Looking Backward: 2000-1887
Page 6
CHAPTER III.
"He is going to open his eyes. He had better see but one of us atfirst."
"Promise me, then, that you will not tell him."
The first voice was a man's, the second a woman's, and both spoke inwhispers.
"I will see how he seems," replied the man.
"No, no, promise me," persisted the other.
"Let her have her way," whispered a third voice, also a woman.
"Well, well, I promise, then," answered the man. "Quick, go! He iscoming out of it."
There was a rustle of garments and I opened my eyes. A fine lookingman of perhaps sixty was bending over me, an expression of muchbenevolence mingled with great curiosity upon his features. He was anutter stranger. I raised myself on an elbow and looked around. Theroom was empty. I certainly had never been in it before, or onefurnished like it. I looked back at my companion. He smiled.
"How do you feel?" he inquired.
"Where am I?" I demanded.
"You are in my house," was the reply.
"How came I here?"
"We will talk about that when you are stronger. Meanwhile, I beg youwill feel no anxiety. You are among friends and in good hands. How doyou feel?"
"A bit queerly," I replied, "but I am well, I suppose. Will you tellme how I came to be indebted to your hospitality? What has happened tome? How came I here? It was in my own house that I went to sleep."
"There will be time enough for explanations later," my unknown hostreplied, with a reassuring smile. "It will be better to avoidagitating talk until you are a little more yourself. Will you obligeme by taking a couple of swallows of this mixture? It will do yougood. I am a physician."
I repelled the glass with my hand and sat up on the couch, althoughwith an effort, for my head was strangely light.
"I insist upon knowing at once where I am and what you have been doingwith me," I said.
"My dear sir," responded my companion, "let me beg that you will notagitate yourself. I would rather you did not insist upon explanationsso soon, but if you do, I will try to satisfy you, provided you willfirst take this draught, which will strengthen you somewhat."
I thereupon drank what he offered me. Then he said, "It is not sosimple a matter as you evidently suppose to tell you how you camehere. You can tell me quite as much on that point as I can tell you.You have just been roused from a deep sleep, or, more properly,trance. So much I can tell you. You say you were in your own housewhen you fell into that sleep. May I ask you when that was?"
"When?" I replied, "when? Why, last evening, of course, at about teno'clock. I left my man Sawyer orders to call me at nine o'clock. Whathas become of Sawyer?"
"I can't precisely tell you that," replied my companion, regarding mewith a curious expression, "but I am sure that he is excusable for notbeing here. And now can you tell me a little more explicitly when itwas that you fell into that sleep, the date, I mean?"
"Why, last night, of course; I said so, didn't I? that is, unless Ihave overslept an entire day. Great heavens! that cannot be possible;and yet I have an odd sensation of having slept a long time. It wasDecoration Day that I went to sleep."
"Decoration Day?"
"Yes, Monday, the 30th."
"Pardon me, the 30th of what?"
"Why, of this month, of course, unless I have slept into June, butthat can't be."
"This month is September."
"September! You don't mean that I've slept since May! God in heaven!Why, it is incredible."
"We shall see," replied my companion; "you say that it was May 30thwhen you went to sleep?"
"Yes."
"May I ask of what year?"
I stared blankly at him, incapable of speech, for some moments.
"Of what year?" I feebly echoed at last.
"Yes, of what year, if you please? After you have told me that I shallbe able to tell you how long you have slept."
"It was the year 1887," I said.
My companion insisted that I should take another draught from theglass, and felt my pulse.
"My dear sir," he said, "your manner indicates that you are a man ofculture, which I am aware was by no means the matter of course in yourday it now is. No doubt, then, you have yourself made the observationthat nothing in this world can be truly said to be more wonderful thananything else. The causes of all phenomena are equally adequate, andthe results equally matters of course. That you should be startled bywhat I shall tell you is to be expected; but I am confident that youwill not permit it to affect your equanimity unduly. Your appearanceis that of a young man of barely thirty, and your bodily conditionseems not greatly different from that of one just roused from asomewhat too long and profound sleep, and yet this is the tenth dayof September in the year 2000, and you have slept exactly one hundredand thirteen years, three months, and eleven days."
