When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells (top romance novels txt) đ
- Author: H. G. Wells
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âLast as long as the cliffs, if necessary,â exclaimed Isbister with satisfaction. âThe world changes. When he fell asleep, twenty years ago, I was down at Boscastle with a box of water-colours and a noble, old-fashioned ambition. I didnât expect that some day my pigments would glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Landâs End round again to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when heâs not looking.â
Warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. âI just missed seeing you, if I recollect aright.â
âYou came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway station. It was close on the Jubilee, Victoriaâs Jubilee, because I remember the seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea.â
âThe Diamond Jubilee, it was,â said Warming; âthe second one.â
âAh, yes! At the proper Jubileeâthe Fifty Year affairâI was down at Wookeyâa boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had with him! My landlady wouldnât take him in, wouldnât let him stayâhe looked so queer when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. And the Boscastle doctorâit wasnât the present chap, but the G.P. before himâwas at him until nearly two, with, me and the landlord holding lights and so forth.â
âIt was a cataleptic rigour at first, wasnât it?â
âStiff!âwherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his head and heâd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course thisââhe indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his headââis quite different. And, of course, the little doctorâwhat was his name?â
âSmithers?â
âSmithers it wasâwas quite wrong in trying to fetch him round too soon, according to all accounts. The things he did. Even now it makes me feel allâugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly little things, not dynamosââ
âInduction coils.â
âYes. You could see his muscles throb and jump, and he twisted about. There was just two flaring yellow candles, and all the shadows were shivering, and the little doctor nervous and putting on side, and himâstark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made me dream.â
Pause.
âItâs a strange state,â said Warming.
âItâs a sort of complete absence,â said Isbister.
âHereâs the body, empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. Itâs like a seat vacant and marked âengaged.â No feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heartânot a flutter. That doesnât make me feel as if there was a man present. In a sense itâs more dead than death, for these doctors tell me that even the hair has stopped growing. Now with the proper dead, the hair will go on growingââ
âI know,â said Warming, with a flash of pain in his expression.
They peered through the glass again. Graham was indeed in a strange state, in the flaccid phase of a trance, but a trance unprecedented in medical history. Trances had lasted for as much as a year beforeâbut at the end of that time it had ever been waking or a death; sometimes first one and then the other. Isbister noted the marks the physicians had made in injecting nourishment, for that device had been resorted to to postpone collapse; he pointed them out to Warming, who had been trying not to see them.
âAnd while he has been lying here,â said Isbister, with the zest of a life freely spent, âI have changed my plans in life; married, raised a family, my eldest ladâI hadnât begun to think of sons thenâis an American citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard. Thereâs a touch of grey in my hair. And this man, not a day older nor wiser (practically) than I was in my downy days. Itâs curious to think of.â
Warming turned. âAnd I have grown old too. I played cricket with him when I was still only a lad. And he looks a young man still. Yellow perhaps. But that is a young man nevertheless.â
âAnd thereâs been the War,â said Isbister.
âFrom beginning to end.â
âAnd these Martians.â
âIâve understood,â said Isbister after a pause, âthat he had some moderate property of his own?â
âThat is so,â said Warming. He coughed primly. âAs it happensâhave charge of it.â
âAh!â Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: âNo doubtâhis keep here is not expensiveâno doubt it will have improvedâaccumulated?â
âIt has. He will wake up very much better offâif he wakesâthan when he slept.â
âAs a business man,â said Isbister, âthat thought has naturally been in my mind. I have, indeed, sometimes thought that, speaking commercially, of course, this sleep may be a very good thing for him. That he knows what he is about, so to speak, in being insensible so long. If he had lived straight onââ
âI doubt if he would have premeditated as much,â said Warming. âHe was not a far-sighted man. In factââ
âYes?â
âWe differed on that point. I stood to him somewhat in the relation of a guardian. You have probably seen enough of affairs to recognise that occasionally a certain frictionâ. But even if that was the case, there is a doubt whether he will ever wake. This sleep exhausts slowly, but it exhausts. Apparently he is sliding slowly, very slowly and tediously, down a long slope, if you can understand me?â
âIt will be a pity to lose his surprise. Thereâs been a lot of change these twenty years. Itâs Rip Van Winkle come real.â
âItâs Bellamy,â said Warming. âThere has been a lot of change certainly. And, among other changes, I have changed. I am an old man.â
Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. âI shouldnât have thought it.â
âI was forty-three when his bankersâyou remember you wired to his bankersâsent on to me.â
âI got their address from the cheque book in his pocket,â said Isbister.
âWell, the addition is not difficult,â said Warming.
There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable curiosity. âHe may go on for years yet,â he said, and had a moment of hesitation. âWe have to consider that. His affairs, you know, may fall some day into the hands ofâsomeone else, you know.â
âThat, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems most constantly before my mind. We happen to beâas a matter of fact, there are no very trustworthy connections of ours. It is a grotesque and unprecedented position.â
âIt is,â said Isbister. âAs a matter of fact, itâs a case for a public trustee, if only we had such a functionary.â
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