CHAPTER XV. PROMINENT PEOPLE
The state apartments of the Wind Vane Keeper would have seemedastonishingly intricate to Graham had he entered them fresh from hisnineteenth century life, but already he was growing accustomed to thescale of the new time. They can scarcely be described as halls androoms, seeing that a complicated system of arches, bridges, passages andgalleries divided and united every part of the great space. He cameout through one of the now familiar sliding panels upon a. plateau oflanding at the head of a flight of very broad and gentle steps, withmen and women far more brilliantly dressed than any he had hitherto seenascending and descending. From this position he looked down a vista ofintricate ornament in lustreless white and mauve and purple, spanned bybridges that seemed wrought of porcelain and filigree, and terminatingfar off in a cloudy mystery of perforated screens.
Glancing upward, he saw tier above tier of ascending gallerieswith faces looking down upon him. The air was full of the babble ofinnumerable voices and of a music that descended from above, a gay andexhilarating music whose source he never discovered.
The central aisle was thick with people, but by no means uncomfortablycrowded; altogether that assembly must have numbered many thousands.They were brilliantly, even fantastically dressed, the men as fancifullyas the women, for the sobering influence of the Puritan conception ofdignity upon masculine dress had long since passed away. The hair ofthe men, too, though it was rarely worn long, was commonly curled ina manner that suggested the barber, and baldness had vanished fromthe earth. Frizzy straight-cut masses that would have charmed Rossettiabounded, and one gentleman, who was pointed out to Graham under themysterious title of an "amorist", wore his hair in two becoming plaits ala Marguerite. The pigtail was in evidence; it would seem that citizensof Chinese extraction were no longer ashamed of their race. There waslittle uniformity of fashion apparent in the forms of clothing worn. Themore shapely men displayed their symmetry in trunk hose, and here werepuffs and slashes, and there a cloak and there a robe. The fashions ofthe days of Leo the Tenth were perhaps the prevailing influence, butthe aesthetic conceptions of the far east were also patent. Masculineembonpoint, which, in Victorian times, would have been subjected tothe tightly buttoned perils, the ruthless exaggeration of tight-leggedtight-armed evening dress, now formed but the basis of a wealth ofdignity and drooping folds. Graceful slenderness abounded also. ToGraham, a typically stiff man from a typically stiff period, not onlydid these men seem altogether too graceful in person, but altogether tooexpressive in their vividly expressive faces. They gesticulated, theyexpressed surprise, interest, amusement, above all, they expressedthe emotions excited in their minds by the ladies about them withastonishing frankness. Even at the first glance it was evident thatwomen were in a great majority.
The ladies in the company of these gentlemen displayed in dress, bearingand manner alike, less emphasis and more intricacy. Some affected aclassical simplicity of robing and subtlety of fold, after the fashionof the First French Empire, and flashed conquering arms and shoulders asGraham passed. Others had closely-fitting dresses without seam or beltat the waist, sometimes with long folds falling from the shoulders. Thedelightful confidences of evening dress had not been diminished by thepassage of two centuries.
Everyone's movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln thathe saw men as Raphael's cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him thatthe attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of everyrich person's education. The Master's entry was greeted with a sort oftittering applause, but these people showed their distinguished mannersby not crowding upon him nor annoying him by any persistent scrutiny, ashe descended the steps towards the floor of the aisle.
He had already learnt from Lincoln that these were the leaders ofexisting London society; almost every person there that night was eithera powerful official or the immediate connexion of a powerful official.Many had returned from the European Pleasure Cities expressly to welcomehim. The aeronautic authorities, whose defection had played a partin the overthrow of the Council only second to Graham's were veryprominent, and so, too, was the Wind Vane Control. Amongst others therewere several of the more prominent officers of the Food Trust; thecontroller of the European Piggeries had a particularly melancholy andinteresting countenance and a daintily cynical manner. A bishop in fullcanonicals passed athwart Graham's vision, conversing with a gentlemandressed exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurelwreath.
"Who is that?" he asked almost involuntarily
"The Bishop of London," said Lincoln.
"No--the other, I mean."
"Poet Laureate."
"You still?"
"He doesn't make poetry, of course. He's a cousin of Wotton--one ofthe Councillors. But he's one of the Red Rose Royalists--a delightfulclub--and they keep up the tradition of these things."
