out into the air.
And then he again said "Hm--m--m"--only longer than the first time. It
seemed as if some one answered him. That "Hm" floated off to some one
who was listening for it. Perhaps it was an echo that came floating
back. Perhaps it wasn't.
But any grown-up person who hesitates in an empty room of a country
house at eleven o'clock at night and murmurs "Hm" into the open air is
not in an ordinary state of mind. The normal thing is to put the lights
out and go up more or less briskly to bed. Uncle Felix was no exception
to this rule. His emotions, evidently, were not quite normal.
He listened. The night was very still. The stars, like a shower of
golden rain arrested in full flight, paused in a flock and looked at
him, but in so deliberate a way that he was conscious of being looked
at. It was rather a delightful sensation, he thought; never before had
they seemed so intimate, so interested in his life. He was aware that a
friendly relationship existed between him and those far, bright,
twinkling eyes. "Hm" he murmured softly once again, then heard a sound
of wings rush whirring past his face, and next a chattering of birds
somewhere overhead among the heavy eaves. "So I'm not the only one
awake," he thought, and, for some odd reason, felt rather pleased about
it. "Sounds like swallows. I wonder!"
But he saw no movement anywhere; no wind stirred the ivy on the wall,
the limes were motionless, the earth asleep. Even the stream beyond the
laurel shrubberies ran silently. Dimly he made out the garden lying at
attention, the flower-beds like folded hands upon its breast; and
further off, the big untidy elms in pools of deeper shadow, their
outlines blurred as dreams blur the mind. Yet, though he could detect
no slightest movement, he was keenly aware that other things beside the
stars were looking at him. The night was full of carefully-screened
eyes, all fixed upon him. Framed in the lighted window, he was so
easily visible. Night herself, calm and majestic, gazed down upon him
through wide-open lids that filled the entire sky. He felt the
intentness of her steadfast gaze, and paused. He stopped. It seemed
that everything stopped too. So striking, indeed, was the sensation,
that he gave expression to it half aloud:
"It's slowing up," he murmured, "stopping!... I do believe! Hm!..."
There was no answer this time, no sign of echo anywhere, but he heard
an owl calling its muffled note from the Wood without a Centre.
"It's probably seen me too," he thought, and then it also stopped.
He waited a moment, hoping it would begin again, for he loved the
atmosphere of childhood that the sound invoked in him. But the flutey
call was not repeated. He drew his head in, closed and bolted the
window, fastened the shutters carefully and pulled the curtains over;
then he extinguished the lamps, lit his candle, and moved out softly
into the hall on his way upstairs. And for the first time in his life
he felt that in shutting the window he had not shut the beauty out. The
beauty of that watching, listening night had not gone away from him by
closing down the shutters. It was not lost. It stopped there. This
novel realisation was very queer and very exquisite. Regret did not
operate.
And he went along the passage, murmuring "Hm" over and over to himself,
for there seemed nothing more adequate that he could think of. The
servants had long since gone to bed; he alone was awake in the whole
big house. He moved cautiously down the long corridor towards the green
baize doors, fully aware that it was not the proper way upstairs. He
pushed them, and they swung behind him with a grunt that repeated
itself several times, lessening and shortening until it ended in an
abrupt puffing sound--and he found himself in a chilly corridor of
stone. It was very dark; the candle threw the shadow of his hand down
the gaping length in front of him. He went stealthily a few steps
further, then stopped opposite a closed door of white. For a moment he
held his breath, examining the panels by the light of the raised
candle; then turned the knob of brass, threw it wide open, and found
himself--in Mrs. Horton's kitchen.
The room was very warm. There was the curious, familiar smell of brooms
and aprons, of soap and soda, flavoured with brown sugar, treacle, and
a dash of toast and roasted coffee. The ashes still glowed between the
bars of the range like a grinning mouth. He put the candle down and
looked about him nervously. There was an awful moment when he thought a
great six-foot cook, with red visage and bare arms, would rise and
strike him with a ladle or a rolling-pin. In the faint light he made
out the white deal table in the centre, the rows of pots and pans
gleaming in mid-air, dish-cloths hanging on a string to dry, layers of
plates of various sizes on the shelves, and jugs suspended by their
handles at an angle ready for pouring out. He saw the dresser with its
huge, capacious drawers--the only drawers in the world that opened
easily, and were deep enough to be of value.
Also--there was a sound, the sound all kitchens have, steadily tapping,
clicking, ticking. He turned; he saw the familiar object whence the
sound proceeded. At the end of the great silent room, upright like a
sentry placed against the wall, stiff and rigid, he saw a figure with a
round and pallid face, staring solemnly at him through the gloom. He
stiffened and stood rigid too, listening to the tapping noise that
issued from its hollow interior of wood and iron. Watching him with
remorseless mien, the kitchen clock asked him for the password. "Why
not? Why not?" its ticking said distinctly.
