JOHN BARTINE'S WATCH
A STORY BY A PHYSICIAN
by Ambrose Bierce
"The exact time? Good God! my friend, why do you
insist? One would think--but what does it matter;
it is easily bedtime--isn't that near enough? But,
here, if you must set your watch, take mine and
see for yourself."
With that he detached his watch--a tremendously
heavy, old-fashioned one--from the chain, and
handed it to me; then turned away, and walking
across the room to a shelf of books, began an
examination of their backs. His agitation and
evident distress surprised me; they appeared
reasonless. Having set my watch by his, I stepped
over to where he stood and said, "Thank you."
As he took his timepiece and reattached it to
the guard I observed that his hands were unsteady.
With a tact upon which I greatly prided myself,
I sauntered carelessly to the sideboard and took
some brandy and water; then, begging his pardon
for my thoughtlessness, asked him to have some
and went back to my seat by the fire, leaving
him to help himself, as was our custom. He did
so and presently joined me at the hearth, as
tranquil as ever.
This odd little incident occurred in my apartment,
where John Bartine was passing an evening. We
had dined together at the club, had come home
in a cab and--in short, everything had been done
in the most prosaic way; and why John Bartine
should break in upon the natural and established
order of things to make himself spectacular with
a display of emotion, apparently for his own
entertainment, I could nowise understand. The
more I thought of it, while his brilliant
conversational gifts were commending themselves
to my inattention, the more curious I grew, and
of course had no difficulty in persuading myself
that my curiosity was friendly solicitude. That
is the disguise that curiosity usually assumes
to evade resentment. So I ruined one of the
finest sentences of his disregarded monologue
by cutting it short without ceremony.
"John Bartine," I said, "you must try to forgive
me if I am wrong, but with the light that I have
at present I cannot concede your right to go all
to pieces when asked the time o' night. I cannot
admit that it is proper to experience a mysterious
reluctance to look your own watch in the face
and to cherish in my presence, without explanation,
painful emotions which are denied to me, and which
are none of my business."
To this ridiculous speech Bartine made no
immediate reply, but sat looking gravely into
the fire. Fearing that I had offended I was
about to apologize and beg him to think no
more about the matter, when looking me calmly
in the eyes he said:
"My dear fellow, the levity of your manner does
not at all disguise the hideous impudence of
your demand; but happily I had already decided
to tell you what you wish to know, and no
manifestation of your unworthiness to hear it
shall alter my decision. Be good enough to give
me your attention and you shall hear all about
the matter.
"This watch," he said, "had been in my family
for three generations before it fell to me. Its
original owner, for whom it was made, was my
great-grandfather, Bramwell Olcott Bartine, a
wealthy planter of Colonial Virginia, and as
stanch a Tory as ever lay awake nights contriving
new kinds of maledictions for the head of
Mr. Washington, and new methods of aiding and
abetting good King George. One day this worthy
gentleman had the deep misfortune to perform for
his cause a service of capital importance which
was not recognized as legitimate by those who
suffered its disadvantages. It does not matter
what it was, but among its minor consequences
was my excellent ancestor's arrest one night
in his own house by a party of Mr. Washington's
rebels. He was permitted to say farewell to his
weeping family, and was then marched away into
the darkness which swallowed him up forever.
Not the slenderest clew to his fate was ever
found. After the war the most diligent inquiry
and the offer of large rewards failed to turn
up any of his captors or any fact concerning
his disappearance. He had disappeared, and
that was all."
Something in Bartine's manner that was not in
his words--I hardly knew what it was--prompted
me to ask:
"What is your view of the matter--of the justice
of it?"
