登陆注册
4917200000004

第4章

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 didn't expect that some day my pigments would glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land's End round again to the Lizard.

Luck comes to a man very often when he's not looking."Warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck.

" I just missed seeing you, if I recollect aright.""You came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway station. It was close on the Jubilee, Victoria's Jubilee, because I remember the seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea.""The Diamond Jubilee, it was," said Warming;"the second one."

"Ah, yes ! At the proper Jubilee--the Fifty Year affair--I was down at Wookey--a boy. I missed all that. . . . What a fuss we had with him! My landlady wouldn't take him in, wouldn't let him stay--he looked so queer when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. And the Boscastle doctor--it wasn't the present chap, but the G.P. before him--was at him until nearly two, with, me and the landlord holding lights and so forth.""It was a cataleptic rigour at first, wasn't it?""Stiff!--wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course this"--he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head--" is quite different. And, of course, the little doctor--what was his name?""Smithers? "

"Smithers it was--was quite wrong in trying to fetch him round too soon, according to all accounts.

The things he did. Even now it makes me feel all--ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly little things, not dynamos--""Induction coils."

"Yes. 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 him--stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made me dream."Pause.

"It's a strange state," said Warming.

" It's a sort of complete absence," said Isbister.

"Here's the body, empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It's like a seat vacant and marked 'engaged.'

No feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart--not a flutter. __That__ doesn't make me feel as if there was a man present. In a sense it's 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 growing--""I know," 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 before --but 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.

"And while he has been Iying here," said Isbister, with the zest of a life freely spent, " I have changed my plans in life; married, raised a family, my eldest lad--I hadn't begun to think of sons then--is an American citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard.

There's a touch of grey in my hair. And this man, not a day older nor wiser (practically) than I was in my downy days. It's curious to think of."Warming turned. "And I have grown old too. Iplayed 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."

"And there's been the War," said Isbister.

"From beginning to end."

"And these Martians."

"I've understood," said Isbister after a pause, "that he had some moderate property of his own?""That is so," said Warming. He coughed primly.

"As it happens-- have charge of it."

" Ah!" Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke:

"No doubt--his keep here is not expensive--no doubt it will have improved--accumulated?""It has. He will wake up very much better off--if he wakes--than when he slept."

"As a business man," said Isbister, "that 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 on--""I doubt if he would have premeditated as much,"said Warming. "He was not a far-sighted man. In fact--""Yes?"

"We differed on that point. I stood to him some-what in the relation of a guardian. You have probably seen enough of affairs to recognise that occasionally a certain friction--. 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? ""It will be a pity to lose his surprise. There's been a lot of change these twenty years. It's Rip Van Winkle come real.""It's Bellamy," said Warming. " There has been a lot of change certainly. And, among other changes, I have changed. I am an old man."Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise.

"I shouldn't have thought it."

"I was forty-three when his bankers--you remember you wired to his bankers--sent on to me.""I got their address from the cheque book in his pocket," said Isbister.

"Well, the addition is not difficult," said Warming.

There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable curiosity. "He may go on for years yet," he said, and had a moment of hesitation.

同类推荐
  • 教童子法

    教童子法

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • Morning Star

    Morning Star

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 使蜀日记

    使蜀日记

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 耕樵问答

    耕樵问答

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 春渚纪闻

    春渚纪闻

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 每天读点金融史3

    每天读点金融史3

    《每天读点金融史3:影响世界经济的金融事件》为系列丛书的第三册,主要讲述影响世界经济的金融事件。《每天读点金融史》系列丛书以金融史为主线,把一百多年来的经济发展和金融格局演变的巨幅画卷为你徐徐拉开,是你理解世界经济的格局演变与未来走向的理想读物。“金融只是一种手段,关键看使用者的目的。”这句关于金融的著名论断写在这里与读者诸君分享。
  • 题家园新池

    题家园新池

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 谋尽江山

    谋尽江山

    一代皇子,历劫而归!在重重的阴影之中算谋天下,揭开隐藏在背后的身世真相! 一品谋士,在阴暗之处手握乾坤,翻手为云覆手为雨算计苍生,只为了复仇! 一殇美人,在背后默默无怨无悔地跟随,竭尽全力付出,为的仅仅是心上之人绽放笑容! 壮丽江山,喋血噬影,这权欲又该造就多少可怜人? 暗夜沉寂卷杀机,北风飞雪飘血雨。弓藏赴燕覆初意,劫尽归周谋人心。层层暗影何人觉?重重身世无人知!数番算计终成空,几载兜转恍如始。蓦然回首往昔事,故景依旧人已逝。 吐槽群:744528737欢迎大家加入!
  • 刀剑不笑

    刀剑不笑

    秦时明月汉时关,万里长征人未还。但使龙城飞将在,不教胡马度阴山。英雄从来不会被人遗忘,也被无数懵懂少年崇拜和想去成为。与儿时的玩伴一一道别,不谙世事的少年跟着曾经叱咤风云的正法老师闯荡江湖,江湖的地位和游戏法则是谁人制定,江湖的生存法门又是什么,江湖的恩怨情仇兴衰荣辱本书将为你一一呈现。
  • 尊胜菩萨所问一切诸法入无量门陀罗尼经

    尊胜菩萨所问一切诸法入无量门陀罗尼经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 忘川语录

    忘川语录

    存在于一个世界的六个种族,来自于神的旨意。血洗苍穹之后,她,是否重生。他与她的来生,将会怎样?她(他),又将何去何从……
  • 马斯洛的人本哲学

    马斯洛的人本哲学

    本书以全新的视角,介绍了马斯洛的理论精华,书中解答了我们关于人生的一系列问题:什么是人生的意义?人性的本质为何?我们怎样才能获得幸福和安宁?我们怎样才能健全自我的人格?我们怎样才能挖掘自我的潜能?我们怎样才能实现自我的价值?我们如何才能达到力所能及的目标?我们如何才能成为优秀的人?本书引导我们了解马斯洛,了解自己的人生,帮助我们调动自身一切积极的因素以实现最完美的自我,创造最美好的人生境界。
  • 长生劫之黄泉

    长生劫之黄泉

    长生殿,远古时期一个超越六界的神邸。无极,集天地灵气而生的神秘灵体,长生殿主人,六界号‘无极大人’。唯一与之相克的是从冥界衍生出的精灵的魂魄。“玄灵,若有来世,本座必许你十里繁华”。“无极,只要我还有一口气在,便誓要将这六界生灵屠尽,为你陪葬”!千年后,长生殿易主,她失了魂魄,从此永生不灭,却唯独记得他……
  • 一夜情深,腹黑总裁紧追不放

    一夜情深,腹黑总裁紧追不放

    顾挽歌初次见到傅薄清,是在酒店的总统套房。顾挽歌第二次见到傅薄清,是在顾家。他是她妹妹的未婚夫。一夜孽缘,让顾挽歌众叛亲离,成了人人唾弃的烂女人,臭小三。后来,她才慢慢知道,她这个顾家大小姐是假的,她只是个私生女。妹妹跟她的深厚感情也是假的,她只是他们玩弄于手掌心的笑话。只有傅薄清对她的爱,是真的。傅大少:小歌,我对你的爱不但真,还很深。顾小歌:知道了,不要每天重复。傅大少:好好好,不说,今晚做给你看。顾小歌:呸!!!--情节虚构,请勿模仿
  • 下界当天才

    下界当天才

    “我都说了多少次了,”李波无奈的说道,“我的天赋我自己最清楚,在我那,我就是最废的,没有之一!”这是一个由于在老家太废了,只能下界冒充天才的故事。轻松日常向,更新时间不定