There are times when a quick succession of “next” is found merely soothing; but there are times of reactionary languor when there is not left force enough to watch when that which we attend to is the rhythm only.
Thus we may find the ticking of a clock nothing—indeed, to mention this is commonplace.
But what a dreadful effect may be produced upon the mind by the sudden cessation of the ticking of the clock when once a certain experience has to be gone through!
Who that has counted the beatings of a pulse or listened to the flutterings of a breath, watching for the next and the next and the next, and coming at last to the one which has no next, can bear without agony to hear a watch or a clock stop ticking, or to hear any rhythmical sound cease suddenly?
One of the most horrible moments in my life was a moment in which the rhythmical noise of a common saw, heard over the parapet of a bridge in London, stopped suddenly when I was listening for it. In the distance the sound was softened; it had a sough with it which reminded me very painfully of the sound of human breath, but when it ceased I thought I could bear no more in this world, and longed to be at that moment taken away.
Of course the emotion of that moment was imparted from my recollection of a moment of which it was the symbol, but I think the cessation of something with a beat in it has always a terror for me.
“Can you draw an inference?” said Coleridge to the clown. “Yes, sir,” said the clown, “a cartload of them.”
That is the way with most of us. We are too eager to draw a cartload of inferences, and when we find the inference will not be drawn we suffer.
This was the case with Patty Jamblin. She was unable to draw an inference as to what was to follow: she only knew that she was depressed and distrustful.
There is a peculiarity about the next thing, remember—that it is sure to happen, and what a blessing there is in certainty!