章节正文
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 landlordholding 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 tranceunprecedented 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 postponecollapse; 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. 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."
"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.
"We have to consider that. His affairs, you
know, may fall some day into the hands of--someone
else, you know."
"That, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one
of the problems most constantly before my mind. We
happen to be--as a matter of fact, there are no very
trustworthy connections of ours. It is a grotesque
and unprecedented position."
"It is," said Isbister. "As a matter of fact, it's a
case for a public trustee, if only we had such a
functionary."
"It seems to me it's a case for some public body,
some practically undying guardian. If he really is
going on living--as the doctors, some of them, think.
As a matter of fact, I have gone to one or two public
men about it. But, so far, nothing has been done."
"It wouldn't be a bad idea to hand him over to
some public body--the British Museum Trustees, or
the Royal College of Physicians. Sounds a bit odd,
of course, but the whole situation is odd."
"The difficulty is to induce them to take him."
"Red tape, I suppose? "
"Partly."
Pause. " It's a curious business, certainly," said
Isbister. "And compound interest has a way of
mounting up."
"It has," said Warming. "And now the gold supplies
are running short there is a tendency towards
. . . appreciation."
"I've felt that," said Isbister with a grimace. "But
it makes it better for him."
"If he wakes."
"If he wakes," echoed Isbister. "Do you notice
the pinched-ill look of his nose, and the way in which
his eyelids sink?"
Warming looked and thought for a space. "I doubt
if he will wake," he said at last.
"I never properly understood," said Isbister, "what
it was brought this on. He told me something about
overstudy. I've often been curious."
"He was a man of considerable gifts, but spasmodic,
emotional. He had grave domestic troubles,
divorced his wife, in fact, and it was as a relief from
that, I think, that he took up politics of the rabid sort.
He was a fanatical Radical--a Socialist--or typical
Liberal, as they used to call themselves,-of the advanced
school. Energetic--flighty--undisciplined. Overwork
upon a controversy did this for him. I remember
the pamphlet he wrote--a curious production. Wild,
whirling stuff. There were one or two prophecies.
Some of them are already exploded, some of them are
established facts. But for the most part to read such
a thesis is to realise how full the world is of
unanticipated things. He will have much to learn, much to
unlearn, when he wakes. If ever a waking comes."
"I'd give anything to be there," said Isbister, "just
to hear what he would say to it all."
"So would I," said Warming. "Aye! so would
I," with an old man's sudden turn to self pity. "But
I shall never see him wake."
He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure.
"He will never wake," he said at last. He sighed
"He will never wake again."
CHAPTER III
THE AWAKENING
But Warming was wrong in that. An awakening
came.
What a wonderfullycomplex thing! this simple
seeming unity--the self! Who can trace its
reintegration as morning after morning we awaken, the
flux and confluence of its countless factors intenveaving,
rebuilding, the dim first stirrings of the soul, the
growth and synthesis of the unconscious to the
subconscious, the sub-conscious to dawning consciousness,
until at last we recognise ourselves again. And
as it happens to most of us after the night's sleep, so
it was with Graham at the end of his vast slumber.
A dim cloud of sensationtaking shape, a cloudy
dreariness, and he found himself vaguely somewhere,
recumbent, faint, but alive.
The pilgrimage towards a personal being seemed to
traverse vast gulfs, to occupy epochs. Gigantic
dreams that were terrible realities at the time, left
vague perplexing memories, strange creatures, strange
scenery, as if from another planet. There was a distinct
impression, too, of a momentous conversation, of
a name--he could not tell what name--that was
subsequently to recur, of some queer long-forgotten
"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 landlordholding 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 tranceunprecedented 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 postponecollapse; 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. 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."
"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.
"We have to consider that. His affairs, you
know, may fall some day into the hands of--someone
else, you know."
"That, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one
of the problems most constantly before my mind. We
happen to be--as a matter of fact, there are no very
trustworthy connections of ours. It is a grotesque
and unprecedented position."
"It is," said Isbister. "As a matter of fact, it's a
case for a public trustee, if only we had such a
functionary."
"It seems to me it's a case for some public body,
some practically undying guardian. If he really is
going on living--as the doctors, some of them, think.
As a matter of fact, I have gone to one or two public
men about it. But, so far, nothing has been done."
"It wouldn't be a bad idea to hand him over to
some public body--the British Museum Trustees, or
the Royal College of Physicians. Sounds a bit odd,
of course, but the whole situation is odd."
"The difficulty is to induce them to take him."
"Red tape, I suppose? "
"Partly."
Pause. " It's a curious business, certainly," said
Isbister. "And compound interest has a way of
mounting up."
"It has," said Warming. "And now the gold supplies
are running short there is a tendency towards
. . . appreciation."
"I've felt that," said Isbister with a grimace. "But
it makes it better for him."
"If he wakes."
"If he wakes," echoed Isbister. "Do you notice
the pinched-ill look of his nose, and the way in which
his eyelids sink?"
Warming looked and thought for a space. "I doubt
if he will wake," he said at last.
"I never properly understood," said Isbister, "what
it was brought this on. He told me something about
overstudy. I've often been curious."
"He was a man of considerable gifts, but spasmodic,
emotional. He had grave domestic troubles,
divorced his wife, in fact, and it was as a relief from
that, I think, that he took up politics of the rabid sort.
He was a fanatical Radical--a Socialist--or typical
Liberal, as they used to call themselves,-of the advanced
school. Energetic--flighty--undisciplined. Overwork
upon a controversy did this for him. I remember
the pamphlet he wrote--a curious production. Wild,
whirling stuff. There were one or two prophecies.
