Chapter 24 - Page 2

behold the venerable figure of the pensioner. With this idea he let his
head steady itself; and it seemed to him that its dizziness must needs
be the result of very long and deep sleep. What if it were the sleep of
a century? What if all things that were extant when he went to sleep
had passed away, and he was waking now in another epoch of time? Where
was America, and the republic in which he hoped for such great things?
Where England? had she stood it better than the republic? Was the old
Hospital still in being,--although the good Warden must long since have
passed out of his warm and pleasant life? And himself, how came he to
be preserved? In what musty old nook had he been put away, where Time
neglected and Death forgot him, until now he was to get up friendless,
helpless,--when new heirs had come to the estate he was on the point of
laying claim to,--and go onward through what remained of life? Would it
not have been better to have lived with his contemporaries, and to be
now dead and dust with them? Poor, petty interests of a day, how
slight!

Again the noise, a little stir, a sort of quiet moan, or something that
he could not quite define; but it seemed, whenever he heard it, as if
some fact thrust itself through the dream-work with which he was
circumfused; something alien to his fantasies, yet not powerful enough
to dispel them. It began to be irksome to him, this little sound of
something near him; and he thought, in the space of another hundred
years, if it continued, he should have to arouse himself and see what
it was. But, indeed, there was something so cheering in this long
repose,--this rest from all the troubles of earth, which it sometimes
seems as if only a churchyard bed would give us,--that he wished the
noise would let him alone. But his thoughts were gradually getting too
busy for this slumberous state. He begun, perforce, to come nearer
actuality. The strange question occurred to him, Had any time at all
passed? Was he not still sitting at Lord Braithwaite's table, having
just now quaffed a second glass of that rare and curious Italian wine?
Was it not affecting his head very strangely,--so that he was put out
of time as it were? He would rally himself, and try to set his head
right with another glass. He must be still at table, for now he
remembered he had not gone to bed at all. [Endnote: 2.]

Ah, the noise! He could not bear it, he would awake now, now!--silence
it, and then to sleep again. In fact, he started up; started to his
feet, in puzzle and perplexity, and stood gazing around him, with
swimming brain. It was an antique room, which he did not at all
recognize, and, indeed, in that dim twilight--which how it came he
could not tell--he could scarcely discern what were