When the Sleeper Wakes, Page 4

  CHAPTER IV. THE SOUND OF A TUMULT

  Graham's last impression before he fainted was of a clamorous ringing ofbells. He learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between lifeand death, for the better part of an hour. When he recovered his senses,he was back on his translucent couch, and there was a stirring warmthat heart and throat. The dark apparatus, he perceived, had been removedfrom his arm, which was bandaged. The white framework was still abouthim, but the greenish transparent substance that had filled it wasaltogether gone. A man in a deep violet robe, one of those who had beenon the balcony, was looking keenly into his face.

  Remote but insistent was a clamour of bells and confused sounds, thatsuggested to his mind the picture of a great number of people shoutingtogether. Something seemed to fall across this tumult, a door suddenlyclosed.

  Graham moved his head. "What does this all mean?" he said slowly. "Wheream I?"

  He saw the red-haired man who had been first to discover him. A voiceseemed to be asking what he had said, and was abruptly stilled.

  The man in violet answered in a soft voice, speaking English with aslightly foreign accent, or so at least it seemed to the Sleeper's ears,"You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep.It is quite safe. You have been here some time--sleeping. In a trance."

  He said something further that Graham could not hear, and a little phialwas handed across to him. Graham felt a cooling spray, a fragrant mistplayed over his forehead for a moment, and his sense of refreshmentincreased. He closed his eyes in satisfaction.

  "Better?" asked the man in violet, as Graham's eyes reopened. He was apleasant-faced man of thirty, perhaps, with a pointed flaxen beard, anda clasp of gold at the neck of his violet robe.

  "Yes," said Graham.

  "You have been asleep some time. In a cataleptic trance. You have heard?Catalepsy? It may seem strange to you at first, but I can assure youeverything is well."

  Graham did not answer, but these words served their reassuring purpose.His eyes went from face to face of the three people about him. They wereregarding him strangely. He knew he ought to be somewhere in Cornwall,but he could not square these things with that impression.

  A matter that had been in his mind during his last waking moments atBoscastle recurred, a thing resolved upon and somehow neglected. Hecleared his throat.

  "Have you wired my cousin?" he asked. "E. Warming, 27, Chancery Lane?"

  They were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. "What an odd_blurr_ in his accent!" whispered the red-haired man. "Wire, sir?" saidthe young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled.

  "He means send an electric telegram," volunteered the third, apleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gavea cry of comprehension. "How stupid of me! You may be sure everythingshall be done, sir," he said to Graham. "I am afraid it would bedifficult to--wire to your cousin. He is not in London now. But don'ttrouble about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long timeand the important thing is to get over that, sir." (Graham concluded theword was sir, but this man pronounced it "Sire.")

  "Oh!" said Graham, and became quiet.

  It was all very puzzling, but apparently these people in unfamiliardress knew what they were about. Yet they were odd and the room was odd.It seemed he was in some newly established place. He had a sudden flashof suspicion. Surely this wasn't some hall of public exhibition! If itwas he would give Warming a piece of his mind. But it scarcely hadthat character. And in a place of public exhibition he would not havediscovered himself naked.

  Then suddenly, quite abruptly, he realised what had happened. There wasno perceptible interval of suspicion, no dawn to his knowledge. Abruptlyhe knew that his trance had lasted for a vast interval; as if by someprocesses of thought reading he interpreted the awe in the faces thatpeered into his. He looked at them strangely, full of intense emotion.It seemed they read his eyes. He framed his lips to speak and could not.A queer impulse to hide his knowledge came into his mind almost at themoment of his discovery. He looked at his bare feet, regarding thensilently. His impulse to speak passed. He was trembling exceedingly.

  They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meatytaste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.

  "That--that makes me feel better," he said hoarsely, and there weremurmurs of respectful approval. He knew now quite clearly. He made tospeak again, and again he could not.

  He pressed his throat and tried a third time.

  "How long?" he asked in a level voice. "How long have I been asleep?"

  "Some considerable time," said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quicklyat the others.

  "How long?"

  "A very long time."

  "Yes--yes," said Graham, suddenly testy. "But I want--Is it--it is--someyears? Many years? There was something--I forget what. I feel--confused.But you--" He sobbed. "You need not fence with me. How long--?"

