A PATHETIC STORY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4394, 24 March 1922, Page 3

A PATHETIC STORY.

THE TIME FIEND. Even as I leaned smoking from my carriage window the man’s back view suggested to me an immediate name: that high, narrow figure, the rough brown hair low upon the neck —surely Finlay. And yet>, because Finlay was so essentially a ■temperament, a mental conception to me, I felt strangely powerless to thrust out a hand and shout into his ear. Finlay’s contour and colouring, but the gestures, theipose, the tones of quite another mail. My mind struggled with the contradiction. I had known Finlay, I must explain to you, for several years. Our acquaintance had started with a shock —my shock. It was a summer's morning, about nine o’clock, when I, walking across the Park to Piccadilly, noticed idly upon a seat an angular figure with sprawling legs—in fact, Finlay. At Shat time I did not know Finlay; I merely noticed his crisp hair and his display Of bright blue socks. Returning that, evening about five o’clock across the park, I found .the same lean figure in the s.ame attitude upon the same seat. It gave me a nasty sensation sj. of living the same life oyer and over ago in. -I was so interested that I turned aside and sat upon his seat. We conversed. I discovered that he believed the time to be, broadly speaking, ten in the; morning, and that he had, on his own showing, been sitting there for eight hours or 'thereabouts. Finlay said that he often did that. He explained, to me carefully and mathematically that ne had been, born without a sense of time. He said that the passage of hours and minutes meant nothing to him—though he admitted to a. certain inclination for food, drink, and other trifles that could not. be entirely shaken off. I knew later that this was striptly true. Finlay had none of the sdrise of time that even the birds and beasts appear in some degree to possess. He once sab, by my observation, for three days in a boat off Appledpre, eating of course, and occasionally, it may be presumed,, sleeping—but without a single bass or mullet to brighten his vigil. When he took the ’fly and his bed his nurse almost wept over him. He was, she declared, the most patient patient she had ever known. And yet he was clever, active, a born reconteur, a thorough sportsman. Simply, he had no sense of time. Of course, he was' born for army life, I served a few months with him before we received our commissions and parted; and it was beautiful to watch him. Guards meant nothing to him; .and those long delays outside the quartermaster’s stores in the cold December days—l believed he liked them. I fancy that, as a \ whole, the war appeared to him to last upwards of a year. The other three passed by him during his moments of abstraction. Eyeing the Vback view upon the Fplkstone platform—l, of course, surin a moment the facts that I have bad to explain at length to you —you will'understand by momentary impotence when you realise that the man before me was gesticulating with a watch in one hand, twitching the fingers dt the other, and turning his head from side to side like a sensitive thrush. To every porter who came within three yards he would break info a snarling shput: "Here ‘you, what time are we off,, eh, Half a minute late already.” “Here, Bob, come on and settle down,” laughed his companions from the next compartment. "Damme, I can’t settle down. When’ B train going to start ?’* He stamped his boots angrily one aifter another on the concrete, fidgeted with his hat, and clicked the watch to. The scurrying tide of luggage and humanity blew round 'him with a rattle and a glancing of wild eyes. Alone in the midst he stood—or, rathers stamped incessantly—the incarx nation of revolt and impatience. E was certainly Finlay. But my brain had only cleared itself for action at the moment the green flag flashed and the whistle blew. The lean, flying figure disappeared into its compartment amid laughter and cursings, and I sank back to wait for Victoria. A round, cheerful face was gazing earnestly into mine; and a voice with a strong Scottish accent was asking for the loan of a match. I obliged with one. The Scottish voice then became suddenly and happily communicative,, ' It told me, as it evidently wished badly tp tell me, that his whole party consisted of prisoners returning from Russia. "Prisoners of war, o’course. Ye see, they gi’ed us yon clothes at Marseilles. Man, man,” he si aped my knee resoundingly, "it’s just, gran’ to be back.” I glanced at the others. Why had I not suspected it ? Who but returned prisoners of war would have conducted themselves like schoolboys at an unexpected half-holiday ? Somehow my hand was in my bag, and a flask had come out with it. Almost apologetically I was offering it - round, and explaining in a breath that I had once been a warrior myself.