"Asano told me there was a King."
"The King doesn't belong. They had to expel him. It's the Stuart blood,I suppose; but really--"
"Too much?"
"Far too much."
Graham did not quite follow all this, but it seemed part of thegeneral inversion of the new age. He bowed condescendingly to his firstintroduction. It was evident that subtle distinctions of class prevailedeven in this assembly, that only to a small proportion of the guests,to an inner group, did Lincoln consider it appropriate to introduce him.This first introduction was the Master Aeronaut, a man whose suntannedface contrasted oddly with the delicate complexions about him. Justat present his critical defection from the Council made him a veryimportant person indeed.
His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham's ideas, withthe general bearing. He made a few commonplace remarks, assurances ofloyalty and frank inquiries about the Master's health. His manner wasbreezy, his accent lacked the easy staccato of latter-day English. Hemade it admirably clear to Graham that he was a bluff "aerial dog"--heused that phrase--that there was no nonsense about him, that he wasa thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn'tprofess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worthknowing He made a manly bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness andpassed.
"I am glad to see that type endures," said Graham
"Phonographs and kinematographs," said Lincoln, a little spitefully. "Hehas studied from the life." Graham glanced at the burly form again. Itwas oddly reminiscent.
"As a matter of fact we bought him," said Lincoln. "Partly. And partlyhe was afraid of Ostrog. Everything rested with him."
He turned sharply to introduce the Surveyor-General of the Public SchoolTrust. This person was a willowy figure in a blue-grey academic gown, hebeamed down upon Graham through _pince-nez_ of a Victorian pattern, andillustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand.Graham was immediately interested in this gentleman's functions, andasked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-Generalseemed quietly amused at the Master's fundamental bluntness. He was alittle vague as to the monopoly of education his Company possessed; itwas done by contract with the syndicate that ran the numerous LondonMunicipalities, but he waxed enthusiastic over educational progresssince the Victorian times. "We have conquered Cram," he said,"completely conquered Cram--there is not an examination left in theworld. Aren't you glad?"
"How do you get the work done?" asked Graham.
"We make it attractive--as attractive as possible. And if it does notattract then--we let it go. We cover an immense field."
He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. TheSurveyor-General mentioned the names of Pestalozzi and Froebelwith profound respect, although he displayed no intimacy with theirepoch-making works. Graham learnt that University Extension stillexisted in a modified form. "There is a certain type of girl, forexample," said the Surveyor-General, dilating with a sense of hisusefulness, "with a perfect passion for severe studies--when they arenot too difficult you know. We cater for them by the thousand. Atthis moment," he said with a Napoleonic touch, "nearly five hun
dredphonographs are lecturing in different parts of London on the influenceexercised by Plato and Swift on the love affairs of Shelley, Hazlitt,and Burns. And afterwards they write essays on the lectures, and thenames in order of merit are put in conspicuous places. You see how yourlittle germ has grown? The illiterate middle-class of your days hasquite passed away."
"About the public elementary schools," said Graham. "Do you controlthem?"
The Surveyor-General did, "entirely." Now, Graham, in his laterdemocratic days, had taken a keen interest in these and his questioningquickened. Certain casual phrases that had fallen from the old manwith whom he had talked in the darkness recurred to him. TheSurveyor-General, in effect, endorsed the old man's words. "We haveabolished Cram," he said, a phrase Graham was beginning to interpretas the abolition of all sustained work. The Surveyor-General becamesentimental. "We try and make the elementary schools very pleasant forthe little children. They will have to work so soon. Just a few simpleprinciples--obedience--industry."
"You teach them very little?"
"Why should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse them.Even as it is--there are troubles--agitations. Where the labourers getthe ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialisticdreams--anarchy even! Agitators will get to work among them. I takeit--I have always taken it--that my foremost duty is to fight againstpopular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?"
"I wonder," said Graham thoughtfully. "But there are a great many thingsI want to know."
Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham's face throughout theconversation, intervened. "There are others," he said in an undertone.
The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. "Perhaps,"said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, "you would like to know someof these ladies?"
The daughter of the Manager of the Piggeries of the European Food Trustwas a particularly charming little person with red hair and animatedblue eyes. Lincoln left him awhile to converse with her, and shedisplayed herself as quite an enthusiast for the "dear old times,"as she called them, that had seen the beginning of his trance. Asshe talked she smiled, and her eyes smiled in a manner that demandedreciprocity.
