The clock was bequeathed to me by an old friend who had recently died.
His mind had been a good deal disordered in the later period of his
life. This clock, I am told; seemed to have a strange fascination for
him. His eyes were fastened on it during the last hours of his life. He
died just at midnight. The clock struck twelve, the nurse told me, as he
drew his last breath, and then, without any known cause, stopped, with
both hands upon the hour.
It is a complex and costly piece of mechanism. The escapement is in
front, so that every tooth is seen as it frees itself. It shows the
phases of the moon, the month of the year, the day of the month, and the
day of the week, as well as the hour and minute of the day.
I had not owned it a week before I began to perceive the same kind
of fascination as that which its former owner had experienced. This
gradually grew upon me, and presently led to trains of thought which
became at first unwelcome, then worrying, and at last unendurable.
I began by taking offence at the moon. I did not like to see that
“something large and smooth and round,” so like the skull which little
Peterkin picked up on the field of Blenheim. “How many times,” I kept
saying to myself, “is that wicked old moon coming up to stare at me?” I
could not stand it. I stopped a part of the machinery, and the moon went
into permanent eclipse. By and by the sounds of the infernal machine
began to trouble and pursue me. They talked to me; more and more their
language became that of articulately speaking men. They twitted me with
the rapid flight of time. They hurried me, as if I had not a moment
to lose. Quick! Quick! Quick! as each tooth released itself from the
escapement. And as I looked and listened there could not be any mistake
about it. I heard Quick! Quick! Quick! as plainly, at least, as I ever
heard a word from the phonograph. I stood watching the dial one day,--it
was near one o'clock,--and a strange attraction held me fastened to
the spot. Presently something appeared to trip or stumble inside of the
infernal mechanism. I waited for the sound I knew was to follow. How
nervous I got! It seemed to me that it would never strike. At last the
minute-hand reached the highest point of the dial. Then there was a
little stir among the works, as there is in a congregation as it rises
to receive the benediction. It was no form of blessing which rung out
those deep, almost sepulchral tones. But the word they uttered could not
be mistaken. I can hear its prolonged, solemn vibrations as if I were
standing before the clock at this moment.
Gone! Yes, I said to myself, gone,--its record made up to be opened in
eternity.
I stood still, staring vaguely at the dial as in a trance. And as the
next hour creeps stealthily up, it starts all at once, and cries aloud,
Gone!--Gone! The sun sinks lower, the hour-hand creeps downward with it,
until I hear the thrice-repeated monosyllable, Gone!--Gone!--Gone! Soon
through the darkening hours, until at the dead of night the long roll is
called, and with the last Gone! the latest of the long procession that
filled the day follows its ghostly companions into the stillness and
darkness of the past.
I silenced the striking part of the works. Still, the escapement kept
repeating, Quick! Quick! Quick! Still the long minute-hand, like the
dart in the grasp of Death, as we see it in Roubiliac's monument to Mrs.
Nightingale, among the tombs of Westminster Abbey, stretched itself out,
ready to transfix each hour as it passed, and make it my last. I sat by
the clock to watch the leap from one day of the week to the next. Then
would come, in natural order, the long stride from one month to the
following one.
I could endure it no longer. “Take that clock away!” I said. They took
it away. They took me away, too,--they thought I needed country air. The
sounds and motions still pursued me in imagination. I was very nervous
when I came here. The walks are pleasant, but the walls seem to me
unnecessarily high. The boarders are numerous; a little miscellaneous,
I think. But we have the Queen, and the President of the United States,
and several other distinguished persons, if we may trust what they tell
about themselves.
After we had listened to Number Five's story, I was requested to read a
couple of verses written by me when the guest of my friends, whose name
is hinted by the title prefixed to my lines.