Barrie, J M - Tillyloss Scandal

by Tillyloss Scandal

  232 THE MYSTERY OF TIME-TABLES.

  now and again that they continue to dine to- gether. The cynical say that this is because politics deadens the conscience, and that seems as good a reason as another. But not even members of Parliament are absolutely hardened. It is notorious that a few of them are not on speaking terms, and that they quarreled over time-tables. " The honorable gentleman is a moral cut-throat, and that is the only moral thing about him." " The honorable and gallant member for Shillelagh is a poltroon," are merely Parliamentary expressions ; but tell a member out of the House that he cannot look up his train in a time-table, and he and you are enemies forever. You cannot bring such a charge against him in the House without being sent to the Clock Tower.

  These are all well-known facts, familiar to every reader, but there is a conspiracy of silence about them. Enter a railway compart- ment, and you find all your fellow-travelers turning over the leaves of their time-table, with the exception, perhaps, of one who has opened his map and is making desperate efforts to close it. You open your time-table, too ; but, instead of pretending to understand it, please

  THE MYSTERY OF TIME-TABLES. 233

  look over it at these other humbugs. The man in the corner, who has already asked six porters if this is the train for Doncaster, and is still doubtful, sees your eye on him, and says aloud, " Ha ! I see we reach Doncaster at 5 : 30." The man who is resting his feet on your Glad- stone bag ostentatiously turns down a corner of his time-table to imply that he has found the page. The third man is boldly pretending that he finds the index a help. And so it goes on, and we all do it, and we are a nation of hypo- crites, for not one of us can solve the riddle of the time-tables or find out anything from them, save that all the trains are running in the wrong direction. But why not be open, and admit that the time-tables are a mystery still ?

  MENDING THE CLOCK.

  IT is a little American clock, which I got as a present about two years ago. The donor told me it cost half-a-guinea, but on inquiry at the shop where it was bought (this is what I always do when I get a present), I learned that the real price was four-and-sixpence. Up to this time I had been hesitating about buying a stand for it, but after that I determined not to do so. Since I got it, it has stood on my study mantel-piece, except once or twice at first, when its loud tick compelled me to wrap it up in flannel, and bury it in the bottom of the drawer. Until a fortnight ago my clock went beauti- fully, and I have a feeling that had we treated it a little less hardly it would have continued to go well. One night a fortnight ago it stopped, as if under the impression that I had forgotten to wind it up. I wound it up as far

  236 MENDING THE CLOCK.

  as was possible, but after going for an hour it stopped again. Then I shook it, and it went for five minutes. I strode into another room to ask who had been meddling with my clock, but no one had touched it. When I came back it was going again, but as soon as I sat down it stopped. I shook my fist at it, which terrified it into going for half a minute, and then it went creak, creak, like a clock in pain. The last thing it did before stopping finally was to strike nineteen.

  For two days I left my clock serenely alone, nor would I ever have annoyed myself with the thing had it not been for my visitors. I have a soul above mechanics, but when these visitors saw that my clock had stopped they expressed surprise at my not mending it. How different, I must be, they said, from my brother, who had a passion for making himself generally useful. If the clock had been his he would have had it to pieces and put it right within the hour. I pointed out that my mind was so full of weightier matters that I could not descend to clocks, but they had not the brains to see that what prevented my mending the clock was not incapacity, but want of desire to

  MENDING THE CLOCK. 237

  do so. This has ever been the worry of my life, that, because I don't do certain things, people take it for granted that I can't do them. I took no prizes at school or college, but you entirely misunderstand me if you think that that was because I could not take them. The fact is, that I had always a contempt for prizes and prizemen, and I have ever been one of the men who gather statistics to prove that it is the boy who sat at the foot of his class that makes his name in after life. I was that boy, and though I have not made my mark in life as yet, I could have done it had I wanted to do so as easily as I could mend a clock. My visitors, judging me by themselves, could not follow this argu- ment, though I have given expression to it in their presence many times, and they were so ridiculous as to say it was a pity that my brother did not happen to be at home.

  " Why, what do I need him for ? " I asked, irritably.

  " To mend the clock," they replied, and all the answer I made to them was that if I wanted the clock mended I would mend it myself.

  " But you don't know the way," they said.

  "Do you really think," I asked them, "that

  238 MENDING THE CLOCK.

  I am the kind of man to be beaten by a little American clock ? "

  They replied that that was their belief, at which I coldly changed the sub ject.

  " Are you really going to attempt it ? " they asked, as they departed.

  " Not I," I said ; "I have other things to do."

  Nevertheless the way they flung my brother at me annoyed me, and I returned straight from the door to the study to mend the clock. It amused me to picture their chagrin when they dropped in the next night and found my clock going beautifully. " Who mended it ? " I fancied them asking, and I could not help practicing the careless reply, " Oh, I did it my- self." Then I took the clock in my hands, and sat down to examine it.

