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The Sleeper Awakes Chapter 2 - The Trance · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter two of The Sleeper Awakes. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Tammy Sanders. The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter two. The trance the state of cataleptic rigor into
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  Speaker 1: which this man had fallen lasted for an unprecedented length
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  Speaker 1: of time, and then he passed slowly to the flaccid state,
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  Speaker 1: to a lax attitude suggestive of profound repose. Then it
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  Speaker 1: was his eyes could be closed. He was removed from
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  Speaker 1: the hotel to the Bowcastle Surgery, and from the surgery,
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  Speaker 1: after some weeks, to London. But he still resisted every
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  Speaker 1: attempt at reanimation. After a time, for reasons that will
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  Speaker 1: appear later, these attempts were discontinued for a great space.
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  Speaker 1: He lay in that strange condition, inert and still neither
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  Speaker 1: dead nor living, but as it were, suspended, hanging midway
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  Speaker 1: between nothingness and existence. His was a darkness unbroken by
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  Speaker 1: a ray of thought or sensation, a dreamless inanation, a
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  Speaker 1: vast space of peace. The tumult of his mind had
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  Speaker 1: swelled and risen to an abrupt climax of silence. Where
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  Speaker 1: was the man? Where is any man when insensibility takes
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  Speaker 1: hold of him? It seems only yesterday, said isbister. I
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  Speaker 1: remember it all as though it happened yesterday, clearer perhaps
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  Speaker 1: than if it had happened yesterday. It was the isy
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  Speaker 1: Bister of the last chapter, but he was no longer
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  Speaker 1: a young man. The hair that had been brown and
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  Speaker 1: a trifle in excess of the fashionable length was iron
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  Speaker 1: gray and clipped close, and the face that had been
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  Speaker 1: pink and white was buff and ruddy. He had a
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  Speaker 1: pointed beard shot with gray. He talked to an elderly
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  Speaker 1: man who wore a summer suit of drill. The summer
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  Speaker 1: of that year was unusually hot. This was Warming, a
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  Speaker 1: London solicitor and next of kin to Graham, the man
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  Speaker 1: who had fallen into the trance, and the two men
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  Speaker 1: stood side by side in a room in a house
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  Speaker 1: in London. Regarding his recumbent figure, it was a yellow
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  Speaker 1: figure lying lax upon a water bed and clad in
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  Speaker 1: a flowing shirt. A figure with a shrunken face and
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  Speaker 1: a stubby beard, lean limbs and lank nails, and about
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  Speaker 1: it was a case of thin glass. This glass seemed
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  Speaker 1: to mark off the sleeper from the reality of life
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  Speaker 1: about him. He was a thing apart, a strange, isolated abnormality.
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  Speaker 1: The two men stood close to the glass, peering in.
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  Speaker 1: The thing gave me a shock, said, Isbister. I feel
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  Speaker 1: a queer sort of surprise even now when I think
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  Speaker 1: of his white eyes. They were white, you know. Rolled
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  Speaker 1: up Coming here again brings it all back to me.
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  Speaker 1: Have you never seen him since that time? Asked Warming.
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  Speaker 1: Often wanted to come, said Isbister, But business nowadays is
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  Speaker 1: too serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I've been
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  Speaker 1: in America most of the time, if I remember rightly,
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  Speaker 1: said Warming. You were an artist, was, and then I
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  Speaker 1: became a married man. I saw it was all up
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  Speaker 1: with black and white very soon, at least for a mediocrity,
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  Speaker 1: and I jumped on to process. Those posters on the
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  Speaker 1: cliffs at Dover are by my people. Good posters, admitted
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  Speaker 1: the solicitor, though I was sorry to see them there
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  Speaker 1: last as long as the cliffs if necessary, exclaimed Ezbister,
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  Speaker 1: with satisfaction. The world changes. When he fell asleep twenty
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  Speaker 1: years ago, I was down at Bowcastle with a box
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  Speaker 1: of water colors and a noble, old fashioned ambition. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't expect that some day my pigments would glorify the
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  Speaker 1: whole blessed coast of England, from Land's Inn round again
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  Speaker 1: to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often
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  Speaker 1: when he is not looking. Warming seemed to doubt the
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  Speaker 1: quality of the luck. I just missed seeing you, if
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  Speaker 1: I recollect aright. You came back by the trap that
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  Speaker 1: took me to Camelford Railway station. It was close on
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  Speaker 1: the jubilee, Victoria's Jubilee, because I remember the seats and
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  Speaker 1: flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea.
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  Speaker 1: The Diamond Jubilee, it was said warming the second one,
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  Speaker 1: ah yes, at the proper Jubilee, the fifty year affair.
