Chapter 22 Chapter 21: Time to Time

On Tuesday night, when Tom got back into bed, he brooded first, and finally dreamed—of the same things he thought and dreamed of, and of others that rose from the depths of his mind, mingled with them. matter.In the dream, this was his last night here.He went downstairs to go into the garden, but found the angel descending from the clock--grown as a giant--and barring his way with a flaming sword.But Tom wouldn't back away, so the angel stepped back and let the door open.But when Tom looked out of the door, he found that the garden had disappeared. There was only a paved yard outside, piled with rubbish bins. The old Mrs. Bartholomew stood in the middle of the yard and said angrily: "Who is messing around?" Fiddling with the time of my grandfather clock?" At this moment, Tom woke up, and all the strange things in the dream sank back into the depths of his mind, and the thoughts, questions, and fragmented reasoning and analysis of his waking hours Reappeared.

Tom thought again: there will be no more days--so the angel on the grandfather clock swore.And since time will end one day, it means that the current direction at this moment is only a temporary thing.It may be dispensable, and it may be something that can be avoided.Tom himself might be able to hide behind time, to have the "past" in the present moment and the eternal future--that is, Hatty's "now" and the garden.To do this, of course, he had to understand how time worked. "What's the time?" Tom asked Aunt Gwen, who brought him morning tea, and Aunt Gwen, thinking she had missed his question, replied that it was nearly seven o'clock.

"What is time—I mean, how does time work?" said Tom, Uncle at breakfast time.In my uncle's view, there is no clear answer.People have all kinds of theories. "Of course," said Uncle Allen, "people used to think..." Tom listened intently, and sometimes he seemed to understand, and sometimes he felt sure he didn't. "But the current theory of time," said Uncle Allen, "the most modern theory of time..." Tom felt a little puzzled. Could it be that theories, like women's clothing, are also popular and outdated?Then he suddenly realized that he was not paying attention, so he quickly pulled back his thoughts. Once again he thought he could understand, and then he found that he didn't understand anything again, and he felt extremely depressed.

"I've heard a theory, too," said Tom, while his uncle stopped for tea, "I know of an angel--I've heard of an angel who said: In the end, there will be no more It's time." "Angel!" cried my uncle out of the blue, and spilled so much tea on the tie that he had to wipe it off, which made him even angrier. "What the hell have angels got to do with a scientific theory?" Tom shuddered, not daring to say that it was more authoritative than a theory: it was a brilliant, unmistakable assertion. Uncle Allen said angrily that he didn't want to have any more breakfast.He rushed out of the house, slammed the front door shut, and left for work ten minutes early.

As soon as he left, Aunt Gwen scolded Tom and said, "Tom, you really shouldn't have done this." "But," said Tom, "I didn't know he had such an aversion to angels." "Your uncle is as respectful as anyone is to a normal, normal angel," said Aunt Gwen, "but it's not right for him to lose his temper at breakfast. He's always in a bad mood early in the morning, and Before we could figure out what was going on, he'd be in a rage, finish his breakfast in two bites, or just walk away after eating half of it. It's all going to lead to indigestion."

"I'm sorry," said Tom.My aunt obviously had a better understanding of truth, though it was not at all the same as my uncle's. When Alan Kitson came home from get off work that night, his wife took him aside to talk.At first he opened his posture to defend, and his voice was very loud, but in the end, he had nothing to say.Finally, he paused and said, "Maybe you're right. I should." At dinner, as soon as he saw Tom, he said, "Tom, I'm sorry," so emphatically that Tom felt almost overwhelmed by the gesture. Tom thought the subject of time would be brushed aside for a while, but his uncle was now determined to make up for his gaffe that morning.After supper he took out paper and pencil, and began to draw diagrams for Tom. "Imagine, Tom, this is a point in time..." Later he asked Tom to imagine a painter standing in one place painting a landscape, and a second painter coming up behind him and painting the same landscape, with the first A landscape painted by a painter, and then a third painter paints the same landscape, with the first painter's landscape in it, and the second painter's first painter's landscape, and then again A fourth painter came... "I hope this analogy will make you understand better, Tom," said my uncle, "or from another point of view, suppose..." Tom kept trying to pretend that he understood. His expression made his entire face stiff.In fact, all he wanted to do now was cry like a baby because he didn't figure it out, and it all meant so much to him.