  The annoying thing, to begin with, was that there seemed to be no way in. The clock was practically hermetically sealed, for, though the back shook a little when I thumped it on my knee, I could see quite well that the back would not come off unless I broke the mainspring. I examined the clock carefully round and round, but to open the thing up was as impossible as to get into an egg without chipping the shell. I

  MENDING THE CLOCK. 239

  twisted and twirled it, but nothing would move. Then I raged at the idiots who made clocks that would not open. My mother came in about that time to ask me how I was getting on.

  " Getting on with what ? " I asked.

  " With the clock/' she said.

  " The clock," I growled, " is nothing to me," for it irritated me to hear her insinuating that I had been foiled.

  "But I thought you were trying to mend it," she said.

  " Not at all," I replied ; " I have something else to do."

  " What a pity," she said, " that Andrew is not here."

  Andrew is the brother they are always fling- ing at me.

  " He could have done nothing," I retorted, " for the asses made this clock not to open."

  "I'm sure it opens," my mother said.

  "Why should you be sure? " I asked, fiercely.

  " Because," she explained, " I never saw or heard of a clock that doesn't open."

  " Then," I snarled, "you can both see and hear of it now" and I pointed contemptuously at my clock.

  240 MENDING TIIE CLOCK.

  She shook her head as she went out, and as soon as the door shut I hit the clock with my clenched fist (stunning my fourth ^ finger). I had a presentiment that my mother was right about the clock's opening, and I feared that she still labored under the delusion that I had been trying to mend the exasperating thing.

  On the following day we had a visit from my friend Summer, and he had scarcely sat down in my study when he jumped up, exclaiming, " Hullo, is that the right time ? "

  I said to him that the clock had stopped, and he immediately took it on his knees. I looked at him sideways, and saw at once that he was the kind of man who knows about clocks. After shaking it he asked me what was wrong.

  " It needs cleaning," I said at a venture, for if I had told him the whole story he might have thought that I did not know how to mend a clock.

  " Then you have opened it and examined the works ? " he
asked, and not to disappoint him, I said yes.

  " If it needs cleaning, why did you not clean it ? " was his next question.

  I hate inquisitiveness in a man, but I replied

  MENDING THE CLOCK. 241

  that I had not had time to clean it. He turned it round in his hands, and I knew what he was looking for before he said :

  " I have never taken an American clock to pieces. Does it open in the ordinary way ? "

  This took me somewhat aback, but Summer, being my guest, had to be answered.

  " Well," I said, cautiously, " it does and it doesn't."

  He looked at it again, and then held it out to me, saying : " You had better open it your- self, seeing that you know the way."

  There was a clock in the next room, and such a silence was there in my study after that remark that I could distinctly hear it ticking.

  66 Curiously unsettled weather," I said.

  " Very," he answered. " But let me see how you get at the works of the clock."

  " The fact is," I said, " that I don't want this clock mended ; it ticks so loudly that it disturbs me."

  " Never mind," Summer said, " about that. I should like to have a look at its internals, and then we can stop it if you want to do

  so."

  Summer talked in a light way, and I was by 16

  242 MENDING THE CLOCK.

  no means certain whether, once it was set agoing, the clock could be stopped so easily as he thought, but he was evidently determined to get inside.

  " It is a curious little clock/' I said to him ; " a sort of puzzle, indeed, and it took me ten minutes to discover how to open it myself. Suppose you try to find out the way ? "

  " All right," Summer said, and then he tried to remove the glass.

  " The glass doesn't come off, does it ? " he asked.

  " I'm not going to tell you," I replied.

  " Stop a bit, " said Summer, speaking to him- self ; " is it the feet that screw out ? "

  It had never struck me to try the feet ; but I said : "Find out for yourself."

  I sat watching with more interest than he gave me credit for, and very soon he had both the feet out ; then he unscrewed the ring at the top, and then the clock came to pieces.

  "I've done it," said Summer.

  " Yes," I said, " but you have been a long time about it."

  He examined the clock with a practiced eye, and then

  MENDING THE CLOCK. 243

  " It doesn't seem to me/' he said, " to be requiring cleaning."

  A less cautious man than myself would have weakly yielded to the confidence of this asser- tion, and so have shown that he did not know about clocks.

  " Oh, yes, it does," I said, in a decisive tone.

  " Well," he said, " we had better clean it."

  " I can't be bothered cleaning it," I replied, " but, if you like, you can clean it."

  " Are they cleaned in the ordinary way, those American clocks ? " he asked.

  " Well," I said, " they are and they aren't."

  " How should I clean it, then ? " he asked.

  " Oh, in the ordinary way," I replied.

  Summer proceeded to clean it by blowing at the wheels, and after a time he said, " We'll try it now."

  He put it together again, and then wound it up, but it would not go.

  " There is something else wrong with it," he said.

  " We have not cleaned it properly," I ex- plained.

  " Clean it yourself," he replied, and flung out of the house.

