TH.E
MORNING WATCH
165
He was as peaceful and light almost, as
if
he had just received
Absolution. Keeping
his
eyes thinly closed, tilting his head quietly
back, he could see the tender light of the candles against
his
eyelids,
and he became aware once again of the strong fragrance of all the
flowers. Dying, he whispered to himself. Soon now. For me and for all
sinners. ;0 sacred Head. He heard on his rose-mild blindness the in–
finitesimal flickering of the clock like those tiniest of thorns which
cannot be taken out of the skin by thousands, by crown of piercing
thorn. Opening
his
eyes just enough to see, looking through their
rainbow flickering of little sharpness, sharp flames on the dark,
thorn flames in thousands, each a thorn, a little sword, a tongue of
fire, standing from pentecostal waxen foreheads; go ye unto all the
world, a briar-patch of blessed fires, burning, just audibly crackling;
no; the clock. Now pale flowers, round, in thousands, stared flatly
among the thousands of sharp flames, as white and lonely on the
humming gloom as organstops, gazed at too fixedly during a stupefy–
ing sermon, round and bright as wafers, consecrated Hosts, in the
tiny .burning and prickling of Time. He did not quite conceive of
Time except as a power of measure upon the darkness, yet opened
his
eyes now and saw that it was almost twenty-five, twenty-three and a
half,
past four. The clock stood on the lowest step of the Altar. Its
leather case was inlaid with silver wire almost as fine as hair, which
outlined intricate flowers and leaves. It was
his
mother's, and
it'
had
been borrowed for use in the Lady Chapel, as it always w,as for 'this
Thursday watch, because it was the most nearly silent clock on the
place. Now that he looked at it he heard it the more clearly, a sound
more avid and delicate than that of a kitten at its saucer, and now
that he heard nothing else he saw nothing else except the face of /the
clock, hard, handless, staring white out of a shadow of trembling
gold, like the great Host in a monstrance; and when once again he
saw the hands, and the numbers, they showed that only two minutes
of
his
watch remained. Could ye not watch with me one hour? )Now
he remembered the images and emotions into which he had awak–
ened, so acutely, that they were almost his again; but now in some
way they had hardened, they stayed at some distance from him,
and he began to realize that during
this
entire half-hour
his
mind
had been wandering: there had been scarcely one moment of prayer
or of realization. Hell of a saint I'd make, he said to himself; and