Just then Uncle Allen suddenly mentioned Rip Van Winkle. "Like," he said, "you think about Rip Van Winkle—oh, no, that probably doesn't mean much. No, you still imagine, say, a new point in time where we Call it an A." But Uncle Allen was a step too late, and Tom was already thinking about Rip Van Winkle, for he was the first of those whom Uncle Allen mentioned that Tom really knew.In fact, Tom knew very well about him.Rip Van Winkle went hunting one day in the mountains of the northern United States and fell asleep in an enchanted place.He felt that he only slept there for one night, but when he woke up and walked down the hill to return home, he found that twenty years had passed.

So Tom thought, well, isn't he just like Rip Van Winkle in reverse?Tom did not go forward twenty years, but went back more than a hundred years ago, to the time when Hattie lived.He doesn't return to the same time every night, and the order of time is not the same as usual.Like the big fir tree, first he saw it standing, then he saw it fall, then he saw it stand again--it was still there last night.He had seen Hattie first as a little girl his own age, then as a much younger girl, and most recently—though Tom would not quite admit it—to have outgrown him altogether.Tom saw, piece by piece, that Hattie's time—the garden's time—spanned at least ten years, while his own time passed only a few short weeks during the summer holidays.

"You could say," Tom said slowly, returning to the conversation, though he hadn't listened to the other person just now, "you could say that different people have different times, but of course they're all made up of the same total time." part." "Yes," said my uncle, "it might be more accurate—" Tom went straight on. "So, for some reason, I can step back into someone else's time, into the 'past. Thing - "She can also go forward in my time, which is 'future' to her and 'now' to me." "If we want to make it clearer, Tom," said my uncle, "let's go back to point A—"

But Tom went on: "In either case, she's not a ghost from the 'past,' and I'm not a ghost from the 'future.' Neither of us is a ghost, and neither is the garden. That's the end of the matter." " "What are you talking about?" said Uncle Allen angrily. "What garden? What problem was solved? We're talking about possibilities—about theories." "But," said Tom, "if someone actually stepped from one time to another--if they did--it would be proven." "Proof!" cried Uncle Allen.For a moment Tom thought he was going to lose his temper again, but luckily he got himself under control. "Looks like I failed to explain something to you, Tom, because I didn't even get you to understand that the proof - in the theory of time - the proof...!" Like a criminal, you have nothing to prove.

