Time (by H.E.Bates)

H.E.Bates (1905—1974), a modern English writer, was born in 1905 in Rushden, Northampton, England. He was educated at a grammar school, then worked on a local newspaper. Disliking the drudgery of journalism, he became a clerk in a leather warehouse. His new job gave him leisure to write fiction and in 1925 he attained his majority and publication of his first novel together. The author of a number of novels, plays and essays H. E. Bates is also a prolific and widely anthologized short-story writer.

TIME

Sitting on an iron seat fixed about the body of a great chestnut tree breaking into pink-flushed blossom, two old men gazed dumbly at the sunlit emptiness of a town square.
The morning sun burned in a sky of marvellous blue serenity, making the drooping leaves of the tree most brilliant and the pale blossoms expand to fullest beauty. The eyes of the old men were also blue, but the brilliance of the summer sky made a mockery of the dim and somnolent light in them. Their thin white hair and drooping skin, their faltering lips and rusted clothes, the huddling bones of their bodies had come to winter. Their hands tottered, their lips were wet and dribbling, and they stared with a kind of earnest vacancy, seeing the world as a stillness of amber mist. They were perpetually silent, for the deafness of one made speech a ghastly effort of shouting and misinterpretation. With their worn sticks between their knees and their worn hands knotted over their sticks they sat as though time had ceased to exist for them.
Nevertheless every movement across the square was an event. Their eyes missed nothing that came within sight. It was as if the passing of every vehicle held for them the possibility of catastrophe; the appearance of a strange face was a revolution; the apparitions of young ladies in light summer dresses gliding on legs of shellpink silk had on them something of the effect of goddesses on the minds of young heroes. There were, sometimes, subtle changes of light in their eyes. 138
Across the square, they observed an approaching figure. They watched it with a new intensity, exchanging also, for the first time, a glance with one another. For the first time also they spoke.
"Who is it?" said one.
"Duke, ain't it?"
"Looks like Duke," the other said. "But I can't see that far."
Leaning forward on their sticks, they watched the approach of this figure with intent expectancy. He, too, was old. Beside him, indeed, it was as if they were adolescent. He was patriarchal. He resembled a Biblical prophet, bearded and white and immemorial. He was timeless.
But though he looked like a patriarch he came across the square with the haste of a man in a walking race. He moved with a nimbleness and airiness that were miraculous. Seeing the old men on the seat he waved his stick with an amazing gaiety at them. It was like the brandishing of a youthful sword. Ten yards away he bellowed their names lustily in greeting.
"Well, Reuben boy! Well, Shepherd!"
They mumbled somberly in reply. He shouted stentoriously about the weather, wagging his white beard strongly. They shifted stiffly along the seat and he sat down. A look of secret relief came over their dim faces, for he had towered above them like a statue in silver and bronze.
"Thought maybe you warn't coming," mumbled Reuben.
"Ah! been for a sharp walk!" he half-shouted. "A sharp walk." They had not the courage to ask where he had walked, but in his clear brisk voice he told them, and deducing that he could not have travelled less than six or seven miles they sat in gloomy silence, as though shamed. With relief they saw him fumble in his pockets and bring out a bag of peppermints, black-and-white balls sticky and strong from the heat of his strenuous body and having one by one popped peppermints into their mouths they sucked for a long time with toothless and dumb solemnity, contemplating the sunshine.
As they sucked, the two old men waited for Duke to speak, and they waited like men awaiting an oracle, since he was, in their eyes, a masterpiece of a man. Long ago, when they had been napkinned and at the breast, he had been a man with a beard, and before they had reached their youth he had passed into a lusty maturity. All their lives they had felt infantile beside him.
Now, in old age, he persisted in shaming them by the lustiness of his achievements and his vitality. He had the secret of devilish perpetual youth. To them the world across the square was veiled in sunny mistiness, but Duke could detect the swiftness of a rabbit on a hill-side a mile away.
They heard the sounds of the world as though through a stone wall, but he could hear the crisp bark of a fox in another parish. They were condemned to an existence of memory because they could not read, but Duke devoured the papers. He had an infinite knowledge of the world and the freshest affairs of men. He brought them, every morning, news of earthquakes in Peru, of wars in China, of assassinations in Spain, of scandals among the clergy. He understood the obscurest movements of politicians and explained to them the newest laws of the land. They listened to him with the devoutness of worshippers listening to a preacher, regarding him with awe and believing in him with humble astonishment. There were times when he lied to them blatantly. They never suspected.
