When the Sleeper Wakes Part 4

Then suddenly, quite abruptly, he realised what had happened. There was no perceptible interval of suspicion, no dawn to his knowledge. Abruptly he knew that his trance had lasted for a vast interval; as if by some processes of thought reading he interpreted the awe in the faces that peered into his. He looked at them strangely, full of intense emotion.

It seemed they read his eyes. He framed his lips to speak and could not.

A queer impulse to hide his knowledge came into his mind almost at the moment of his discovery. He looked at his bare feet, regarding then silently. His impulse to speak pa.s.sed. He was trembling exceedingly.

They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty taste, and the a.s.surance of returning strength grew.

"That--that makes me feel better," he said hoa.r.s.ely, and there were murmurs of respectful approval. He knew now quite clearly. He made to speak again, and again he could not.

He pressed his throat and tried a third time.

"How long?" he asked in a level voice. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Some considerable time," said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quickly at the others.

"How long?"

"A very long time."

"Yes--yes," said Graham, suddenly testy. "But I want--Is it--it is--some years? Many years? There was something--I forget what. I feel--confused.

But you--" He sobbed. "You need not fence with me. How long--?"

He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his knuckles and sat waiting for an answer.

They spoke in undertones.

"Five or six?" he asked faintly. "More?"

"Very much more than that."

"Morel"

"More."

He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the muscles of his face. He looked his question.

"Many years," said the man with the red beard.

Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from his face with a lean hand. "Many years!" he repeated. He shut his eyes tight, opened them, and sat looking about him, from one unfamiliar thing to another.

"How many years?" he asked.

"You must be prepared to be surprised."

"Well?"

"More than a gross of years."

He was irritated at the strange word. "More than a _what_?"

Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about "decimal" he did not catch.

"How long did you say?" asked Graham. "How long? Don't look like that.

Tell me."

Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "More than a couple of centuries."

_"What?"_ he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "Who says--? What was that? A couple of centuries!"

"Yes," said the man with the red beard. "Two hundred years."

Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose, and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.

"Two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulf opening very slowly in his mind; and then, "Oh, but--!"

They said nothing.

"You--did you say--?"

"Two hundred years. Two centuries of years," said the man with the red beard.

There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had heard was indeed true.

"But it can't be," he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances. Trances don't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played upon me! Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of Cornwall--?"

His voice failed him.

The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong in history, sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others.

"That was it, sir," said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy of Cornwall--it's in the southwest country beyond the dairy meadows. There is a house there still. I have been there."

"Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "That was it--Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep--somewhere there. I don't exactly remember. I don't exactly remember."

He pressed his brows and whispered, "More than two hundred years!"

He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was cold within him. "But if it is two hundred years, every soul I know, every human being that ever I saw or spoke to before I went to sleep, must be dead."

They did not answer him.

"The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, of Church and State.

High and low, rich and poor, one with another--"

"Is there England still?"

"That's a comfort! Is there London?" E "This _is_ London, eh? And you are my a.s.sistant--custodian; a.s.sistant-custodian. And these--? Eh?

a.s.sistant-custodians to?"

He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "But why am I here? No! Don't talk. Be quiet. Let me--"