Chương Chương 6 · THE GREAT AWAKENING

. THE GREAT AWAKENING

THE GREAT AWAKENING

And now I come to the end of this extraordinary incident, so

overshadowing in its importance, not only in our own small, individual

lives, but in the general history of the human race. As I said when I

began my narrative, when that history comes to be written, this

occurrence will surely stand out among all other events like a mountain

towering among its foothills. Our generation has been reserved for a

very special fate since it has been chosen to experience so wonderful a

thing. How long its effect may last--how long mankind may preserve the

humility and reverence which this great shock has taught it--can only be

shown by the future. I think it is safe to say that things can never be

quite the same again. Never can one realize how powerless and ignorant

one is, and how one is upheld by an unseen hand, until for an instant

that hand has seemed to close and to crush. Death has been imminent upon

us. We know that at any moment it may be again. That grim presence

shadows our lives, but who can deny that in that shadow the sense of

duty, the feeling of sobriety and responsibility, the appreciation of the

gravity and of the objects of life, the earnest desire to develop and

improve, have grown and become real with us to a degree that has leavened

our whole society from end to end? It is something beyond sects and

beyond dogmas. It is rather an alteration of perspective, a shifting of

our sense of proportion, a vivid realization that we are insignificant

and evanescent creatures, existing on sufferance and at the mercy of the

first chill wind from the unknown. But if the world has grown graver

with this knowledge it is not, I think, a sadder place in consequence.

Surely we are agreed that the more sober and restrained pleasures of the

present are deeper as well as wiser than the noisy, foolish hustle which

passed so often for enjoyment in the days of old--days so recent and yet

already so inconceivable. Those empty lives which were wasted in aimless

visiting and being visited, in the worry of great and unnecessary

households, in the arranging and eating of elaborate and tedious meals,

have now found rest and health in the reading, the music, the gentle

family communion which comes from a simpler and saner division of their

time. With greater health and greater pleasure they are richer than

before, even after they have paid those increased contributions to the

common fund which have so raised the standard of life in these islands.

There is some clash of opinion as to the exact hour of the great

awakening. It is generally agreed that, apart from the difference of

clocks, there may have been local causes which influenced the action of

the poison. Certainly, in each separate district the resurrection was

practically simultaneous. There are numerous witnesses that Big Ben

pointed to ten minutes past six at the moment. The Astronomer Royal has

fixed the Greenwich time at twelve past six. On the other hand, Laird

Johnson, a very capable East Anglia observer, has recorded six-twenty as

the hour. In the Hebrides it was as late as seven. In our own case

there can be no doubt whatever, for I was seated in Challenger's study

with his carefully tested chronometer in front of me at the moment. The

hour was a quarter-past six.

An enormous depression was weighing upon my spirits. The cumulative

effect of all the dreadful sights which we had seen upon our journey was

heavy upon my soul. With my abounding animal health and great physical

energy any kind of mental clouding was a rare event. I had the Irish

faculty of seeing some gleam of humor in every darkness. But now the

obscurity was appalling and unrelieved. The others were downstairs

making their plans for the future. I sat by the open window, my chin

resting upon my hand and my mind absorbed in the misery of our situation.

Could we continue to live? That was the question which I had begun to

ask myself. Was it possible to exist upon a dead world? Just as in

physics the greater body draws to itself the lesser, would we not feel an

overpowering attraction from that vast body of humanity which had passed

into the unknown? How would the end come? Would it be from a return of

the poison? Or would the earth be uninhabitable from the mephitic

products of universal decay? Or, finally, might our awful situation prey

upon and unbalance our minds? A group of insane folk upon a dead world!

My mind was brooding upon this last dreadful idea when some slight noise

caused me to look down upon the road beneath me. The old cab horse was

coming up the hill!

I was conscious at the same instant of the twittering of birds, of

someone coughing in the yard below, and of a background of movement in

the landscape. And yet I remember that it was that absurd, emaciated,

superannuated cab-horse which held my gaze. Slowly and wheezily it was

climbing the slope. Then my eye traveled to the driver sitting hunched

up upon the box and finally to the young man who was leaning out of the

window in some excitement and shouting a direction. They were all

indubitably, aggressively alive!

Everybody was alive once more! Had it all been a delusion? Was it

conceivable that this whole poison belt incident had been an elaborate

dream? For an instant my startled brain was really ready to believe it.

Then I looked down, and there was the rising blister on my hand where it

was frayed by the rope of the city bell. It had really been so, then.

And yet here was the world resuscitated--here was life come back in an

instant full tide to the planet. Now, as my eyes wandered all over the

great landscape, I saw it in every direction--and moving, to my

amazement, in the very same groove in which it had halted. There were

the golfers. Was it possible that they were going on with their game?

Yes, there was a fellow driving off from a tee, and that other group upon

the green were surely putting for the hole. The reapers were slowly

trooping back to their work. The nurse-girl slapped one of her charges

and then began to push the perambulator up the hill. Everyone had

unconcernedly taken up the thread at the very point where they had

dropped it.