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  Speaker 1: I was down at wookeye a boy. I missed all that.
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  Speaker 1: What a fuss we had with him. My landlady wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: take him in, wouldn't let him stay. He looked so
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  Speaker 1: queer when he was rigid. We had to carry him
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  Speaker 1: in a chair up to the hotel and the Bowcastle. Doctor.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't the present chap but the g P before
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  Speaker 1: him was at him until nearly two with me and
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  Speaker 1: the landlord holding lights and so forth. Do you mean
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  Speaker 1: he was stiff, an hard stiff. Wherever you bent him,
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  Speaker 1: he stuck. You might have stood him on his head
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  Speaker 1: and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: this he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of
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  Speaker 1: his head is quite different. And the little doctor what
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  Speaker 1: was his name, Smithers, Smithers it was, was quite wrong
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  Speaker 1: in trying to fetch him round too soon, according to
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  Speaker 1: all accounts, the things he did, even now it makes
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  Speaker 1: me feel all uh mustard snuff pricking and one of
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  Speaker 1: those beastly little things not dynamos coils. Yes, you could
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  Speaker 1: see his muscles throb and jump, and he twisted about.
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  Speaker 1: There were just two flaring yellow candles, and all the
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  Speaker 1: shadows were shivering, and the little doctor nervous and putting
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  Speaker 1: on side, and him stark and squirming in the most
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  Speaker 1: unnatural ways. Well, it made me dream. Pause. It's a
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  Speaker 1: strange state, said warming. It's a sort of complete absence,
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  Speaker 1: said isbister. Here's the body empty, not dead a bit,
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  Speaker 1: and yet not alive. It's like a seat, vacant and marked, engaged,
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  Speaker 1: no feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart, not
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  Speaker 1: a flutter. That doesn't make me feel as if there
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  Speaker 1: was a man present. In a sense, it's more dead
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  Speaker 1: than death. For these doctors tell me that even the
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  Speaker 1: hair has stopped growing. Now with the proper dead, the
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  Speaker 1: hair will go on growing, I know, said Warming, with
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  Speaker 1: a flash of pain in his expression. They peered through
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  Speaker 1: the glass again. Graham was indeed in a strange state,
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  Speaker 1: in the flaccid phase of a trance, but a trance
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  Speaker 1: unprecedented in medical history. Trances had lasted for as much
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  Speaker 1: as a year before, but at the end of that
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  Speaker 1: time it had ever been a waking or a death,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes first one and then the other. Is Bister noted
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  Speaker 1: the marks the physicians had made in injecting nourishment for
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  Speaker 1: that had been resorted to postpone collapse. He pointed them
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  Speaker 1: out to Warming, who had been trying not to see them.
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  Speaker 1: And while he has been lying here, said Isbister, with
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  Speaker 1: the zest of a life freely spent, I have changed
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  Speaker 1: my plans in life, married, raised a family, my eldest
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  Speaker 1: lad I hadn't begun to think of sons. Then, is
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  Speaker 1: an American citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard. There's
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  Speaker 1: a touch of gray in my hair. And this man
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  Speaker 1: not a day older nor wiser practically than I was
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  Speaker 1: in my downy days. It's curious to think of Warming turned.
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  Speaker 1: And I have grown old too. I played cricket with
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  Speaker 1: him when I was still only a boy, and he
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  Speaker 1: looks a young man, still yellow perhaps, but that is
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  Speaker 1: a young man nevertheless. And there's been the war, said
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  Speaker 1: his bister, from beginning to end. And these martians I've understood,
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  Speaker 1: said his bister, after a pause, that he had some
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  Speaker 1: moderate property of his own. That is so, said Warming.
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  Speaker 1: He coughed primly, as it happens, I have charge of it, ah,
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  Speaker 1: is bister, thought, hesitated and spoke. No doubt his keep
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  Speaker 1: here is not expensive. No doubt it will have improved,
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  Speaker 1: accumulated it has. He will wake up very much better
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  Speaker 1: off if he wakes than when he slept, as a
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  Speaker 1: business man, said isbister. That thought has naturally been in
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  Speaker 1: my mind. I have indeed sometimes thought that, speaking commercially,
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  Speaker 1: of course, this sleep may have been a very good
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  Speaker 1: thing for him. That he knows what he is about,
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  Speaker 1: so to speak, in being insensible so long. If he
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  Speaker 1: had lived straight on I doubt if he would have
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  Speaker 1: premeditated as much, said Warming. He was not a far
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  Speaker 1: sighted man. In fact, yes, we differed on that point.