Feeling partially dazed, I drank a cup of some sort of broth at mycompanion's suggestion, and, immediately afterward becoming verydrowsy, went off into a deep sleep.
When I awoke it was broad daylight in the room, which had been lightedartificially when I was awake before. My mysterious host was sittingnear. He was not looking at me when I opened my eyes, and I had a goodopportunity to study him and meditate upon my extraordinary situation,before he observed that I was awake. My giddiness was all gone, and mymind perfectly clear. The story that I had been asleep one hundred andthirteen years, which, in my former weak and bewildered condition, Ihad accepted without question, recurred to me now only to be rejectedas a preposterous attempt at an imposture, the motive of which it wasimpossible remotely to surmise.
Something extraordinary had certainly happened to account for mywaking up in this strange house with this unknown companion, but myfancy was utterly impotent to suggest more than than the wildest guessas to what that something might have been. Could it be that I was thevictim of some sort of conspiracy? It looked so, certainly; and yet,if human lineaments ever gave true evidence, it was certain that thisman by my side, with a face so refined and ingenuous, was no party toany scheme of crime or outrage. Then it occurred to me to question ifI might not be the butt of some elaborate practical joke on the partof friends who had somehow learned the secret of my undergroundchamber and taken this means of impressing me with the peril ofmesmeric experiments. There were great difficulties in the way of thistheory; Sawyer would never have betrayed me, nor had I any friends atall likely to undertake such an enterprise; nevertheless thesupposition that I was the victim of a practical joke seemed on thewhole the only one tenable. Half expecting to catch a glimpse of somefamiliar face grinning from behind a chair or curtain, I lookedcarefully about the room. When my eyes next rested on my companion, hewas looking at me.
"You have had a fine nap of twelve hours," he said briskly, "and I cansee that it has done you good. You look much better. Your color isgood and your eyes are bright. How do you feel?"
"I never felt better," I said, sitting up.
"You remember your first waking, no doubt," he pursued, "and yoursurprise when I told you how long you had been asleep?"
"You said, I believe, that I had slept one hundred and thirteenyears."
"Exactly."
"You will admit," I said, with an ironical smile, "that the story wasrather an improbable one."
"Extraordinary, I admit," he responded, "but given the properconditions, not improbable nor inconsistent with what we know of thetrance state. When complete, as in your case, the vital functions areabsolutely suspended, and there is no waste of the tissues. No limitcan be set to the possible duration of a trance when the externalconditions protect the body from physical injury. This trance of yoursis indeed the longest of which there is any positive record, but thereis no known reason wherefore, had you not been discovered and had thechamber in which we found you continued intact, you might not haveremained in a state of suspended animation till, at the end ofindefinite ages, the gradual refrigeration of the earth had destroyedthe bodily tissues and set the spirit free."
"Perhaps," I said, "you will go on and favor me with some particularsas to the circumstances under which you discovered this chamber ofwhich you speak, and its contents. I enjoy good fiction."
"In this case," was the grave reply, "no fiction could be so strangeas the truth. You must know that these many years I have beencherishing the idea of building a laboratory in the large gardenbeside this house, for the purpose of chemical experiments for which Ihave a taste. Last Thursday the excavation for the cellar was at lastbegun. It was completed by that night, and Friday the masons were tohave come. Thursday night we had a tremendous deluge of rain, andFriday morning I found my cellar a frog-pond and the walls quitewashed down. My daughter, who had come out to view the disaster withme, called my attention to a corner of masonry laid bare by thecrumbling away of one of the walls. I cleared a little earth from it,and, finding that it seemed part of a large mass, determined toinvestigate it. The workmen I sent for unearthed an oblong vault someeight feet below the surface, and set in the corner of what hadevidently been the foundation walls of an ancient house. A layer ofashes and charcoal on the top of the vault showed that the house abovehad perished by fire. The vault itself was perfectly intact, thecement being as good as when first applied. It had a door, but this wecould not force, and found entrance by removing one of the flagstoneswhich formed the roof. The air which came up was stagnant but pure,dry and not cold. Descending with a lantern, I found myself in anapartment fitted up as a bedroom in the style of the nineteenthcentury. On the bed lay a young man. That he was dead and must havebeen dead a century was of course to be taken for granted; but theextraordinary state of preservation of the body struck me and themedical colleagues whom I had summoned with amazement. That the art ofsuch embalming as this had ever been known we should not havebelieved, yet here seemed conclusive testimony that our immediateancestors had possessed it. My medical colleagues, whose curiosity washighly excited, were at once for undertaking experiments to test thenature of the process employed, but I withheld them. My motive in sodoing, at least the only motive I now need speak of, was therecollection of something I once had read about the extent to whichyour contemporaries had cultivated the subject of animal magnetism. Ithad occurred to me as just conceivable that you might be in a trance,and that the secret of your bodily integrity after so long a time wasnot the craft of an embalmer, but life. So extremely fanciful did thisidea seem, even to me, that I did not risk the ridicule of my fellowphysicians by mentioning it, but gave some other reason for postponingtheir experiments. No sooner, however, had they left me, than I set onfoot a systematic attempt at resuscitation, of which you know theresult."
