When the Sleeper Wakes | Page 6

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 somewhat 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 wonderfully complex 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 interweaving,