"I have tried," she said, "countless times--to imagine those oldromantic days. And to you they are memories. How strange and crowded theworld must seem to you! I have seen photographs and pictures of the oldtimes, the little isolated houses built of bricks made out of burnt mudand all black with soot from your fires, the railway bridges, the simpleadvertisements, the solemn savage Puritanical men in strange blackcoats and those tall hats of theirs, iron railway trains on iron bridgesoverhead, horses and cattle, and even dogs running half wild about thestreets. And suddenly, you have come into this!"
"Into this," said Graham.
"Out of your life--out of all that was familiar."
"The old life was not a happy one," said Graham. "I do not regret that."
She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighedencouragingly. "No?"
"No," said Graham. "It was a little life--and unmeaning. But this--.We thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet Isee--although in this world I am barely four days old--looking back onmy own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time--the mere beginning ofthis new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find ithard to understand how little I know."
"You may ask me what you like," she said, smiling at him.
"Then tell me who these people are. I'm still very much in the darkabout them. It's puzzling. Are there any Generals?"
"Men in hats and feathers?"
"Of course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the greatpublic businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?"
"That? He's a most important officer. That is Morden. He is managingdirector of the Antibilious Pill Company. I have heard that his workerssometimes turn out a myriad myriad pills a day in the twenty-four hours.Fancy a myriad myriad!"
"A myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud," said Graham. "Pills! What awonderful time it is! That man in purple?"
"He is not quite one of the inner circle, you know. But we like him. Heis really clever and very amusing. He is one of the heads of theMedical Faculty of our London University. All medical men, you know, areshareholders in the Medical Faculty Company, and wear that purple. Youhave to be--to be qualified. But of course, people who are paid by feesfor doing something--" She smiled away the social pretensions of allsuch people.
"Are any of your great artists or authors here?"
"No authors. They are mostly such queer people--and so preoccupied aboutthemselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some ofthem, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful isn't it? But I thinkWraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From Capri."
"Capillotomist," said Graham. "Ah! I remember. An artist! Why not?"
"We have to cultivate him," she said apologetically. "Our heads are inhis hands." She smiled.
Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance wasexpressive. "Have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?" hesaid. "Who are your great painters?"
She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. "For a moment," she said, "Ithought you meant--" She laughed again. "You mean, of course, those goodmen you used to think so much of because they could cover great spacesof canvas with oil-colours? Great oblongs. And people used to put thethings in gilt frames and hang them up in rows in their square rooms. Wehaven't any. People grew tired of that sort of thing."
"But what did you think I meant?"
She put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was abovesuspicion, and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. "Andhere," and she indicated her eyelid.
Graham had an adventurous moment. Then a grotesque memory of a picturehe had somewhere seen of Uncle Toby and the Widow flashed across hismind. An archaic shame came upon him. He became acutely aware that hewas visible to a great number of interested people. "I see," he remarkedinadequately. He turned awkwardly away from her, fascinating facility.He looked about him to meet a number of eyes that immediately occupiedthemselves with other things. Possibly he coloured a little. "Who isthat talking with the lady in saffron?" he asked, avoiding her eyes.
The person in question he learnt was one of the great organisers of theAmerican theatres just fresh from a gigantic production at Mexico. Hisface reminded Graham of a bust of Caligula. Another striking lookingman was the Black Labour Master. The phrase at the time made no deepimpression, but afterwards it recurred;--the Black Labour Master? Thelittle lady, in no degree embarrassed, pointed out to him a charminglittle woman as one of the subsidiary wives of the Anglican Bishop ofLondon. She added encomiums on the episcopal courage--hitherto there hadbeen a rule of clerical monogamy--"neither a natural nor an expedientcondition of things. Why should the natural development of theaffections be dwarfed and restricted because a man is a priest?"
"And, bye the bye," she added, "are you an Anglican?" Graham was on theverge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a "subsidiary wife,"apparently an euphemistic phrase, when Lincoln's return broke off thisvery suggestive and interesting conversation. They crossed the aisle towhere a tall man in crimson, and two charming persons in Burmese costume(as it seemed to him) awaited him diffidently. From their civilities hepassed to other presentations.