I rushed downstairs, but the hall door was open, and I heard the voices

of my companions, loud in astonishment and congratulation, in the yard.

How we all shook hands and laughed as we came together, and how Mrs.

Challenger kissed us all in her emotion, before she finally threw herself

into the bear-hug of her husband.

"But they could not have been asleep!" cried Lord John. "Dash it all,

Challenger, you don't mean to believe that those folk were asleep with

their staring eyes and stiff limbs and that awful death grin on their

faces!"

"It can only have been the condition that is called catalepsy," said

Challenger. "It has been a rare phenomenon in the past and has

constantly been mistaken for death. While it endures, the temperature

falls, the respiration disappears, the heartbeat is indistinguishable--in

fact, it _is_ death, save that it is evanescent. Even the most

comprehensive mind"--here he closed his eyes and simpered--"could hardly

conceive a universal outbreak of it in this fashion."

"You may label it catalepsy," remarked Summerlee, "but, after all, that

is only a name, and we know as little of the result as we do of the

poison which has caused it. The most we can say is that the vitiated

ether has produced a temporary death."

Austin was seated all in a heap on the step of the car. It was his

coughing which I had heard from above. He had been holding his head in

silence, but now he was muttering to himself and running his eyes over

the car.

"Young fat-head!" he grumbled. "Can't leave things alone!"

"What's the matter, Austin?"

"Lubricators left running, sir. Someone has been fooling with the car.

I expect it's that young garden boy, sir."

Lord John looked guilty.

"I don't know what's amiss with me," continued Austin, staggering to his

feet. "I expect I came over queer when I was hosing her down. I seem to

remember flopping over by the step. But I'll swear I never left those

lubricator taps on."

In a condensed narrative the astonished Austin was told what had happened

to himself and the world. The mystery of the dripping lubricators was

also explained to him. He listened with an air of deep distrust when

told how an amateur had driven his car and with absorbed interest to the

few sentences in which our experiences of the sleeping city were

recorded. I can remember his comment when the story was concluded.

"Was you outside the Bank of England, sir?"

"Yes, Austin."

"With all them millions inside and everybody asleep?"

"That was so."

"And I not there!" he groaned, and turned dismally once more to the

hosing of his car.

There was a sudden grinding of wheels upon gravel. The old cab had

actually pulled up at Challenger's door. I saw the young occupant step

out from it. An instant later the maid, who looked as tousled and

bewildered as if she had that instant been aroused from the deepest

sleep, appeared with a card upon a tray. Challenger snorted ferociously

as he looked at it, and his thick black hair seemed to bristle up in his

wrath.

"A pressman!" he growled. Then with a deprecating smile: "After all, it

is natural that the whole world should hasten to know what I think of

such an episode."

"That can hardly be his errand," said Summerlee, "for he was on the road

in his cab before ever the crisis came."

I looked at the card: "James Baxter, London Correspondent, New York

Monitor."

"You'll see him?" said I.

"Not I."

"Oh, George! You should be kinder and more considerate to others.

Surely you have learned something from what we have undergone."

He tut-tutted and shook his big, obstinate head.

"A poisonous breed! Eh, Malone? The worst weed in modern civilization,

the ready tool of the quack and the hindrance of the self-respecting man!

When did they ever say a good word for me?"

"When did you ever say a good word to them?" I answered. "Come, sir,

this is a stranger who has made a journey to see you. I am sure that you

won't be rude to him."

"Well, well," he grumbled, "you come with me and do the talking. I

protest in advance against any such outrageous invasion of my private

life." Muttering and mumbling, he came rolling after me like an angry

and rather ill-conditioned mastiff.

The dapper young American pulled out his notebook and plunged instantly

into his subject.

"I came down, sir," said he, "because our people in America would very

much like to hear more about this danger which is, in your opinion,

pressing upon the world."

"I know of no danger which is now pressing upon the world," Challenger

answered gruffly.

The pressman looked at him in mild surprise.

"I meant, sir, the chances that the world might run into a belt of

poisonous ether."

"I do not now apprehend any such danger," said Challenger.

The pressman looked even more perplexed.

"You are Professor Challenger, are you not?" he asked.

"Yes, sir; that is my name."

"I cannot understand, then, how you can say that there is no such danger.

I am alluding to your own letter, published above your name in the London

Times of this morning."

It was Challenger's turn to look surprised.

"This morning?" said he. "No London Times was published this morning."

"Surely, sir," said the American in mild remonstrance, "you must admit

that the London Times is a daily paper." He drew out a copy from his

inside pocket. "Here is the letter to which I refer."

Challenger chuckled and rubbed his hands.

"I begin to understand," said he. "So you read this letter this morning?"

"Yes, sir."

"And came at once to interview me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you observe anything unusual upon the journey down?"