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  Speaker 1: I stood to him somewhat in the relation of a guardian.
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  Speaker 1: You have probably seen enough of affairs to recognize that
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  Speaker 1: occasionally a certain friction. But even if that was the case,
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  Speaker 1: there is a doubt whether he will ever wake. This
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  Speaker 1: sleep exhausts slowly, but it exhausts apparently. He is sliding slowly,
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  Speaker 1: very slowly, and tediously down a long slope. If you
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  Speaker 1: can understand me, it will be a pity to lose
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  Speaker 1: his surprise. There's been a lot of change these twenty years,
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  Speaker 1: Its rip van Winkle, come real. There has been a
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  Speaker 1: lot of change, certainly, said Warming. And among other changes,
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  Speaker 1: I have changed. I am an old man. Isbister hesitated,
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  Speaker 1: and then feigned a belated surprise. I shouldn't have thought it.
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  Speaker 1: I was forty three when his bankers, you remember, you
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  Speaker 1: wired to his bankers sent on to me. I got
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  Speaker 1: their address from the check book in his pocket, said Isbister. Well,
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  Speaker 1: the addition is not difficult, said Warming. There was another pause,
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  Speaker 1: and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable curiosity. He
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  Speaker 1: may go on for years. Yet he said and had
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  Speaker 1: a moment of hesitation. We have to consider that his affairs,
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  Speaker 1: you know, may fall someday into the hands of someone else.
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  Speaker 1: You know that, if you will believe me, mister Isbister,
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  Speaker 1: is one of the problems most constantly before my mind.
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  Speaker 1: We happen to be as a matter of fact, there
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  Speaker 1: are no very trustworthy connections of ours. It is a
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  Speaker 1: grotesque and unprecedented position. Rather, said Isbister. It seems to
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  Speaker 1: me it's a case of some public body, some practically
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  Speaker 1: undying guardian, if he really is going on living, as
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  Speaker 1: the doctors some of them think. As a matter of fact,
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  Speaker 1: I have gone to one or two public men about it,
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  Speaker 1: but so far nothing has been done. It wouldn't be
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  Speaker 1: a bad idea to hand him over to some public body,
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  Speaker 1: the British Museum Rustees or the Royal College of Physicians.
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  Speaker 1: Sounds a bit odd, of course, but the whole situation
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  Speaker 1: is odd. The difficulty is to induce them to take
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  Speaker 1: him red tape, I suppose partly pause. It is a
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  Speaker 1: curious business, certainly, said Isbister, and compound interest has a
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  Speaker 1: way of mounting up. It has said warming, and now
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  Speaker 1: the gold supplies are running short. There is a tendency
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  Speaker 1: towards appreciation. I've felt that, said Isbister, with a grimace.
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  Speaker 1: But it makes it better for him if he wakes.
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  Speaker 1: If he wakes, echoed, isbister, do you notice the pinched
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  Speaker 1: in look of his nose and the way in which
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  Speaker 1: his eyelids sink warming looked in thought for a space.
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  Speaker 1: I doubt if he will wake, he said at last.
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  Speaker 1: I never properly understood, said Isbister. What it was brought
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  Speaker 1: this on? He told me something about overstudy. I've often
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  Speaker 1: been curious. He was a man of considerable gifts, but
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  Speaker 1: spasmodic emotional. He had grave domestic troubles. Divorced his wife
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  Speaker 1: in fact, and it was as a relief from that
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  Speaker 1: I think that he took up politics of the rabid sort.
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  Speaker 1: He was a fanatical radical, a socialist, or typical liberal,
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  Speaker 1: as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school, energetic, flighty, undisciplined.
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  Speaker 1: Over work upon a controversy did this for him? I
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  Speaker 1: remember the pamphlet he wrote, A curious production, wild whirling stuff.
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  Speaker 1: There were one or two prophecies, some of them are
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  Speaker 1: already exploded. Some of them are established facts, but for
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  Speaker 1: the most part, to read such a thesis as to
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  Speaker 1: realize how full the world is of unanticipated things, he
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  Speaker 1: will have much to learn, much to unlearn when he wakes.
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  Speaker 1: If ever a waking comes. I'd give anything to be there,
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  Speaker 1: said isbister, just to hear what he would say to it. All.
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  Speaker 1: So would I, said, warming Ay, so would I with
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  Speaker 1: an old man's sudden turn to self pity. But I
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  Speaker 1: shall never see him wake. He stood, looking thoughtfully at
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  Speaker 1: the waxen figure. He will never awake, he said. At last,
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  Speaker 1: he sighed, he will never awake again. End of Chapter
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  Speaker 1: two