human
The thing gave me a shock, said Isbister.
gpt
I feel a queer sort of surprise even now when I think of his white eyes. They were white, you know, rolled up. Coming here again brings it all back to me.
human
Have you never seen him since that time?
gpt
Often wanted to come, said Isbister;
human
If I remember rightly, said Warming,
gpt
Was. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with black and white, very soon--at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped on to process. Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people.
human
Good posters, admitted the solicitor,
gpt
Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary, exclaimed Isbister with satisfaction.
human
The world changes. When he fell asleep, twenty years ago, I was down at Boscastle with a box of water-colours and a noble, old-fashioned ambition. I didn't expect that some day my pigments would glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land's End round again to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he's not looking.
gpt
I just missed seeing you, if I recollect aright.
human
You came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway station. It was close on the Jubilee, Victoria's Jubilee, because I remember the seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea.
gpt
The Diamond Jubilee, it was, said Warming;
human
Ah, yes! At the proper Jubilee--the Fifty Year affair--I was down at Wookey--a boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had with him! My landlady wouldn't take him in, wouldn't let him stay--he looked so queer when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. And the Boscastle doctor--it wasn't the present chap, but the G.P. before him--was at him until nearly two, with me and the landlord holding lights and so forth.
gpt
Do you mean--he was stiff and hard?
human
Stiff!--wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course this --he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head--
gpt
Smithers?
human
Smithers it was--was quite wrong in trying to fetch him round too soon, according to all accounts. The things he did! Even now it makes me feel all--ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly little things, not dynamos--
gpt
Coils.
human
Yes. You could see his muscles throb and jump, and he twisted about. There were just two flaring yellow candles, and all the shadows were shivering, and the little doctor nervous and putting on side, and _him_--stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made me dream.
gpt
It's a strange state,
human
It's a sort of complete absence, said Isbister.
gpt
Here's the body, empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It's like a seat vacant and marked 'engaged.' No feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart--not a flutter. _That_ doesn't make me feel as if there was a man present. In a sense it's more dead than death, for these doctors tell me that even the hair has stopped growing. Now with the proper dead, the hair will go on growing--
human
I know,