The Sleeper Awakes: A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes
v
he state of cataleptic rigour into which this man had fallen, lasted for an
unprecedented length of time, and then he passed slowly to the flaccid
state, to a lax attitude suggestive of profound repose. Then it was his eyes
could be closed.
Hewas removed from the hotel to the Boscastle surgery, and from the surgery,
after some weeks, to London. But he still resisted every attempt at reanima-
tion. After a time, for reasons that will appear later, these attempts were
discontinued. For a great space he lay in that strange condition, inert and
still-neither dead nor living but, as it were, suspended, hanging midway be-
tween nothingness and existence. His was a darkness unbroken by a ray of
thought or sensation, a dreamless inanition, a vast space of peace. The tu-
mult of his mind had swelled and risen to an abrupt climax of silence. Where
was the man? Where is any man when insensibility takes hold of him?
"It seems only yesterday," said Isbister. "I remember it all as though it hap-
pened yesterday-clearer, perhaps, than if it had happened yesterday."
3 H. G. (HERBERT GEORGE) WELLS
It was the Isbister of the last chapter, but he was no longer a young man. The
hair that had been brown and a trifle in excess of the fashionable length, was
iron grey and clipped close, and the face that had been pink and white was
buff and ruddy. He had a pointed beard shot with grey. He talked to an
elderly man who wore a summer suit of drill (the summer of that year was
unusually hot). This was Warming, a London solicitor and next of kin to
Graham, the man who had fallen into the trance. And the two men stood
side by side in a room in a house in London regarding his recumbent figure.
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."
"If I remember rightly," said Warming, "you were an artist?"
"Was. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with black
and white, very soon-at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped on to process.
Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people."
"Good posters," admitted the solicitor, "though I was sorry to see them
there."
"Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary," exclaimed Isbister with
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