The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells
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, theflux and confluence of its countless factors interweaving, rebuilding,the dim first stirrings of the soul, the growth and synthesis of theunconscious to the subconscious, the subconscious to dawningconsciousness, until at last we recognise ourselves again. And as ithappens to most of us after the night's sleep, so it was with Graham atthe end of his vast slumber. A dim cloud of sensation taking shape, acloudy dreariness, and he found himself vaguely somewhere, recumbent,faint, but alive.
The pilgrimage towards a personal being seemed to traverse vast gulfs, tooccupy epochs. Gigantic dreams that were terrible realities at the time,left vague perplexing memories, strange creatures, strange scenery, as iffrom another planet. There was a distinct impression, too, of a momentousconversation, of a name--he could not tell what name--that wassubsequently to recur, of some queer long-forgotten sensation of vein andmuscle, of a feeling of vast hopeless effort, the effort of a man neardrowning in darkness. Then came a panorama of dazzling unstable confluentscenes....
Graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding someunfamiliar thing.
It was something white, the edge of something, a frame of wood. He movedhis head slightly, following the contour of this shape. It went upbeyond the top of his eyes. He tried to think where he might be. Did itmatter, seeing he was so wretched? The colour of his thoughts was a darkdepression. He felt the featureless misery of one who wakes towards thehour of dawn. He had an uncertain sense of whispers and footstepshastily receding.
The movement of his head involved a perception of extreme physicalweakness. He supposed he was in bed in the hotel at the place in thevalley--but he could not recall that white edge. He must have slept. Heremembered now that he had wanted to sleep. He recalled the cliff andWaterfall again, and then recollected something about talking to apasser-by....
How long had he slept? What was that sound of pattering feet? And thatrise and fall, like the murmur of breakers on pebbles? He put out alanguid hand to reach his watch from the chair whereon it was his habitto place it, and touched some smooth hard surface like glass. This was sounexpected that it startled him extremely. Quite suddenly he rolled over,stared for a moment, and struggled into a sitting position. The effortwas unexpectedly difficult, and it left him giddy and weak--and amazed.
He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but hismind was quite clear--evidently his sleep had benefited him. He was notin a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very softand yielding mattress, in a trough of dark glass. The mattress waspartly transparent, a fact he observed with a sense of insecurity, andbelow it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. About his arm--and he sawwith a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow--was bound acurious apparatus of rubber, bound so cunningly that it seemed to passinto his skin above and below. And this bed was placed in a case ofgreenish coloured glass (as it seemed to him), a bar in the whiteframework of which had first arrested his attention. In the corner of thecase was a stand of glittering and delicately made apparatus, for themost part quite strange appliances, though a maximum and minimumthermometer was recognisable.
The slightly greenish tint of the glass-like substance which surroundedhim on every hand obscured what lay behind, but he perceived it was avast apartment of splendid appearance, and with a very large and simplewhite archway facing him. Close to the walls of the cage were articles offurniture, a table covered with a silvery cloth, silvery like the side ofa fish, a couple of graceful chairs, and on the table a number of disheswith substances piled on them, a bottle and two glasses. He realised thathe was intensely hungry.
He could see no one, and after a period of hesitation scrambled off thetranslucent mattress and tried to stand on the clean white floor of hislittle apartment. He had miscalculated his strength, however, andstaggered and put his hand against the glass like pane before him tosteady himself. For a moment it resisted his hand, bending outward like adistended bladder, then it broke with a slight report and vanished--apricked bubble. He reeled out into the general space of the hall, greatlyastonished. He caught at the table to save himself, knocking one of theglasses to the floor--it rang but did not break--and sat down in one ofthe armchairs.
When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from thebottle and drank--a colourless liquid it was, but not water, with apleasing faint aroma and taste and a quality of immediate support andstimulus. He put down the vessel and looked about him.
The apartment lost none of its size and magnificence now that thegreenish transparency that had intervened was removed. The archway he sawled to a flight of steps, going downward without the intermediation of adoor, to a spacious transverse passage. This passage ran between polishedpillars of some white-veined substance of deep ultramarine, and along itcame the sound of human movements, and voices and a deep undeviatingdroning note. He sat, now fully awake, listening alertly, forgetting theviands in his attention.
Then with a shock he remembered that he was naked, and casting about himfor covering, saw a long black robe thrown on one of the chairs besidehim. This he wrapped about him and sat down again, trembling.
His mind was still a surging perplexity. Clearly he had slept, and hadbeen removed in his sleep. But where? And who were those people, thedistant crowd beyond the deep blue pillars? Boscastle? He poured out andpartially drank another glass of the colourless fluid.
What was this place?--this place that to his senses seemed subtlyquivering like a thing alive? He looked about him at the clean andbeautiful form of the apartment, unstained by ornament, and saw that theroof was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of light, and, ashe looked, a steady, sweeping shadow blotted it out and passed, and cameagain and passed. "Beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note of itsown in the subdued tumult that filled the air.
He would have called out, but only a little sound came into his throat.Then he stood up, and, with the uncertain steps of a drunkard, made hisway towards the archway. He staggered down the steps, tripped on thecorner of the black cloak he had wrapped about himself, and saved himselfby catching at one of the blue pillars.
The passage ran down a cool vista of blue and purple and ended remotelyin a railed space like a balcony brightly lit and projecting into a spaceof haze, a space like the interior of some gigantic building. Beyond andremote were vast and vague architectural forms. The tumult of voices rosenow loud and clear, and on the balcony and with their backs to him,gesticulating and apparently in animated conversation, were threefigures, richly dressed in loose and easy garments of bright softcolourings. The noise of a great multitude of people poured up over thebalcony, and once it seemed the top of a banner passed, and once somebrightly coloured object, a pale blue cap or garment thrown up into theair perhaps, flashed athwart the space and fell. The shouts sounded likeEnglish, there was a reiteration of "Wake!" He heard some indistinctshrill cry, and abruptly these three men began laughing.
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed one--a red-haired man in a short purple robe. "Whenthe Sleeper wakes--_When_!"
He turned his eyes full of merriment along the passage. His face changed,the whole man changed, became rigid. The other two turned swiftly at hisexclamation and stood motionless. Their faces assumed an expression ofconsternation, an expression that deepened into awe.
Suddenly Graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillarcollapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.