As they sat there, blissfully sucking, the shadow of the chestnut tree began to shorten, its westward edge creeping up, like a tide, towards their feet. Beyond, the sun continued to blaze with unbroken brilliance on the white square. Swallowing the last smooth grain of peppermint, Reuben wondered aloud what time it could be.
"Time?" said Duke. He spoke ominously. "Time?" he repeated.
They watched his hand solemnly uplift itself and vanish into his breast. They had no watches. Duke alone could tell them the passage of time while appearing to mock at it himself. Very slowly he drew out an immense watch, held it out at length on its silver chain, and regarded it steadfastly.
They regarded it also, at first with humble solemnity and then with quiet astonishment. They leaned forward to stare at it. Their eyes were filled with a great light of unbelief. The watch had stopped.
The three old men continued to stare at the watch in silence. The stopping of this watch was like the stopping of some perfect automaton. It resembled almost the stopping of time itself. Duke shook the watch urgently. The hands moved onwards for a second or two from half-past three and then were dead again. He lifted it to his ear and listened. It was silent.
For a moment or two longer the old man sat in lugubrious contemplation. The watch, like Duke, was a masterpiece, incredibly ancient, older even than Duke himself. They did not know how often he had boasted to them of its age and efficiency, its beauty and pricelessness. They remembered that it had once belonged to his father, that he had been offered incredible sums for it, that it had never stopped since the battle of Waterloo.
Finally Duke spoke. He spoke with the mysterious air of a man about to unravel a mystery, "Know what't is?"
They could only shake their heads and stare with the blankness of ignorance and curiosity. They could not know.
Duke made an ominous gesture, almost a flourish, with the hand that held the watch.
"It's the lectric."
They stared at him with dim-eyed amazement.
"It's the lectric" he repeated. "The lectric in me body."
Shepherd was deaf. "Eh?" he said.
"The lectric," said Duke significantly, in a louder voice.
"Lectric?" They did not understand, and they waited.
The oracle spoke at last, repeating with one hand the ominous gesture that was like a flourish.
"It stopped yesterday. Stopped in the middle of my dinner," he said. He was briefly silent. "Never stopped as long as I can remember. Never. And then stopped like that, all of a sudden, just at pudden-time. Couldn't understand it. Couldn't understand it for the life of me."
"Take it to the watchmaker's?" Reuben said.
"I did," he said. "I did. This watch is older'n me, I said, and it's never stopped as long as I can remember. So he squinted at it and poked it and that's what he said." "What?"
"It's the lectric, he says, that's what it is. It's the lectric — the lectric in your body. That's what he said. The lectric."
"Lectric light?"
"That's what he said. Lectric. You're full o'lectric, he says. You go home and leave your watch on the shelf and it'll go again. So I did."
The eyes of the old men seemed to signal intense questions. There was an ominous silence. Finally, with the watch still in his hand, Duke made an immense flourish, a gesture of serene triumph.
"And it went," he said. "It went!"
The old men murmured in wonder.
"It went all right. Right as a cricket! Beautiful!"
The eyes of the old men flickered with fresh amazement. The fickleness of the watch was beyond the weakness of their ancient comprehension. They groped for understanding as they might have searched with their dim eyes for a balloon far up in the sky. Staring and murmuring they could only pretend to understand.
"Solid truth," said Duke. "Goes on the shelf but it won't go on me. It's the lectric."
"That's what licks me," said Reuben, "the lectric."
"It's me body," urged Duke. "It's full of it."
"Lectric light?"
"Full of it. Alive with it."
He spoke like a man who had won a prize. Bursting with glory, he feigned humility. His white beard wagged lustily with pride, but the hand still bearing the watch seemed to droop with modesty.
"It's the lectric," he boasted softly.
They accepted the words in silence. It was as though they began to understand at last the lustiness of Duke's life, the nimbleness of his mind, the amazing youthful-ness of his patriarchal limbs.
The shadow of the chestnut tree had dwindled to a small dark circle about their seat. The rays of the sun were brilliantly perpendicular. On the chestnut tree itself the countless candelabra of blossoms were a pure blaze of white and rose. A clock began to chime for noon.
Duke, at that moment, looked at his watch, still lying in his hand.
He stared with instant guilt. The hands had moved miraculously to four o'clock, and in the stillness of the summer air he could hear the tick of wheels.
With hasty gesture of resignation he dropped the watch into his pocket again. He looked quickly at the old men, but they were sunk in sombre meditation. They had not seen or heard.
Abruptly he rose. "That's what it is," he said. "The, lectric." He made a last gesture as though to indicate that he was the victim of some divine manifestation. "The lectric," he said.
He retreated nimbly across the square in the hot sunshine and the old men sat staring after him with the innocence of solemn wonder. His limbs moved with the haste of a clockwork doll, and he vanished with incredible swiftness from sight.
The sun had crept beyond the zenith and the feet of the old men were bathed in sunshine.