The Clock-Bell And The Alarm-Bell

________________________________________________
Title:     The Clock-Bell And The Alarm-Bell
Author: Elizabeth Rundle Charles [More Titles by Charles]

"We have lived a long time here together," said the ponderous Alarm-bell to the little brisk bell in the clock-tower of the Orphan-house, "and a useful life yours has been! I have watched carefully, and never once during these hundred years that we have stood side by side have you failed to tell the hours and half-hours by day and night. I have plenty of leisure for thought; but it would be beyond my powers to calculate how often your voice has been heard in the service of man. I observe, too, how much attention is paid you by all, and with how much well-deserved respect you are regarded. Nothing is done in house or field without your sanction. At your early call this little busy hive begins to stir in the morning. At your mid-day invitation the boys gather from the fields where they have been working, and the girls from the laundries and work-rooms, to the noonday meal. At your evening summons the doors are closed at night, and not a sound is heard afterwards in house or field until your steady voice wakens our little world again. Yours is, indeed, a useful, honoured life; but as for me, who can tell what I was made for? Since I was placed here first, a hundred years ago, lifted up with enormous trouble and labour, and safely roofed in my belfry, not a creature has heard my voice, or been the better for my existence. I might as well have been lying still a lump of unsmelted ore in the depths of the mines. I feel so stiff and rusty, that I sometimes question if they could move me if they tried. For you, daily, hourly usefulness! for me, a hundred years of silence! And who can say how many more? I do not complain; but our destinies are very different. It must be wonderfully happy to be so useful, and to be looked on by every one with such attention and regard. Of course, I could not expect to be as serviceable as you--I, with my cumbrous, ponderous mass of heavy metal, and you, hung so lightly, so graceful in your shape, so brisk in all your movements, so cheery and pleasant in your voice. But I should like to be of some use once in my life, even if it were only to know for what purpose I was made, and set on high."

"Wait!" said the Clock-bell; "there must be some work for you. It would have taken a hundred such as I am to make one like you. Think of the trouble there must have been in getting a mould large enough for you,--of the labour it was to raise you so high. You must be set there for some end, although we do not yet know what. Wait!" said the Clock-bell cheerily, and struck nine.

Then there was a sound from within the house, as of many childish voices singing an evening hymn. A few minutes after, all was still, and ten o'clock echoed over the silent fields to the sleeping city near at hand.

But that night there was an unusual stir in the Orphan-house. Feet were heard rushing hither and thither; and from every window poured forth the cry, "Fire! fire!--the Orphan-house is on fire!" And, through the darkness, lurid smoke began to rise from an outhouse attached to the main building. Then came another cry:--"The Alarm-bell!--ring the Alarm-bell!" And feet were heard on the steps of the belfry-tower; and hands began pulling vigorously at the ropes, and in a moment, for the first time, the deep tones of the long-silent bell pealed heavily on the midnight air. They awoke the city. In a short time fire-engines were on the way. Streams of water played on the flames, and quenched them; and the children and the Orphan-house were saved.

The next morning all was silent again, as if nothing had happened; the outhouse lay in ashes, but the Orphan-house was uninjured. At eight the Clock-bell called the children to their morning prayer; whilst the Alarm-bell had relapsed into silence, perhaps for another century.

But the Clock-bell said, "You have done in an hour the service of a century. Had it not been for you, I should never have struck another hour."

And the grateful children often looked up as they passed beneath, and said, "Had it not been for our good Alarm-bell we might all have perished!"

So the Alarm-bell learned what it was made for, and was content to wait another hundred years, or more, before its voice was heard again.

[The end]
Elizabeth Rundle Charles's short story: Clock-Bell And The Alarm-Bell

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN