When the Sleeper Wakes | Page 3

There is a sort of
oppression, a weight. No -- not drowsiness, would God it were! It is
like a shadow, a deep shadow falling suddenly and swiftly across
something busy. Spin, spin into the darkness The tumult of thought, the
confusion, the eddy and eddy. I can't express it. I can hardly keep my
mind on it -- steadily enough to tell you."
He stopped feebly.
"Don't trouble, old chap," said Isbister. "I think I can understand. At
any rate, it don't matter very much just at present about telling me, you
know."
The sleepless man thrust his knuckles into his eyes and rubbed them.
Isbister talked for awhile while this rubbing continued, and then he had
a fresh idea. "Come down to my room," he said, "and try a pipe. I can
show you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you'd care?"
The other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.

Several times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his
movements were slow and hesitating. "Come in with me," said Isbister,
"and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol. If you take
alcohol?"
The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer clearly
aware of his actions. "I don't drink," he said slowly, coming up the
garden path, and after a moment's interval repeated absently, "No -- I
don't drink. It goes round. Spin, it goes -- spin --"
He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of
one who sees nothing.
Then he sat down abruptly and heavily in the easy chair, seemed almost
to fall into it. He leant forward with his brows on his hands and became
motionless.
Presently he made a faint sound in his throat. Isbister moved about the
room with the nervousness of an inexperienced host, making little
remarks that scarcely required answering. He crossed the room to his
portfolio, placed it on the table and noticed the mantel clock.
"I don't know if you'd care to have supper with me," he said with an
unlighted cigarette in his hand -- his mind troubled with a design of the
furtive administration of chloral. "Only cold mutton, you know, but
passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe." He repeated this after
momentary silence.
The seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand,
regarding him.
The stillness lengthened. The match went out, the cigarette was put
down unlit. The man was certainly very still. Isbister took up the
portfolio, opened it, put it down, hesitated, seemed about to speak.
"Perhaps," he whispered doubtfully. Presently he glanced at the door
and back to the figure. Then he stole on tiptoe out of the room, glancing
at his companion after each elaborate pace.

He closed the door noiselessly. The house door was standing open, and
he went out beyond the porch, and stood where the monkshood rose at
the corner of the garden bed. From this point he could see the stranger
through the open window, still and dim, sitting head on hand. He had
not moved.
A number of children going along the road stopped and regarded the
artist curiously. A boatman exchanged civilities with him. He felt that
possibly his circumspect attitude and position seemed peculiar and
unaccountable. Smoking, perhaps, might seem more natural. He drew
pipe and pouch from his pocket, filled the pipe slowly.
"I wonder," . . . he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of
complacency. "At any rate we must give him a chance." He struck a
match in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe.
Presently he heard his landlady behind him, coming with his lamp lit
from the kitchen. He turned, gesticulating with his pipe, and stopped
her at the door of his sitting-room. He had some difficulty in explaining
the situation in whispers, for she did not know he had a visitor. She
retreated again with the lamp, still a little mystified to judge from her
manner, and he resumed his hovering at the corner of the porch, flushed
and less at his ease.
Long after he had smoked out his pipe, and when the bats were abroad,
his curiosity dominated his complex hesitations, and he stole back into
his darkling sitting-room. He paused in the doorway. The stranger was
still in the same attitude, dark against the window. Save for the singing
of some sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying ships in the
harbour, the evening was very still. Outside, the spikes of monkshood
and delphinium stood erect and motionless against the shadow of the
hillside. Something flashed into Isbister's mind; he started, and leaning
over the table, listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became
conviction. Astonishment seized him and became -- dread!
No sound of breathing came from