The Scot drank gravely, almost sacramentally. I caught his communicative eye and his lips trembling with, narrative, and then suddenly interposed a question. "That man on just now 1 , a—the man with his watch in his hand—is he of your party ?” "Aye, he’s one of us,” J “Tsn.’t his name Finlay?" “Aye. that’s Finlay. Hoo d’ye kin ,h.im, then ? Ah, now he’s unco’ daft —a verra queer case.” He laughed. “It’s Robert Finlay, istjjt it,” "Aye.” "Robert Finlay of the Wessex Regiment? You’ll excuse me askftig for all these details', but the fact !s fhttt he puzzled me. His behaviour was so. jerky and impatient, so unJil<a the Finlay I knew before the

"‘Ah, ye’ll have known him before the war, then ? Well, nop, sir, yon was a most unusual quiet man whea first he came to my notice. He was just built for a prison house —just built for it. He and me and another dozen or so were flung together into a wee filthy barn ip a small village wi’ a kirk (or since had been u kirk) ; ye see that makes a great difference in Russia whether their villages have kirks or no. Next morning round comes the local commissary and takes our names and numbers. They had to do that by signs. De’il a one of us could say aught ex<cept ‘zacustret’—Ahftt means ‘eat,’ ye see—and one or two other phrases of such like potencies. Weel, then, he brought us out wi’ a ragged smelling Bolshie snuffling aroun’ our heels; wi’ -a Mark IV Lee-Enfield in his fist an’ a couple of French-bayonets in his belt, and indicated to us that he had to weed the village' street. As far as cleanliness went, the village was not so bad—but it was maist awfu' puir. The puir souls that worked In the fields -—.■ "But aboot Finlay. He was the only man of us that never grumbled. Not that the grumbling had much effect either way, for the sentry an’ the local executives didna’ understan’, an’ so long as we worked they didna’ care what contortions we twisteJ our faces into. But Finlay was a marvel. We> all thought at first that he was just 'feared to grumble—then we found cut he jus’ didna’ bother. He’d wheel a barrow up and down a stretch of road for eight hours without seeming to realise that he’d been more than once to an’ fro. Aye, he beat us. "Hpcever, retribution was to copie. There was a belfry in the middle squire o’ yon village, kind o’ shrine maybe, wi’ a clock in It. Yon clock had a bronze bell dangling in front of it, an’ when we first arrived at the resort, at, every quarter of an hour a wee bronze hammer used to strike the bell an’ notify the folk cf the passage of time. Weel, after a stay of three weeks the clock refused to go. It would appear that the local specialist in clocks had b een proscribed same time' before, an’ this id’t thq local commissary in a fix Finally, after searching the village, he;camp tp our hotel an’ stood rubbing his nose at us for five minutes while we tqld him what we thought of him—all but Finlay, that was engaged in his Own thoughts, wi'out any sense whether it was yesterday or to-morrow or Friday fortnight., "The local commissary appeared to notice this, He left rubbing his nose an’ took to picking his teeth. “Then he had us marched to .he belfrey. He disentangled Finlay from the group and explained to Finlay what he wanted. Finlay listened wi’ considerable interest, but owing to the difficulties o’ the language it |ook him half an hour to grasp the commiss.ary’s bright idea. Which wds, in brief> that Finlay should ba hoisted up on to the pedestal o’ the clock wi’ a watch in his hand, an’ every quarter of an hour should strike yon bell-, with wee yon hammer. Since the commissary ended by borrowing the sentry’s Lee-Enfield and placing its business end in proximity to Finlay’s right temple, Finlay concluded, naturally . enough, that 'the commissary was serious about it. He therefore ascended. Since the ladder was then removed, it was a matter o’ difficulty for. Finlay to come down unaided. For two hours he sat peering at -the watch, and at every quarter giving a tap to the bell, wi’ extra notes for the hours.

"At midday they hoisted his soup up to him, an’ he continued. Towards two o’clock we noticed a distinct interval in the familiar sound; the sentry also noticed it. He loosed a round in the direction Of the belfry, which struck the face of the clock a few feet from Finlay's head; after which Finlay was well up tp time until at five pip emma be was allowed to descend. “For three weeks—that is, until we were removed to another part— Finlay was kept tp his duty; it was his business to inform the village p’ the passage o’ time. Since it was summer, an’ warm enough for comfort, we inclined to envy him. But it vyas the de’il an’ all- for the poor laddie himself, Ye see, he jus,’ had to attend to the passage o’ time. Th°re was the watch face ■staring up into his, wi’ a Lee-Enfield nosing in his particular direction every occasion ’he let the quarter pass hint by. I (loot that commissary attributed some magic power or other to his auld clock, by the regular way he kept Finlay at work on it. Aye, T believe the laddie was driven daft by the tick'-tick-ticking of the little watch—just Time incarnate beating against his brain the wihple while, ye see"; an’ then, every quarter of an hour, pom, pom on yon bell, aye, I* was pitiable. Weel, ye’ll see him at Victoria. He’s no daft in any sense, but he’s the. most impatient man 1 ever seen or heard. Set him to wait ten seconds in a ticket-queue and it’s a treat to listen to him, jnan. He’s fair obsessed wi’ the passage o’ time. He keeps twp wrist watches an’ a fine chronometer that he bought a,t Taranto; an’ while he’s shaving in the morning ye can hear his humming : Days an’ moments quickly flying Join the living wi* the dead. He’s what ye might call a case o’ temporary conversion.”