  He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with hisknuckles and sat waiting for an answer.

  They spoke in undertones.

  "Five or six?" he asked faintly. "More?"

  "Very much more than that."

  "More!"

  "More."

  He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching themuscles of his face. He looked his question.

  "Many years," said the man with the red beard.

  Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear fromhis face with a lean hand. "Many years!" he repeated. He shut his eyestight, opened them, and sat looking about him, from one unfamiliar thingto another.

  "How many years?" he asked.

  "You must be prepared to be surprised."

  "Well?"

  "More than a gross of years."

  He was irritated at the strange word. "More than a _what_?"

  Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about"decimal" he did not catch.

  "How long did you say?" asked Graham. "How long? Don't look like that.Tell me."

  Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "More thana couple of centuries."

  _"What?"_ he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "Whosays--? What was that? A couple of centuries!"

  "Yes," said the man with the red beard. "Two hundred years."

  Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vastrepose, and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.

  "Two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulfopening very slowly in his mind; and then, "Oh, but--!"

  They said nothing.

  "You--did you say--?"

  "Two hundred years. Two centuries of years," said the man with the redbeard.

  There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he hadheard was indeed true.

  "But it can't be," he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances. Trancesdon't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played uponme! Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast ofCornwall--?"

  His voice failed him.

  The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong inhistory, sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others.

  "That was it, sir," said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy ofCornwall--it's in the southwest country beyond the dairy meadows. Thereis a house there still. I have been there."

  "Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "That wasit--Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep--somewhere there. I don'texactly remember. I don't exactly remember."

  He pressed his brows and whispered, "More than two hundred years!"

  He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was coldwithin him. "But if it is two hundred years, every soul I know, everyhuman being that ever I saw or spoke to before I went to sleep, must bedead."

  They did not answer him.

  "The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, of Church and State.High and low, rich and poor, one w
ith another--"

  "Is there England still?"

  "That's a comfort! Is there London? Eh?" "This _is_ London, eh? And youare my assistant--custodian; assistant-custodian. And these--? Eh?Assistant-custodians to?"

  He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "But why am I here? No! Don'ttalk. Be quiet. Let me--"

  He sat silent, rubbed his eyes, and, uncovering them, found anotherlittle glass of pinkish fluid held towards him. He took the dose. It wasalmost immediately sustaining. Directly he had taken it he began to weepnaturally and refreshingly.

  Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears,a little foolishly. "But--two--hun--dred--years!" he said. He grimacedhysterically and covered up his face again.

  After a space he grew calm. He sat up, his hands hanging over his kneesin almost precisely the same attitude in which Isbister had found himon the cliff at Pentargen. His attention was attracted by a thickdomineering voice, the footsteps of an advancing personage. "What areyou doing? Why was I not warned? Surely you could tell? Someone willsuffer for this. The man must be kept quiet. Are the doorways closed?All the doorways? He must be kept perfectly quiet. He must not be told.Has he been told anything?"

  The man with the fair beard made some inaudible remark, and Grahamlooking over his shoulder saw approaching a very short, fat, andthickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. Verythick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over hisnose and overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidableexpression. He scowled momentarily at Graham and then his regardreturned to the man with the flaxen beard. "These others," he said in avoice of extreme irritation. "You had better go."

  "Go?" said the red-bearded man.

  "Certainly--go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go."

  The two men addressed turned obediently, after one reluctant glance atGraham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walkedstraight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. Andthen came a strange thing; a long strip of this apparently solid wallrolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again,and immediately Graham was alone with the new comer and the purple-robedman with the flaxen beard.

  For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham,but proceeded to interrogate the other--obviously his subordinate--uponthe treatment of their charge. He spoke clearly, but in phrases onlypartially intelligible to Graham. The awakening seemed not only a matterof surprise but of consternation and annoyance to him. He was evidentlyprofoundly excited.

  "You must not confuse his mind by telling him things," he repeated againand again. "You must not confuse his mind."

  His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeperwith an ambiguous expression.

  "Feel queer?" he asked.

  "Very."

  "The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?"

  "I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems."

  "I suppose so, now."

  "In the first place, hadn't I better have some clothes?"

  "They--" said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded manmet his eye and went away. "You will very speedily have clothes," saidthe thickset man.

  "Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred--?" askedGraham.