The warmth was comforting. He sat down on the white deal table, knowing
himself an intruder, but boldly facing the tall monster that guarded
the deserted room and challenged him. "_You_ haven't stopped," he
answered in his beard. "Why not?" And as he said it, a new expression
stole upon its hardened countenance, the challenge melted, the obdurate
stare relaxed. The quaint, grandfatherly aspect of benevolence shone
over it like a smile; it looked not only kind, but contrite. He saw it
as it used to be, ages and ages ago, when he was a boy, sliding down
the banisters towards it, or towards its counterpart in the hall. It
winked.
The ticking, too, became less aggressive and relentless, less sure of
itself, almost as though it were slowing up. There was a plaintive note
behind the metallic sharpness. The great kitchen clock also was aware
of a conspiracy hatching against Time....
And as he sat and listened to the machinery tapping away the seconds,
he heard a similar tapping in his brain that swung gradually into
rhythm with the clock. A pendulum in his mind was swinging, each swing
a little shorter than the one before; and he remembered that a dozen
pendulums in a room, starting at different lengths, ended by swinging
all together. "We're slowing up together--stopping!" murmured the two
pendulums. "Why not? Why not? Why not?..."
Presently both would cease, yet ceasing would be the beginning, not the
end. A state without end or beginning would supervene. Ticking meant
time, and time meant becoming; but beyond becoming lay the bottomless
sea of being, which was eternity. Maria floated there--calm, quiet,
serene, little globular Maria, circular, the perfect form.
The Kitchen Spell rolled in upon him, smothering mind and senses.
It came at first so gradually he hardly noticed it, but it rose and
rose and rose, till at length he sat dipped to the eyes in it, and then
finally his eyes went under too. He was immersed, submerged. The
parochial vanished; he swam in the universal. He felt drowsy, soothed,
and very happy; his heart beat differently. Consciousness ran
fluttering along the edge of something hard that hitherto had seemed an
unsurpassable barrier. The barrier melted and let him through.
He rubbed his eyes and started. "That's the clock in Mrs. Horton's
kitchen," he tried to say, but the words had an empty and ridiculous
sound, as if there was no meaning in them. They flew about him in the
air like little butterflies trying to settle. They settled on one
meaning, only to flit elsewhere the next minute and settle on another
meaning. They could mean anything and everything. They did mean
everything. They meant _one_ thing. Finally they settled back into his
heart. And their meaning caught him by the throat in a most delicious
way. The air was full of tiny fluttering wings; he heard pattering feet
and little voices; hair tied with coloured ribbons brushed his cheeks;
and laughing, mischievous eyes like stars floated loose about the
ceiling. The Kitchen Spell grew mighty--irresistible... rising over him
out of a timeless Long Ago.
From the direction of the ghostly towel-horse it seemed to come. But
beyond the towel-horse was the window, and beyond the window lay the
open fields, and beyond the fields lay miles and miles of country
asleep beneath the stars; and this country stretched without a break
right up to the lonely wolds of distant Yorkshire where an old grey
house contained another kitchen, silent and deserted in the night. All
the empty kitchens of England were at this moment in league together,
but this old Yorkshire kitchen was the parent of them all--and thence
the Spell first issued. It was his own childhood kitchen.
And Uncle Felix travelled backwards against the machinery of Time that
cheats the majority so easily with its convention of moving hands and
ticking voice and bullying, staring visage. He slid swiftly down the
long banister-descent of years and reached in a flash that old sombre
Yorkshire kitchen, and stood, four-foot nothing, face smudged and
fingers sticky, beside the big deal table with the dying embers in the
grate upon his right. His heart was beating. He could just reach the
juicy cake without standing on a chair. He ate the very slice that he
had eaten forty years ago. It _was_ possible to have your cake and eat
it too!...
He gulped it down and sucked the five fingers of each hand in
turn--then turned to attack the staring monster that had tried to make
him believe it was impossible. He crossed the stone floor on tiptoe,
but with challenge in his heart, looked straight into its humbugging
big face, opened its carefully buttoned jacket--and took off the
weights.
"Hm!" he murmured, with complacent satisfaction that included victory,
"I've stopped you!"
There was a curious, long-drawn sound as the machinery ran down; the
chains quivered, then hung motionless. There was disaster in the sound,
but laughter too--the laughter of the culprit caught in the act,
unmasked, exposed at last. "But I've had a good time these last hundred
years," he seemed to hear, with the obvious answer this insolence
suggested: "Caught! You're It!"--in a tone that was not wholly unlike
Maria's.
He turned and left the kitchen as stealthily as he had entered it. He
went along the cold stone corridor, through the green baize doors, and
so up the softly carpeted stairs to his bedroom. He undressed and
rolled solemnly between the sheets. He sighed deeply, but he did not
move again. He fell instantly into the right position for sleep.
But while he slept, the timeless night brought up its mystery. Moored
outside against the walls an Extra Day lay swinging from the stars. The
waves of Time washed past its sides, yet could not move it. The wind
was in the rigging; it lay at anchor, filling the sky with a beauty of
eternity. And above the old Mill House the darkness, led by the birds,
flowed on to meet the quivering Dawn.