Tom didn't care.He has solved some problems to his satisfaction.Starting with the information revealed to him by the angels, he draws some useful conclusions about the properties of time.He hadn't yet seen what it was useful for, but at least he had a warm, excited feeling that his problem would soon have a - full and definite - answer . That Wednesday night Tom went down to the garden with a fresh idea.It was still winter there, but Tom looked around warily and thought, "I expected so, but is it the same winter? Is it another part of Hatty's time that I'm entering? What if Yes, so the earlier part or the later part?" The question was soon answered, and he walked round the garden to the hedge, where he found a door opening into the meadow beyond.It must not have been there when Tom was last here, or Tom would have noticed it right away.The door had been put in after that, and it had been a while before it became so dilapidated. Tom walked toward the door, the gravel path creaking under his feet in the frost.He poked his head over the door and looked at the grass over there. He knew that in summer the grass was sparsely eaten by cattle, but now he saw a large piece of ice.On the far side of the meadow where the ice is smoothest and firmest, many skaters slide across it, calling to each other loudly and laughing happily. Tom felt himself left out of happiness.He believed that this was one of the friend gatherings James said he intended to lure Hattie to.Among the skaters, you could guess which one was Hattie: there was a girl who alternately mingled with the group and sometimes skated fast on the ice alone.The habit of solitude formed in childhood is not very likely to be changed.In fact, this habit may accompany you for life. Now the lads of the skaters plucked the crooked branches from the clipped willows to make a rootball or hockey stick, and picked up a rock for a ball.The girls gathered to watch, talking and laughing loudly. The lone skater turned away from them and came running across the ice on her skates—she was walking straight across the grass toward the hedge.Hatty--it was Hattie--had seen Tom. "Oh, I seem to see a figure, I think it might be you." She finished the last long slide, looking at him carefully. She opened the garden door. "I'm so glad it's you, Tom! I miss you sometimes, even now—even though the Chapman girls are funny, and Barty and the others—even though I'm skating—oh, Tom , skating! I feel like I could skate from here to the end of the world, if the whole world was covered with ice! I feel like I'm free like a bird - I've never felt like this before! I want to go far --a place far away!" She urged Tom to get on the ice, and Tom wasn't reluctant. "Come on, Tom, come on!" The ice felt smooth to Tom's bare foot, and he felt the ice vibrate and shake slightly under Hatty's weight, like a dance-hall. Same as the floor.He seemed to have been enchanted by the ice, and suddenly forgot the time he had to think about-forgot what else he needed to think about.Hatty twisted and slid away from him, and he went after him suddenly, with a dash of style, which he had not skated so well at home with Peter on the street.But his gliding steps ended faster than Hattie, as if he could never escape the shackles of the earth, while she spread her wings like a strong and powerful bird. "Tom," Hatty called him softly on the ice, gliding quickly past him, whistling past him like a gust of wind, "why don't you wear skates?" "Oh, why don't I wear skates?" repeated Tom painfully, having rented all the skates he'd ever worn from a skating rink in town.And he knew that his aunt and uncle would never have skates.And if he rushed to buy skates in the summer, they would think it was very strange. Then, like a blinding icy flash, Tom hit upon an idea--such a bold idea as he had never thought of before. He opened his arms and asked Hattie to stop skating and listen to him.Hatty complied. "Where do you keep your skates, Hattie, I mean when you're not skating?" "In the shoe locker in the hall. At the end of winter, I grease the belts and skates, wrap the skates in paper, and put them in the top shelf of the shoe locker." There were no skates in the locker in the hall during the day, Tom knew--only what the yellow-bearded lodger used to fix his car.If Hattie had put her skates there, they must have been rummaged out of the closet, sold, given away, or It was thrown away.Anyway, he certainly couldn't get them. Before Hatty had finished talking about the shoe cabinet, Tom decided that it was inappropriate for her to keep her skates there.She needs a dry and safe place, and more importantly, a secret place. "Hatty, can you promise me one thing?" "What's up?" "You promise first, okay?" "If it's something wrong or dangerous, I can't promise you." "It's not like that. I just want you to say yes first, or you'll hear what I'm saying and maybe you'll say it's ridiculous—it's not—it's not." "Well, tell me, if I can do it, I promise you." Satisfied with that, Tom said, "Well, I just hope that when you're not wearing your skates, you always keep them in the one you showed me last time, under the floor of your bedroom closet. Secret place." "There!" said Hatty, as if she hadn't had to think of that place for a long time, "but that's ridiculous—why should I put them there?" "Promise!" cried Tom. "It's just a little ridiculous, and it won't do any harm. Promise me. It won't do you any harm." "What does it matter to you?" Hatty asked in bewilderment. "It's too long a story now. But you must promise - on your honor - to always leave your skates there when you're not skating - in that secret place. It's still a secret Yes, is it?" he asked with a sudden surge of fear. "I've only told you one person," said Hatty, "but, Tom—" "On your honor, you said you would do it if you could," said Tom firmly, seeing that he was about to succeed. "I really don't understand, but—well, I promise—I promise on my honor." Tom was absolutely sure she would keep her word.He turned at once, and slid towards the garden gate, towards the great house. "But, no!" Hattie shouted after him, because something suddenly occurred to her mind. "Come back, Tom! That promise means if I get out of here, I'll have to keep the skates forever." It was true, but Tom didn't stop.He heard Hattie shouting along the way, and distant skaters calling her, asking what she was doing standing alone at the garden gate, and telling her to go back to their activities again. Tom ran into the big house and up the stairs.He picked up the bedroom slipper that was stuck to the front door of the suite and closed the door.But he still intended to go out into the garden again that night.If he was lucky, he'd only be in the suite for five minutes before going down to the grass and skating with Hattie. He doesn't need to turn on the lights in the bedroom.He fumbled for the closet door and opened it, then ran his hands through the cracks in the floorboards inside.He had to pull out the pencil sharpener in his trousers pocket to pry the floor up.He touched the hollow below and found two large paper packages. No sooner had his hands touched the package than he heard a door open—the door to the suite's other bedroom.Only then did he realize that he was too excited just now, and must have made some unnecessary noises.They heard, they came. He closed the closet door as softly as possible without clicking, and slipped back into bed quickly.Just in time, a second later, my aunt pushed open the door of his bedroom and turned on the light.He pretended to turn over on the bed, making a lot of noise to cover up the creaking of the mattress spring that his aunt must have heard, while he closed his eyes tightly and moaned like in a nightmare generally.Aunt walked to the bed, touched his forehead to see if he had a fever, then kissed him, and left the bedroom.She left Tom's door ajar, and Tom heard her go into her own bedroom, but did not hear her close the door.She left both doors open so she could hear him anytime. Tom lay on the bed with his eyes open, trembling with anxiety, knowing that the slightest sound would startle his aunt again.He can only wait until his aunt falls asleep again, how long it will take, he has no idea. In the end, it was Tom who fell asleep first--he fell asleep and dreamed that he was skating to the end of the world, the end of time. ①The protagonist in a short story in "Notes of Knowledge" written by American writer Washington Irving (1783-1859).