Can Such Things Be [69]
rebels!' For some minutes nothing was said: Bartine was recovering his temper, and I waited. Then I said: 'Was that all?' 'No--there was something else. A few weeks after my great-grandfather's arrest his watch was found lying on the porch at the front door of his dwelling. It was wrapped in a sheet of letter-paper bearing the name of Rupert Bartine, his only son, my grandfather. I am wearing that watch.' Bartine paused. His usually restless black eyes were staring fixedly into the grate, a point of red light in each, reflected from the glowing coals. He seemed to have forgotten me. A sudden threshing of the branches of a tree outside one of the windows, and almost at the same instant a rattle of rain against the glass, recalled him to a sense of his sur- roundings. A storm had risen, heralded by a single gust of wind, and in a few moments the steady plash of the water on the pavement was distinctly heard. I hardly know why I relate this incident; it seemed somehow to have a certain significance and relevancy which I am unable now to discern. It at least added an element of seriousness, almost solem- nity. Bartine resumed: 'I have a singular feeling toward this watch--a kind of affection for it; I like to have it about me, though partly from its weight, and partly for a rea- son I shall now explain, I seldom carry it. The reason is this: Every evening when I have it with me I feel an unaccountable desire to open and con- sult it, even if I can think of no reason for wishing to know the time. But if I yield to it, the moment my eyes rest upon the dial I am filled with a myste- rious apprehension--a sense of imminent calamity. And this is the more insupportable the nearer it is to eleven o'clock--by this watch, no matter what the actual hour may be. After the hands have regis- tered eleven the desire to look is gone; I am entirely indifferent. Then I can consult the thing as often as I like, with no more emotion than you feel in looking at your own. Naturally I have trained myself not to look at that watch in the evening before eleven; nothing could induce me. Your insistence this evening upset me a trifle. I felt very much as I suppose an opium-eater might feel if his yearning for his special and particular kind of hell were rein- forced by opportunity and advice. 'Now that is my story, and I have told it in the interest of your trumpery science; but if on any evening hereafter you observe me wearing this damnable watch, and you have the thoughtfulness to ask me the hour, I shall beg leave to put you to the inconvenience of being knocked down.' His humour did not amuse me. I could see that in relating his delusion he was again somewhat dis- turbed. His concluding smile was positively ghastly, and his eyes had resumed something more than their old restlessness; they shifted hither and thither about the room with apparent aimlessness and I fancied had taken on a wild expression, such as is sometimes observed in cases of dementia. Perhaps this was my own imagination, but at any rate I was now persuaded that my friend was afflicted with a most singular and interesting monomania. Without, I trust, any abatement of my affectionate solicitude for him as a friend, I began to regard him as a pa- tient, rich in possibilities of profitable study. Why not? Had he not described his delusion in the in- terest of science? Ah, poor fellow, he was doing more for science than he knew: not only his story but himself was in evidence. I should cure him if I could, of course, but first I should make a little experiment in psychology--nay, the experiment itself might be a step in his restoration.
'That is very frank and friendly of you, Bartine,' I said cordially, 'and I'm rather proud of your con- fidence. It is all very odd, certainly. Do you mind showing me the watch?' He detached it from his waistcoat, chain and all, and passed it to me without a word. The case was of gold, very thick and strong, and singularly en- graved. After closely examining the dial and observ- ing that it was nearly twelve o'clock, I opened it at
'That is very frank and friendly of you, Bartine,' I said cordially, 'and I'm rather proud of your con- fidence. It is all very odd, certainly. Do you mind showing me the watch?' He detached it from his waistcoat, chain and all, and passed it to me without a word. The case was of gold, very thick and strong, and singularly en- graved. After closely examining the dial and observ- ing that it was nearly twelve o'clock, I opened it at