Some of them are already exploded, some of them are
established facts. But for the most part to read such
a thesis is to realise how full the world is of
unanticipated things. He will have much to learn, much to
unlearn, when he wakes. If ever a waking comes."
"I'd give anything to be there," said Isbister, "just
to hear what he would say to it all."
"So would I," said Warming. "Aye! so would
I," with an old man's sudden turn to self pity. "But
I shall never see him wake."
He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure.
"He will never wake," he said at last. He sighed
"He will never wake again."
CHAPTER III
THE AWAKENING
But Warming was wrong in that. An awakening
came.
What a wonderfullycomplex thing! this simple
seeming unity--the self! Who can trace its
reintegration as morning after morning we awaken, the
flux and confluence of its countless factors intenveaving,
rebuilding, the dim first stirrings of the soul, the
growth and synthesis of the unconscious to the
subconscious, the sub-conscious to dawning consciousness,
until at last we recognise ourselves again. And
as it happens to most of us after the night's sleep, so
it was with Graham at the end of his vast slumber.
A dim cloud of sensationtaking shape, a cloudy
dreariness, and he found himself vaguely somewhere,
recumbent, faint, but alive.
The pilgrimage towards a personal being seemed to
traverse vast gulfs, to occupy epochs. Gigantic
dreams that were terrible realities at the time, left
vague perplexing memories, strange creatures, strange
scenery, as if from another planet. There was a distinct
impression, too, of a momentous conversation, of
a name--he could not tell what name--that was
subsequently to recur, of some queer long-forgotten
- landlord [´lændlɔ:d]
n.地主；房东；店主 (初中英语单词) - movement [´mu:vmənt] n.活动；运动；动作 (初中英语单词)
- nervous [´nə:vəs] a.神经的；神经过敏的 (初中英语单词)
- vacant [´veikənt] a.空虚的，无表情的 (初中英语单词)
- flutter [´flʌtə] vi.飘扬；摆 n.拍动 (初中英语单词)
- medical [´medikəl] a.医学的；医疗的 (初中英语单词)
- device [di´vais] n.装置；器具；策略 (初中英语单词)
- postpone [pəust´pəun] v.延迟；搁置；延缓发作 (初中英语单词)
- pointed [´pɔintid] a.尖(锐)的；中肯的 (初中英语单词)
- freely [´fri:li] ad.自由地；慷慨地 (初中英语单词)
- beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- moderate [´mɔdərit] a.适度的n.温和主义者 (初中英语单词)
- charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- addition [ə´diʃən] n.加；加法；附加物 (初中英语单词)
- curiosity [,kjuəri´ɔsiti] n.好奇；奇事；珍品 (初中英语单词)
- constantly [´kɔnstəntli] ad.经常地；不断地 (初中英语单词)
- compound [kəm´paund] n.&a.混合(的) v.合成 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- tendency [´tendənsi] n.趋势；倾向 (初中英语单词)
- properly [´prɔpəli] ad.适当地；严格地 (初中英语单词)
- considerable [kən´sidərəbəl] a.重要的；值得重视 (初中英语单词)
- domestic [də´mestik] a.家庭的；本国的 (初中英语单词)
- relief [ri´li:f] n.救济；援救；减轻 (初中英语单词)
- politics [´pɔlitiks] n.政治(学)；政治活动 (初中英语单词)
- complex [´kɔmpleks] a.复杂的 n.综合企业 (初中英语单词)
- awaken [ə´weikən] v.唤起，叫醒 (初中英语单词)
- sensation [sen´seiʃən] n.感觉；轰动；轰动一时 (初中英语单词)
- planet [´plænit] n.行星 (初中英语单词)
- collapse [kə´læps] vi.&n.崩溃；病倒；衰败 (高中英语单词)
- eldest [´eldist] a.最年长的 (高中英语单词)
- cricket [´krikit] n.蟋蟀；板球 (高中英语单词)
- guardian [´gɑ:diən] n.监护人；保护人 (高中英语单词)
- controversy [´kɔntrəvə:si] n.争论；争吵 (高中英语单词)
- thoughtfully [´θɔ:tfuli] ad.深思地；体贴地 (高中英语单词)
- countless [´kauntlis] a.无数的 (高中英语单词)
- unconscious [ʌn´kɔnʃəs] a.无意识的；不觉察的 (高中英语单词)
- prostrate [´prɔstreit, prɔ´streit] a.俯伏的 vt.弄倒 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- mustard [´mʌstəd] n.芥菜；芥末(色) (英语四级单词)
- digestion [di´dʒestʃən] n.消化(力) (英语四级单词)
- warming [´wɔ:miŋ] n.暖和；加温 (英语四级单词)
- graham [´greiəm] a.&n.用全麦粉做的 (英语四级单词)
- nourishment [´nʌriʃmənt] n.食物；营养品(情况) (英语四级单词)
- trustee [trʌs´ti:] n.托管人；保管人 (英语四级单词)
- pamphlet [´pæmflit] n.小册子 (英语四级单词)
- wonderfully [´wʌndəfuli] ad.令人惊讶地；奇妙地 (英语四级单词)
- vaguely [´veigli] ad.含糊地，暖昧地 (英语四级单词)
- pilgrimage [´pilgrimidʒ] n.朝圣；远游；人生历程 (英语四级单词)
- jubilee [´dʒu:bili:] n.欢乐的节日 (英语六级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- trance [trɑ:ns] n.恍惚；出神 (英语六级单词)
- unprecedented [ʌn´presidentid] a.空前的 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- belated [bi´leitid] a.延误的；遗留的 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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