"My view of it," he flamed out, bringing his
clenched hand down upon the table as if he
had been in a public house dicing with
blackguards--"my view of it is that it was
a characteristically dastardly assassination
by that damned traitor, Washington, and his
ragamuffin 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
surroundings. 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
solemnity. 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 reason 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
consult 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 mysterious 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
registered 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 re-enforced 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 humor did not amuse me. I could see that
in relating his delusion he was again somewhat
disturbed. 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
patient, rich in possibilities of profitable
study. Why not? Had he not described his
delusion in the interest 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 confidence. 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 engraved. After closely examining
the dial and observing that it was nearly
twelve o'clock, I opened it at the back and
was interested to observe an inner case of
ivory, upon which was painted a miniature
portrait in that exquisite and delicate manner
which was in vogue during the eighteenth
century.
"Why, bless my soul!" I exclaimed, feeling a
sharp artistic delight--"how under the sun
did you get that done? I thought miniature
painting on ivory was a lost art."
"That," he replied, gravely smiling, "is not
I; it is my excellent great-grandfather, the
late Bramwell Olcott Bartine, Esquire, of
Virginia. He was younger then than later--about
my age, in fact. It is said to resemble me;
do you think so?"
"Resemble you? I should say so! Barring the
costume, which I supposed you to have assumed
out of compliment to the art--or for
vraisemblance, so to say--and the no mustache,
that portrait is you in every feature, line,
and expression."
No more was said at that time. Bartine took a
book from the table and began reading. I heard
outside the incessant plash of the rain in the
street. There were occasional hurried footfalls
on the sidewalks; and once a slower, heavier
tread seemed to cease at my door--a policeman,
I thought, seeking shelter in the doorway. The
boughs of the trees tapped significantly on the
window panes, as if asking for admittance. I
remember it all through these years and years
of a wiser, graver life.
Seeing myself unobserved, I took the old-fashioned
key that dangled from the chain and quickly
turned back the hands of the watch a full hour;
then, closing the case, I handed Bartine his
property and saw him replace it on his person.
"I think you said," I began, with assumed
carelessness, "that after eleven the sight of
the dial no longer affects you. As it is now
nearly twelve"--looking at my own timepiece--"perhaps,
if you don't resent my pursuit of proof, you
will look at it now."
He smiled good-humoredly, pulled out the watch
again, opened it, and instantly sprang to his
feet with a cry that Heaven has not had the
mercy to permit me to forget! His eyes, their
blackness strikingly intensified by the pallor
of his face, were fixed upon the watch, which
he clutched in both hands. For some time he
remained in that attitude without uttering
another sound; then, in a voice that I should
not have recognized as his, he said:
"Damn you! it is two minutes to eleven!"
I was not unprepared for some such outbreak,
and without rising replied, calmly enough:
"I beg your pardon; I must have misread your
watch in setting my own by it."
He shut the case with a sharp snap and put
the watch in his pocket. He looked at me and
made an attempt to smile, but his lower lip
quivered and he seemed unable to close his
mouth. His hands, also, were shaking, and he
thrust them, clenched, into the pockets of
his sack-coat. The courageous spirit was
manifestly endeavoring to subdue the coward
body. The effort was too great; he began to
sway from side to side, as from vertigo, and
before I could spring from my chair to support
him his knees gave way and he pitched awkwardly
forward and fell upon his face. I sprang to
assist him to rise; but when John Bartine
rises we shall all rise.
The post-mortem examination disclosed nothing;
every organ was normal and sound. But when the
body had been prepared for burial a faint dark
circle was seen to have developed around the
neck; at least I was so assured by several
persons who said they saw it, but of my own
knowledge I cannot say if that was true.
Nor can I set limitations to the law of heredity.
I do not know that in the spiritual world a
sentiment or emotion may not survive the heart
that held it, and seek expression in a kindred
life, ages removed. Surely, if I were to guess
at the fate of Bramwell Olcott Bartine, I should
guess that he was hanged at eleven o'clock in
the evening, and that he had been allowed several
hours in which to prepare for the change.
As to John Bartine, my friend, my patient for
five minutes, and--Heaven forgive me!--my victim
for eternity, there is no more to say. He is
buried, and his watch with him--I saw to that.
May God rest his soul in Paradise, and the soul
of his Virginian ancestor, if, indeed, they are
two souls.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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