When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells (tharntype novel english txt) ๐
It was a yellow figure lying lax upon a water-bed and clad in a flowing shirt, a figure with a shrunken face and a stubby beard, lean limbs and lank nails, and about it was a case of thin glass. This glass seemed to mark off the sleeper from the reality of life about him, he was a thing apart, a strange, isolated abnormality. The two men stood close to the glass, peering in.
"The thing gave me a shock," said Isbister "I feel a queer sort of surprise even now when I think of his white eyes. They were white, you know, rolled up. Coming here again brings it all back to me.
"Have you never seen him since that time?" asked Warming.
"Often wanted to come," said Isbister; "but business nowadays is too serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I've been in America most of the time
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โThis way,โ he said concisely, and they went on in silence to a little door that opened at their approach. The two men in red stopped on either side of this door. Howard and Graham passed in, and Graham, glancing back, saw the white-robed Council still standing in a close group and looking at him. Then the door closed behind him with a heavy thud, and for the first time since his awakening he was in silence. The floor, even, was noiseless to his feet.
Howard opened another door, and they were in the first of two contiguous chambers furnished in white and green. โWhat Council was that?โ began Graham. โWhat were they discussing? What have they to do with me?โ Howard closed the door carefully, heaved a huge sigh, and said something in an undertone. He walked slanting ways across the room and turned, blowing out his cheeks again. โUgh!โ he grunted, a man relieved.
Graham stood regarding him.
โYou must understand,โ began Howard abruptly, avoiding Grahamโs eyes, โthat our social order is very complex. A half explanation, a bare unqualified statement would give you false impressions. As a matter of fact โ it is a case of compound interest partly โ your small fortune, and the fortune of your cousin Warming which was left to you โ and certain other beginnings โ have become very considerable. And in other ways that will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person of significance โ of very considerable significance โ involved in the worldโs affairs.โ
He stopped.
โYes?โ said Graham.
โWe have grave social troubles.โ
โYes?โ
โThings have come to such a pass that, in fact, is advisable to seclude you here.โ
โKeep me prisoner!โ exclaimed Graham.
โWell โ to ask you to keep in seclusion.โ
Graham turned on him. โThis is strange!โ he said.
โNo harm will be done you.โ
โNo harm!โ
โBut you must be kept here โโ
โWhile I learn my position, I presume.โ
โPrecisely.โ
โVery well then. Begin. Why harm?โ
โNot now.โ
โWhy not?โ
โIt is too long a story, Sire.โ
โAll the more reason I should begin at once. You say I am a person of importance. What was that shouting I heard? Why is a great multitude shouting and excited because my trance is over, and who are the men in white in that huge council chamber?โ
โAll in good time, Sire,โ said Howard. โBut not crudely, not crudely. This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your awakening. No one expected your awakening. The Council is consulting.โ
โWhat council?โ
โThe Council you saw.โ
Graham made a petulant movement. โThis is not right,โ he said. โI should be told what is happening.
โYou must wait. Really you must wait.โ
Graham sat down abruptly. โI suppose since I have waited so long to resume life,โ he said, โthat I must wait a little longer.โ
โThat is better,โ said Howard. โYes, that is much better. And I must leave you alone. For a space. While I attend the discussion in the Council. I am sorry.โ
He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.
Graham walked to the door, tried it, found it securely fastened in some way he never came to understand, turned about, paced the room restlessly, made the circuit of the room, and sat down. He remained sitting for some time with folded arms and knitted brow, biting his finger nails and trying to piece together the kaleidoscopic impressions of this first hour of awakened life; the vast mechanical spaces, the endless series of chambers and passages, the great struggle that roared and splashed through these strange ways, the little group of remote unsympathetic men beneath the colossal Atlas, Howardโs mysterious behaviour. There was an inkling of some vast inheritance already in his mind โ a vast inheritance perhaps misapplied โ of some unprecedented importance and opportunity. What had he to do? And this roomโs secluded silence was eloquent of imprisonment!
