When the Sleeper Wakes, H. G. Wells [interesting novels in english .TXT] 📗

He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.

“Have ye any news?” asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old man.

Graham hesitated. “None,” he said.

“I stay here till the lights come again,” said the old man. “These blue scoundrels are everywhere—everywhere.”

Graham’s answer was inarticulate assent. He tried to see the old man but the darkness hid his face. He wanted very much to respond, to talk, but he did not know how to begin.

“Dark and damnable,” said the old man suddenly. “Dark and damnable. Turned out of my room among all these dangers.”

“That’s hard,” ventured Graham. “That’s hard on you.”

“Darkness. An old man lost in the darkness. And all the world gone mad. War and fighting. The police beaten and rogues abroad. Why don’t they bring some negroes to protect us?... No more dark passages for me. I fell over a dead man.”

“You’re safer with company,” said the old man, “if it’s company of the right sort,” and peered frankly. He rose suddenly and came towards Graham.

Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down as if relieved to be no longer alone. “Eh!” he said, “but this is a terrible time! War and fighting, and the dead lying there—men, strong men, dying in the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God knows where they are tonight.”

The voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: “God knows where they are tonight.”

Graham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance. Again the old man’s voice ended the pause.

“This Ostrog will win,” he said. “He will win. And what the world will be like under him no one can tell. My sons are under the wind-vanes, all three. One of my daughters-in-law was his mistress for a while. His mistress! We’re not common people. Though they’ve sent me to wander tonight and take my chance.... I knew what was going on. Before most people. But this darkness! And to fall over a dead body suddenly in the dark!”

His wheezy breathing could be heard.

“Ostrog!” said Graham.

“The greatest Boss the world has ever seen,” said the voice.

Graham ransacked his mind. “The Council has few friends among the people,” he hazarded.

“Few friends. And poor ones at that. They’ve had their time. Eh! They should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held election. And Ostrog. And now it has burst out and nothing can stay it, nothing can stay it. Twice they rejected Ostrog—Ostrog the Boss. I heard of his rages at the time—he was terrible. Heaven save them! For nothing on earth can now, he has raised the Labour Companies upon them. No one else would have dared. All the blue canvas armed and marching! He will go through with it. He will go through.”

He was silent for a little while. “This Sleeper,” he said, and stopped.

“Yes,” said Graham. “Well?”

The senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came close. “The real Sleeper—”

“Yes,” said Graham.

“Died years ago.”

“What?” said Graham, sharply.

“Years ago. Died. Years ago.”

“You don’t say so!” said Graham.

“I do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who’s woke up—they changed in the night. A poor, drugged insensible creature. But I mustn’t tell all I know. I mustn’t tell all I know.”

For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for him. “I don’t know the ones that put him to sleep—that was before my time—but I know the man who injected the stimulants and woke him again. It was ten to one—wake or kill. Wake or kill. Ostrog’s way.”

Graham was so astonished at these things that he had to interrupt, to make the old man repeat his words, to re-question vaguely, before he was sure of the meaning and folly of what he heard. And his awakening had not been natural! Was that an old man’s senile superstition, too, or had it any truth in it? Feeling in the dark corners of his memory, he presently came on something that might conceivably be an impression of some such stimulating effect. It dawned upon him that he had happened upon a lucky encounter, that at last he might learn something of the new age. The old man wheezed a while and spat, and then the piping, reminiscent voice resumed:

“The first time they rejected him. I’ve followed it all.”

“Rejected whom?” said Graham. “The Sleeper?”

“Sleeper? No. Ostrog. He was terrible—terrible! And he was promised then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were—not to be more afraid of him. Now all the city’s his millstone, and such as we dust ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work—the workers cut each other’s throats, and murdered a Chinaman or a Labour policeman at times, and left the rest of us in peace. Dead bodies! Robbing! Darkness! Such a thing hasn’t been this gross of years. Eh!—but ‘tis ill on small folks when the great fall out! It’s ill.”

“Did you say—there had not been what?—for a gross of years?”

“Eh?” said the old man.

The old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat this a third time. “Fighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and fools bawling freedom and the like,” said the old man. “Not in all my life has there been that. These are like the old days—for sure—when the Paris people broke