  "They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a matterof fact."

  Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressedmouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "Is therea mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an answer. "Things havechanged tremendously, I suppose?" he said.

  "What is that shouting?" he asked abruptly.

  "Nothing," said the thickset man impatiently. "It's people. You'llunderstand better later--perhaps. As you say, things have changed." Hespoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a mantrying to decide in an emergency. "We must get you clothes and so forth,at any rate. Better wait here until some can come. No one will come nearyou. You want shaving."

  Graham rubbed his chin.

  The man with the flaxen beard came back towards them, turned suddenly,listened for a moment, lifted his eyebrows at the older man, and hurriedoff through the archway towards the balcony. The tumult of shoutinggrew louder, and the thickset man turned and listened also. He cursedsuddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with anunfriendly expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising andfalling, shouting and screaming, and once came a sound like blows andsharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks.Graham strained his ears to draw some single thread of sound from thewoven tumult.

  Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For atime he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: "Show us theSleeper! Show us the Sleeper!"

  The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.

  "Wild!" he cried, "How do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing?"

  There was perhaps an answer.

  "I can't come," said the thickset man; "I have _him_ to see to. Butshout from the balcony."

  There was an inaudible reply.

  "Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you."

  He came hurrying back to Graham. "You must have clothes at once," hesaid. "You cannot stop here--and it will be impossible to--"

  He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In amoment he was back.

  "I can't tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. Ina moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes--in a moment. And thenI can take you away from here. You will find out our troubles soonenough."

  "But those voices. They were shouting--?"

  "Something about the Sleeper--that's you. They have some twisted idea. Idon't know what it is. I know nothing."

  A shrill bell jetted acutely across the indistinct mingling of remotenoises, and this brusque person sprang to a little group of appliancesin the corner of the room. He listened for a moment, regarding a ball ofcrystal, nodded, and said a few indistinct words; then he walked to thewall through which the two men had vanished. It rolled up again like acurtain, and he stood waiting.

  Graham lifted his arm and was astonished to find what strength therestoratives had given him. He thrust one leg over the side of the couchand then the other. His head no longer swam. He could scarcely credithis rapid recovery. He sat feeling his limbs.

  The man with the flaxen beard re-entered from the archway, and as he didso the cage of a lift came sliding down in front of the thicksetman, and a lean, grey-bearded man, carrying a roll, and wearing atightly-fitting costume of dark green, appeared therein.

  "This is the tailor," said the thickset man with an introductorygesture. "It will never do for you to wear that black. I cannotunderstand how it got here. But I shall. I shall. You will be as rapidas possible?" he said to the tailor.

  The man in green bowed, and, advancing, seated himself by Graham on thebed. His manner was calm, but his eyes were full of curiosity. "You willfind the fashions altered, Sire," he said. He glanced from under hisbrows at the thickset man.

  He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliantfabrics poured out over his knees. "You lived, Sire, in a periodessentially cylindrical--the Victorian. With a tendency to thehemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now--" He flicked out alittle appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled theknob, and behold--a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashionon the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern ofbluish white satin. "That is my conception of your immediate treatment,"he said.

  The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.

  "We have very little time," he said.

  "Trust me," said the tailor. "My machine follows. What do you think ofthis?"

  "What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.

  "In your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor, "butthis is
our modern development See here." The little figure repeatedits evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," and with a clickanother small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on tothe dial. The tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twicetowards the lift as he did these things.

  It rumbled again, and a crop-haired anaemic lad with features of theChinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with acomplicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors intothe room. Incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham wasinvited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered someinstructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones andwith words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct anincomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out anumber of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them outuntil the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at eachshoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so thatat last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs.At the same time, some other person entered the room by the lift,behind Graham. The tailor set moving a mechanism that initiated afaint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the machine, and in anothermoment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was released. The tailorreplaced his cloak of black, and the man with the flaxen beard profferedhim a little glass of some refreshing fluid. Graham saw over the rim ofthe glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a singular fixity.

  The thickset man had been pacing the room fretfully, and now turned andwent through the archway towards the balcony, from which the noise ofa distant crowd still came in gusts and cadences. The cropheaded ladhanded the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixingthis in the mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in anineteenth century printing machine. Then they ran the entire thing onits easy, noiseless bearings across the room to a remote corner wherea twisted cable looped rather gracefully from the wall. They made someconnexion and the machine became energetic and swift.

