Part 5 (1/2)
”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, Church and State. High and low, rich and poor, one with another ... Is there England still?”
”That's a comfort! Is there London?”
”This _is_ London, eh? And you are my a.s.sistant-custodian; a.s.sistant-custodian. And these--? Eh? a.s.sistant-custodians too!”
He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. ”But why am I here? No! Don't talk. Be quiet. Let me--”
He sat silent, rubbed his eyes, and, uncovering them, found another little gla.s.s of pinkish fluid held towards him. He took the dose.
Directly he had taken it he began to weep naturally and refres.h.i.+ngly.
Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a little foolishly. ”But--two--hun--dred--years!” he said. He grimaced hysterically and covered his face again.
After a s.p.a.ce he grew calm. He sat up, his hands hanging over his knees in almost precisely the same att.i.tude in which Isbister had found him on the cliff at Pentargen. His attention was attracted by a thick domineering voice, the footsteps of an advancing personage. ”What are you doing? Why was I not warned? Surely you could tell? Someone will suffer for this. The man must be kept quiet. Are the doorways closed? All the doorways? He must be kept perfectly quiet. He must not be told. Has he been told anything?”
The man with the fair beard made some inaudible remark, and Graham looking over his shoulder saw approaching a short, fat, and thickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. Very thick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over his nose and overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidable expression. He scowled momentarily at Graham and then his regard returned to the man with the flaxen beard. ”These others,” he said in a voice of extreme irritation. ”You had better go.”
”Go?” said the red-bearded man.
”Certainly--go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go.”
The two men addressed turned obediently, after one reluctant glance at Graham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walked straight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. A long strip of this apparently solid wall rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again, and immediately Graham was alone with the newcomer and the purple-robed man with the flaxen beard.
For a s.p.a.ce the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham, but proceeded to interrogate the other--obviously his subordinate---upon the treatment of their charge. He spoke clearly, but in phrases only partially intelligible to Graham. The awakening seemed not only a matter of surprise but of consternation and annoyance to him. He was evidently profoundly excited.
”You must not confuse his mind by telling him things,” he repeated again and again. ”You must not confuse his mind.”
His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper with an ambiguous expression.
”Feel queer?” he asked.
”Very.”
”The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?”
”I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems.”
”I suppose so, now.”
”In the first place, hadn't I better have some clothes?”
”They--” said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man met his eye and went away. ”You will very speedily have clothes,” said the thickset man.