THE TRANCE
The of into which this man had fallen, for an length of time, and then he passed slowly to the state, to a of repose. Then it was his be closed.
He was from the hotel to the Boscastle surgery, and from the surgery, after some weeks, to London. But he still every attempt at reanimation. After a time, for that will appear later, these were discontinued. For a great space he in that condition, and still—neither but, as it were, suspended, and existence. His was a by a of or sensation, a inanition, a space of peace. The of his mind had and to an of silence. Where was the man? Where is any man when takes of him?
"It only yesterday," said Isbister. "I it all as though it yesterday—clearer, perhaps, than if it had yesterday."
It was the Isbister of the last chapter, but he was no longer a man. The that had been and a in of the length, was iron and close, and the that had been pink and white was and ruddy. He had a pointed with grey. He talked to an man who a of (the of that year was hot). This was Warming, a London and next of to Graham, the man who had into the trance. And the two men by in a room in a house in London his figure.
It was a yellow upon a water-bed and in a shirt, a with a and a beard, and nails, and about it was a case of thin glass. This to mark off the from the of life about him, he was a thing apart, a strange, abnormality. The two men close to the glass, in.
"The thing gave me a shock," said Isbister. "I a of now when I think of his white eyes. They were white, you know, rolled up. Coming here again it all to me."
"Have you him since that time?" asked Warming.
"Often wanted to come," said Isbister; "but is too a thing for much keeping. I've been in America most of the time."
"If I rightly," said Warming, "you were an artist?"
"Was. And then I 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 on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people."
"Good posters," the solicitor, "though I was sorry to see them there."
"Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary," Isbister with satisfaction. "The world changes. When he asleep, twenty years ago, I was at Boscastle with a box of water-colours and a noble, old-fashioned ambition. I didn't that some day my would the whole of England, from Land's End again to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he's not looking."
Warming to the quality of the luck. "I just missed you, if I aright."
"You came by the that took me to Camelford railway station. It was close on the Jubilee, Victoria's Jubilee, I the seats and in Westminster, and the with the at Chelsea."
"The Diamond Jubilee, it was," said Warming; "the second one."
"Ah, yes! At the proper Jubilee—the Fifty Year affair—I was at Wookey—a boy. I missed all that…. What a we had with him! My wouldn't take him in, wouldn't let him stay—he looked so when he was rigid. We had to him in a chair up to the hotel. And the Boscastle doctor—it wasn't the present chap, but the G.P. him—was at him until nearly two, with me and the lights and so forth."
"Do you mean—he was and hard?"
"Stiff!—wherever you him he stuck. You might have him on his and he'd have stopped. I saw such stiffness. Of this"—he the by a movement of his head—"is different. And the little doctor—what was his name?"
"Smithers?"
"Smithers it was—was in trying to him too soon, according to all accounts. The he did! Even now it makes me all—ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those little things, not dynamos—"
"Coils."
"Yes. You see his and jump, and he about. There were just two yellow candles, and all the were shivering, and the little doctor and on side, and him—stark and in the most ways. Well, it me dream."
Pause.
"It's a state," said Warming.
"It's a of complete absence," said Isbister. "Here's the body, empty. Not a bit, and yet not alive. It's like a seat and marked 'engaged.' No feeling, no digestion, no of the heart—not a flutter. That doesn't make me as if there was a man present. In a it's more than death, for these doctors tell me that the has stopped growing. Now with the proper dead, the will go on growing—"
"I know," said Warming, with a of pain in his expression.
They through the again. Graham was in a state, in the phase of a trance, but a in medical history. Trances had for as much as a year before—but at the end of that time it had been a or a death; sometimes one and then the other. Isbister noted the marks the physicians had in nourishment, for that had been to to collapse; he pointed them out to Warming, who had been trying not to see them.
"And while he has been here," said Isbister, with the of a life spent, "I have my plans in life; married, a family, my lad—I hadn't to think of sons then—is an American citizen, and looking to Harvard. There's a touch of in my hair. And this man, not a day older (practically) than I was in my days. It's to think of."
Warming turned. "And I have old too. I played with him when
I was still only a boy. And he looks a man still. Yellow perhaps.
But that is a man nevertheless."
"And there's been the War," said Isbister.
"From to end."
"And these Martians."
"I've understood," said Isbister after a pause, "that he had some property of his own?"
"That is so," said Warming. He primly. "As it happens—I have of it."
"Ah!" Isbister thought, and spoke: "No doubt—his keep here is not expensive—no it will have improved—accumulated?"
"It has. He will wake up very much off—if he wakes—than when he slept."
"As a man," said Isbister, "that has naturally been in my mind. I have, indeed, sometimes that, speaking commercially, of course, this sleep may be a very good thing for him. That he what he is about, so to speak, in being so long. If he had on—"
"I if he would have as much," said Warming. "He was not a far-sighted man. In fact—"
"Yes?"
"We on that point. I to him in the relation of a guardian. You have of to that occasionally a friction—. But if that was the case, there is a he will wake. This sleep slowly, but it exhausts. Apparently he is slowly, very slowly and tediously, a long slope, if you can me?"
"It will be a to his surprise. There's been a of these twenty years. It's Rip Van Winkle come real."
"There has been a of certainly," said Warming. "And, among other changes, I have changed. I am an old man."
Isbister hesitated, and then a surprise. "I shouldn't have it."
"I was forty-three when his bankers—you you to his bankers—sent on to me."
"I got their address from the cheque book in his pocket," said Isbister.
"Well, the is not difficult," said Warming.
There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an curiosity. "He may go on for years yet," he said, and had a moment of hesitation. "We have to that. His affairs, you know, may some day into the hands of—someone else, you know."
"That, if you will me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems most my mind. We to be—as a of fact, there are no very of ours. It is a and position."
"Rather," said Isbister.
"It to me it's a case of some public body, some guardian. If he is going on living—as the doctors, some of them, think. As a 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 idea to hand him over to some public body—the British Museum Trustees, or the Royal College of Physicians. Sounds a odd, of course, but the whole is odd."
"The is to them to take him."
"Red tape, I suppose?"
"Partly."
Pause. "It's a business, certainly," said Isbister. "And has a way of up."
"It has," said Warming. "And now the gold are there is a … appreciation."
"I've that," said Isbister with a grimace. "But it makes it for him."
"If he wakes."
"If he wakes," Isbister. "Do you notice the pinched-in look of his nose, and the way in which his sink?"
Warming looked and for a space. "I if he will wake," he said at last.
"I properly understood," said Isbister, "what it was this on. He told me something about overstudy. I've often been curious."
"He was a man of gifts, but spasmodic, emotional. He had troubles, his wife, in fact, and it was as a from that, I think, that he took up politics of the sort. He was a Radical—a Socialist—or Liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the school. Energetic—flighty—undisciplined. Overwork upon a did this for him. I the he wrote—a production. Wild, stuff. There were one or two prophecies. Some of them are already exploded, some of them are facts. But for the most part to read such a is to how full the world is of things. He will have much to learn, much to unlearn, when he wakes. If a comes."
"I'd give anything to be there," said Isbister, "just to what he would say to it all."
"So would I," said Warming. "Aye! so would I," with an old man's turn to self pity. "But I shall see him wake."
He looking at the figure. "He will awake," he said at last. He sighed. "He will again."