"Well, to tell the truth, your people seemed more lively and generally

human than I have ever seen them. The baggage man set out to tell me a

funny story, and that's a new experience for me in this country."

"Nothing else?"

"Why, no, sir, not that I can recall."

"Well, now, what hour did you leave Victoria?"

The American smiled.

"I came here to interview you, Professor, but it seems to be a case of

'Is this nigger fishing, or is this fish niggering?' You're doing most of

the work."

"It happens to interest me. Do you recall the hour?"

"Sure. It was half-past twelve."

"And you arrived?"

"At a quarter-past two."

"And you hired a cab?"

"That was so."

"How far do you suppose it is to the station?"

"Well, I should reckon the best part of two miles."

"So how long do you think it took you?"

"Well, half an hour, maybe, with that asthmatic in front."

"So it should be three o'clock?"

"Yes, or a trifle after it."

"Look at your watch."

The American did so and then stared at us in astonishment.

"Say!" he cried. "It's run down. That horse has broken every record,

sure. The sun is pretty low, now that I come to look at it. Well,

there's something here I don't understand."

"Have you no remembrance of anything remarkable as you came up the hill?"

"Well, I seem to recollect that I was mighty sleepy once. It comes back

to me that I wanted to say something to the driver and that I couldn't

make him heed me. I guess it was the heat, but I felt swimmy for a

moment. That's all."

"So it is with the whole human race," said Challenger to me. "They have

all felt swimmy for a moment. None of them have as yet any comprehension

of what has occurred. Each will go on with his interrupted job as Austin

has snatched up his hose-pipe or the golfer continued his game. Your

editor, Malone, will continue the issue of his papers, and very much

amazed he will be at finding that an issue is missing. Yes, my young

friend," he added to the American reporter, with a sudden mood of amused

geniality, "it may interest you to know that the world has swum through

the poisonous current which swirls like the Gulf Stream through the ocean

of ether. You will also kindly note for your own future convenience that

to-day is not Friday, August the twenty-seventh, but Saturday, August the

twenty-eighth, and that you sat senseless in your cab for twenty-eight

hours upon the Rotherfield hill."

And "right here," as my American colleague would say, I may bring this

narrative to an end. It is, as you are probably aware, only a fuller and

more detailed version of the account which appeared in the Monday edition

of the Daily Gazette--an account which has been universally admitted to

be the greatest journalistic scoop of all time, which sold no fewer than

three-and-a-half million copies of the paper. Framed upon the wall of my

sanctum I retain those magnificent headlines:--

TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS' WORLD COMA

UNPRECEDENTED EXPERIENCE

CHALLENGER JUSTIFIED

OUR CORRESPONDENT ESCAPES

ENTHRALLING NARRATIVE

THE OXYGEN ROOM

WEIRD MOTOR DRIVE

DEAD LONDON

REPLACING THE MISSING PAGE

GREAT FIRES AND LOSS OF LIFE

WILL IT RECUR?

Underneath this glorious scroll came nine and a half columns of

narrative, in which appeared the first, last, and only account of the

history of the planet, so far as one observer could draw it, during one

long day of its existence. Challenger and Summerlee have treated the

matter in a joint scientific paper, but to me alone was left the popular

account. Surely I can sing "Nunc dimittis." What is left but

anti-climax in the life of a journalist after that!

But let me not end on sensational headlines and a merely personal

triumph. Rather let me quote the sonorous passages in which the greatest

of daily papers ended its admirable leader upon the subject--a leader

which might well be filed for reference by every thoughtful man.

"It has been a well-worn truism," said the Times, "that our human race

are a feeble folk before the infinite latent forces which surround us.

From the prophets of old and from the philosophers of our own time the

same message and warning have reached us. But, like all oft-repeated

truths, it has in time lost something of its actuality and cogency. A

lesson, an actual experience, was needed to bring it home. It is from

that salutory but terrible ordeal that we have just emerged, with minds

which are still stunned by the suddenness of the blow and with spirits

which are chastened by the realization of our own limitations and

impotence. The world has paid a fearful price for its schooling. Hardly

yet have we learned the full tale of disaster, but the destruction by

fire of New York, of Orleans, and of Brighton constitutes in itself one

of the greatest tragedies in the history of our race. When the account

of the railway and shipping accidents has been completed, it will furnish

grim reading, although there is evidence to show that in the vast

majority of cases the drivers of trains and engineers of steamers

succeeded in shutting off their motive power before succumbing to the

poison. But the material damage, enormous as it is both in life and in

property, is not the consideration which will be uppermost in our minds

to-day. All this may in time be forgotten. But what will not be

forgotten, and what will and should continue to obsess our imaginations,

is this revelation of the possibilities of the universe, this destruction

of our ignorant self-complacency, and this demonstration of how narrow is

the path of our material existence and what abysses may lie upon either

side of it. Solemnity and humility are at the base of all our emotions

to-day. May they be the foundations upon which a more earnest and

reverent race may build a more worthy temple."