It came into Grahamโs mind with irresistible conviction that this series of magnificent impressions was a dream. He tried to shut his eyes and succeeded, but that time-honoured device led to no awakening.
Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments of the two small rooms in which he found himself.
In a long oval panel of mirror he saw himself and stopped astonished. He was clad in a graceful costume of purple and bluish white, with a little greyshot beard trimmed to a point, and his hair, its blackness streaked now with bands of grey, arranged over his forehead in an unfamiliar but graceful manner. He seemed a man of five-and-forty perhaps. For a moment he did not perceive this was himself.
A flash of laughter came with the recognition. โTo call on old Warming like this!โ he exclaimed, โand make him take me out to lunch!โ
Then he thought of meeting first one and then another of the few familiar acquaintances of his early manhood, and in the midst of his amusement realised that every soul with whom he might jest had died many score of years ago. The thought smote him abruptly and keenly; he stopped short, the expression of his face changed to a white consternation.
The tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge facade of that wonderful street reasserted itself. The shouting multitudes came back clear and vivid, and those remote, inaudible, unfriendly councilors in white. He felt himself a little figure, very small and ineffectual, pitifully conspicuous. And all about him, the world was โ strange.
Presently Graham resumed his examination of his apartments. Curiosity kept him moving in spite of his fatigue. The inner room, he perceived, was high, and its ceiling dome shapedโ, with an oblong aperture in the centre, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad vans seemed to be rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint humming note of its easy motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. As these vans sprang up one after the other, Graham could get transient glimpses of the sky. He was surprised to see a star.
This drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of these rooms was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about the cornices. There were no windows. And he began to recall that along all the vast chambers and passages he had traversed with Howard he had observed no windows at all. Had there been windows? There were windows on the street indeed, but were they for light? Or was the whole city lit day and night for evermore, so that there was no night there?
And another thing dawned upon him. There was no fireplace in either room. Was the season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, or was the whole City uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested in these questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, the simply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour of bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was a curious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and colour, that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were several very comfortable chairs, a light table on silent runners carrying several bottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substance like jelly. Then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, no writing materials. โThe world has changed indeed,โ he said.
He observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows of peculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white that harmonized With the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre of this side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having a white smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitory idea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute for books, but at first it did not seem so.
The lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. At first sight it seemed like Russian. Then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English about certain of the words.
โoi Man huwdbi Kinโ forced itself on him as โThe Man who would be King.โ โPhonetic spelling,โ he said. He remembered reading a story with that title, then he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world. But this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He puzzled out the titles of two adjacent cylinders. โThe Heart of Darkness,โ he had never heard of before nor โThe Madonna of the Futureโ โ no doubt if they were indeed stories, they were by post Victorian authors.
He puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it. Then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. He opened a sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressed this and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voices and music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. He suddenly realised what this might be, and stepped back to regard it.
On the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, and in this picture were figures that moved. Not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like reality viewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube. His interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented a man pacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty but petulant woman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed so strange to Graham. โI have worked,โ said the man, โbut what have you been doing?โ
โAh!โ said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair. Within five minutes he heard himself named, heard โwhen the Sleeper wakes,โ used jestingly as a proverb for remote postponement, and passed himself by, a thing remote and incredible. But in a little while he knew those two people like intimate friends.
At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the apparatus was blank again.
It was a strange world into which he had been permitted to see, unscrupulous, pleasure seeking, energetic, subtle, a world too of dire economic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidents that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of dubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in his first impression of the city ways appeared again and again as the costume of the common people. He had no doubt the story was contemporary, and its intense realism was undeniable. And the end had been a tragedy that oppressed him. He sat staring at the blankness.
He started and rubbed his eyes. He had been so absorbed in the latter-day substitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little green and white room with more than a touch of the surprise of his first awakening.
He stood up, and abruptly he was back in his own
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