  "What is that doing?" asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass tothe busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. "Isthat--some sort of force--laid on?"

  "Yes," said the man with the flaxen beard.

  "Who is that?" He indicated the archway behind him.

  The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered inan undertone, "He is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire,--it'sa little difficult to explain. The Council appoints a guardian andassistants. This hall has under certain restrictions been public. Inorder that people might satisfy themselves. We have barred the doorwaysfor the first time. But I think--if you don't mind, I will leave him toexplain."

  "Odd" said Graham. "Guardian? Council?" Then turning his back on the newcomer, he asked in an undertone, "Why is this man glaring at me? Is he amesmerist?"

  "Mesmerist! He is a capillotomist."

  "Capillotomist!"

  "Yes--one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions."

  It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with anunsteady mind. "Sixdoz lions?" he said.

  "Didn't you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They areour monetary units."

  "But what was that you said--sixdoz?"

  "Yes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things,have altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arabsystem--tens, and little hundreds and thousands. We have eleven numeralsnow. We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures fora dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, adozen gross a dozand, and a dozand dozand a myriad. Very simple?"

  "I suppose so," said Graham. "But about this cap--what was it?"

  The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.

  "Here are your clothes!" he said. Graham turned round sharply and sawthe tailor standing at his elbow smiling, and holding some palpably newgarments over his arm. The crop-headed boy, by means of one finger,was impelling the complicated machine towards the lift by which he hadarrived. Graham stared at the completed suit. "You don't mean to say--!"

  "Just made," said the tailor. He dropped the garments at the feet ofGraham, walked to the bed on which Graham had so recently been lying,flung out the translucent mattress, and turned up the looking glass. Ashe did so a furious bell summoned the thickset man to the corner. Theman with the flaxen beard rushed across to him and then hurried out bythe archway.

  The tailor was assisting Graham into a dark purple combination garment,stockings, vest, and pants in one, as the thickset man came back fromthe corner to meet the man with the flaxen beard returning from thebalcony. They began speaking quickly in an undertone, their bearing hadan unmistakable quality of anxiety. Over the purple under-garment came acomplex but graceful garment of bluish white, and I Graham was clothedin the fashion once more and saw himself, sallow-faced, unshaven andshaggy still, but at least naked no longer, and in some indefinableunprecedented way graceful.

  "I must shave," he said regarding himself in the glass.

  "In a moment," said Howard.

  The persistent stare ceased. The young man closed his eyes, reopenedthem, and with a lean hand extended, advanced on Graham. Then hestopped, with his hand slowly gesticulating, and looked about him.

  "A seat," said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-beardedman had a chair behind Graham. "Sit down, please," said Howard.

  Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wildeyed man he saw theglint of steel.

  "Don't you understand, Sire?" cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurriedpoliteness. "He is going to cut your hair."

  "Oh!" cried Graham enlightened. "But you called him--

  "A capillotomist--precisely! He is one of the finest artists in theworld."

  Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. Thecapillotomist came forward with graceful gestures, examined Graham'sears and surveyed him, felt the back of his head, and would have satdown again to regard him but for Howard's audible impatience. Forthwithwith rapid movements and a succession of deftly handled implements heshaved Graham's chin, clipped his moustache, and cut and arranged hishair. All this he did without a word, with something of the rapt air ofa poet inspired. And as soon as he had finished Graham was handed a pairof shoes.

  Suddenly a loud voice shouted--it seemed from a piece of machinery inthe corner--"At once--at once. The people know all over the city. Workis being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing, but come."

  This shout appeared to perturb Howard exceedingly. By his gestures itseemed to Graham that he hesitated between two directions. Abruptlyhe went towards the corner where the apparatus stood about the littlecrystal ball. As he did so the undertone of tumultuous shouting from thearchway that had continued during all these occurrences rose to a mightysound, roared as if it were sweeping past, and fell again as if recedingswiftly. It drew Graham after it with an irresistible attraction. Heglanced at the thickset man, and then obeyed his impulse. In two strideshe was down the steps and in the passage, and, in a score he was outupon the balcony upon which the three men had been standing.