Had its theme been yet more incredible, the circumstantiality of thisnarrative, as well as the impressive manner and personality of thenarrator, might have staggered a listener, and I had begun to feelvery strangely, when, as he closed, I chanced to catch a glimpse of myreflection in a mirror hanging on the wall of the room. I rose andwent up to it. The face I saw was the face to a hair and a line andnot a day older than the one I had looked at as I tied my cravatbefore going to Edith that Decoration Day, which, as this man wouldhave me believe, was celebrated one hundred and thirteen years before.At this, the colossal character of the fraud which was being attemptedon me, came over me afresh. Indignation mastered my mind as I realizedthe outrageous liberty that had been taken.
"You are probably surprised," said my companion, "to see that,although you are a century older than when you lay down to sleep inthat underground chamber, your appearance is unchanged. That shouldnot amaze you. It is by virtue of the total arrest of the vitalfunctions that you have survived this great period of time. If yourbody could have undergone any change during your trance, it would longago have suffered dissolution."
"Sir," I replied, turning to him, "what your motive can be in recitingto me with a serious face this remarkable farrago, I am utterly unableto guess; but you are surely yourself too intelligent to suppose thatanybody but an imbecile could be deceived by it. Spare me any more ofthis elaborate nonsense and once for all tell me whether you refuse togive me an intelligible account of where I am and how I came here. Ifso, I shall proceed to ascertain my whereabouts for myself, whoevermay hinder."
"You do not, then, believe that this is the year 2000?"
"Do you really think it necessary to ask me that?" I returned.
"Very well," replied my extraordinary host. "Since I cannot convinceyou, you shall convince yourself. Are you strong enough to follow meupstairs?"
"I am as strong as I ever was," I replied angrily, "as I may have toprove if this jest is carried much farther."
"I beg, sir," was my companion's response, "that you will not allowyourself to be too fully persuaded that you are the victim of a trick,lest the reaction, when you are convinced of the truth of mystatements, should be too great."
The tone of concern, mingled with commiseration, with which he saidthis, and the entire absence of any sign of resentment at my hotwords, strangely daunted me, and I followed him from the room with anextraordinary mixture of emotions. He led the way up two flights ofstairs and then up a shorter one, which landed us upon a belvedere onthe house-top. "Be pleased to look around you," he said, as we reachedthe platform, "and tell me if this is the Boston of the nineteenthcentury."
At my feet lay a great city. Miles of broad streets, shaded by treesand lined with fine buildings, for the most part not in continuousblocks but set in larger or smaller inclosures, stretched in everydirection. Every quarter contained large open squares filled withtrees, among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the lateafternoon sun. Public buildings of a colossal size and anarchitectural grandeur unparalleled in my day raised their statelypiles on every side. Surely I had never seen this city nor onecomparable to it before. Raising my eyes at last towards the horizon,I looked westward. That blue ribbon winding away to the sunset, was itnot the sinuous Charles? I looked east; Boston harbor stretched beforeme within its headlands, not one of its green islets missing.
I knew then that I had been told the truth concerning the prodigiousthing which had befallen me.