  244 MENDING THE CLOCK.

  After lie had gone I took up the clock to see how he had opened it, and to my surprise it began to go. I laid it down triumphantly. At last I had mended it. When Summer came in an hour afterwards he exclaimed

  " Hullo, it's going."

  " Yes/' I said, " I put it to rights after you went out."

  " How did you do it ? " he asked.

  " I cleaned it properly/' I replied.

  As I spoke I was leaning against the mantel- piece, and I heard the clock beginning to make curious sounds. I gave the mantel-piece a shove with my elbow, and the clock went all right again. Summer had not noticed. He remained in the room for half-an-hour, and all that time I dared not sit down. Had I not gone on shaking the mantel-piece the clock would have stopped at any moment. When he went at last I fell thankfully into a chair, and the clock had stopped before he was half way down the stairs. I shook it and it went for five minutes, and then stopped. I shook it again, and it went for two minutes. I shook

  O . '

  it, and it went for half a minute. I shook it, and it did not go at all.

  MENDING THE CLOCK. 245

  The day was fine, and my study window stood open. In a passion I seized hold of that clock and flung it fiercely out into the garden. It struck against the trunk of a tree, and fell into a flower-bed. Then I stood at the window sneering at it, when suddenly I started. I have mentioned that it has a very loud tick. Surely I heard it ticking! I ran into the garden. The clock was going again ! Concealing it beneath my coat I brought it back to the study, and since then it has gone beautifully. Every- body is delighted except Summer, who is naturally a little annoyed.

  THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD.

  THE largest ship the seas have ever seen was not, as is generally held, the Great Eastern. It was the vessel in which William the Con- queror came over to England, bringing the ancestors of so many people with him. One thinks of this enormous ship when looking about him for anything with which to compare Glengarry's box. As William's ship is to other ships, so is Glengarry's box to all other boxes.

  Glengarry is a medical in his ninth year, He has a romantic notion that he could really study if he had the proper surroundings. He finds that the sharp corners of a square room are against concentration, and that long rooms are depressing, and round rooms too exhilarat- ing. In quest of the room that would suit him he changes his lodgings every month or so, but

  248 THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD.

  though his cab, with a ton of luggage on the top of it, and bags falling off the seat, is now a familiar sight in most Edinburgh streets, Glengarry has never yet come upon a room that has proved a real help.

  It will already be seen why Glengarry began to think by day and night of a big box. He did not want it to study in, but to hold his things in, as he passed from one temporary home to another. In nine years he had accu- mulated a great many suits of clothes, and these Glengarry had to drag after him from lodging to lodging. In his passionate desire to become a doctor he has now hundreds of note-books, most of them left him by men who have got round the examiners ; and at the University, where such things are talked of with bated breath, he is reputed to have the only complete c ollection of cribs and keys in Edinburgh. His rooms are thus a favorite resort.

  After Glengarry had packed all his belong- ings, as he fondly thought, he usually discovered that he had forgotten the six volumes in manu- script entitled " How to Get the Soft Side of Turner," or twelve pairs of boots, or three old coats, or something else, and then the straps had

  THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD. 249

  to be taken off his boxes again when the lid jumped up, exploding the contents in all direc- tions. Thus the idea of a box sufficiently gigan- tic to hold everything took possession of Glen- garry to such an extent that he could almost have passed an examination in it.

  Eumors that the box had been contracted for were passed from mouth to mouth at the University three months ago. These were at first scouted, as big undertakings the Channel Tunnel, for instance usually are ; but it was noticed that Glengarry often wore a preoccu- pied look now, and was absenting himself from his classes even more frequently than usual. When asked to stand for the Students' Council he said that he had something else in his eye at present. Some thought that he re- ferred to a scheme for writing the answers to all possible medical questions on his shirt-sleeves, but he was really thinking of the box. It was by this time in course of construction, the plans be
ing Glengarry's own.

  At that time Glengarry was living in Fred- erick Street, at the top of the house. The room was of such remarkable construction that it could not be classified, and when he took it he thought

  250 THE BIGGEST BOX IN THE WORLD.

  he had got what he was after at last. Bitter disappointment awaited him, however, for the wind howled up there all day long, and he can- not study in wind. He was anxious, too, to try his new box as soon as possible, so he engaged another room in Cumberland Street, where there was said to be no wind.

  The night before Glengarry was to leave Frederick Street he sat waiting for his box as impatiently as though it were a letter in an an- gular hand. By this time he would, on former occasions, have been damp with perspiration, caused by his efforts to get all his things into three small boxes and five Gladstone bags. He would have been sitting on the boxes in wild attempts to close them, finding after they were closed that a coat sleeve was sticking out, or that the bootjack had taken advantage of some moment when he had his back to it, to leap out of a bag and hide beneath the table. His feet would have been catching in waistcoats which he could have sworn were at the bottom of box 2, and he would have had a presentiment that he had forgotten to pack his " Guide to the Ways of Grainger Stewart." Even after the boxes were so full that the locks refused to