In a little while his multitudinous impressions began to organisethemselves into a general effect. At first the glitter of the gatheringhad raised all the democrat in Graham; he had felt hostile andsatirical. But it is not in human nature to resist an atmosphere ofcourteous regard. Soon the music, the light, the play of colours, theshining arms and shoulders about him, the touch of hands, the transientinterest of smiling faces, the frothing sound of skillfully modulatedvoices, the atmosphere of compliment, interest and respect, had woventogether into a fabric of indisputable pleasure. Graham for a timeforgot his spacious resolutions. He gave way insensibly to theintoxication of the position
that was conceded him, his manner becameless conscious, more convincingly regal, his feet walked assuredly, theblack robe fell with a bolder fold and pride ennobled his voice. Afterall this was a brilliant interesting world.
His glance went approvingly over the shifting colours of the people,it rested here and there in kindly criticism upon a face. Presently itoccurred to him that he owed some apology to the charming little personwith the red hair and blue eyes. He felt guilty of a clumsy snub. Itwas not princely to ignore her advances, even if his policy necessitatedtheir rejection. He wondered if he should see her again. And suddenlya little thing touched all the glamour of this brilliant gathering andchanged its quality.
He looked up and saw passing across a bridge of porcelain and lookingdown upon him, a face that was almost immediately hidden, the face ofthe girl he had seen overnight in the little room beyond the theatreafter his escape from the Council. And she was looking with much thesame expression of curious expectation, of uncertain intentness, uponhis proceedings. For the moment he did not remember when he had seenher, and then with recognition came a vague memory of the stirringemotions of their first encounter. But the dancing web of melody abouthim kept the air of that great marching song from his memory.
The lady to whom he was talking repeated her remark, and Graham recalledhimself to the quasiregal flirtation upon which he was engaged.
But from that moment a vague restlessness, a feeling that grew todissatisfaction, came into his mind. He was troubled as if by somehalf forgotten duty, by the sense of things important slipping fromhim amidst this light and brilliance. The attraction that these brightladies who crowded about him were beginning to exercise ceased. He nolonger made vague and clumsy responses to the subtly amorous advancesthat he was now assured were being made to him, and his eyes wanderedfor another sight of that face that had appealed so strongly to hissense of beauty. But he did not see her again until he was awaitingLincoln's return to leave this assembly. In answer to his requestLincoln had promised that an attempt should be made to fly thatafternoon, if the weather permitted. He had gone to make certainnecessary arrangements.
Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with abright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite--the subject was hischoice and not hers. He had interrupted her warm assurances of personaldevotion with a matter-of-fact inquiry. He found her, as he had alreadyfound several other latter-day women that night, less well informedthan charming. Suddenly, struggling against the eddying drift of nearermelody, the song of the Revolt, the great song he had heard in the Hall,hoarse and massive, came beating down to him.
He glanced up startled, and perceived above him an _oeil de boeuf_through which this song had come, and beyond, the upper courses ofcable, the blue haze, and the pendant fabric of the lights of the publicways. He heard the song break into a tumult of voices and cease. But nowhe perceived quite clearly the drone and tumult of the moving platformsand a murmur of many people. He had a vague persuasion that he could notaccount for, a sort of instinctive feeling that outside in the ways ahuge crowd must be watching this place in which their Master amusedhimself. He wondered what they might be thinking.
Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music ofthis gathering reasserted itself, the motif of the marching song, onceit had begun, lingered in his mind.
The bright-eyed lady was still struggling with the mysteries ofEadhamite when he perceived the girl he had seen in the theatre again.She was coming now along the gallery towards him; he saw her firstbefore she saw him. She was dressed in a faintly luminous grey, her darkhair about her brows was like a cloud, and as he saw her the cold lightfrom the circular opening into the ways fell upon her downcast face.
The lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in hisexpression, and grasped her opportunity to escape. "Would you care toknow that girl, Sire?" she asked boldly. "She is Helen Wotton--a nieceof Ostrog's. She knows a great many serious things. She is one of themost serious persons alive. I am sure you will like her."
In another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyedlady had fluttered away.
"I remember you quite well," said Graham. "You were in that littleroom. When all the people were singing and beating time with their feet.Before I walked across the Hall."
Her momentary embarrassment passed. She looked up at him, and her facewas steady. "It was wonderful," she said, hesitated, and spoke witha sudden effort. "All those people would have died for you, Sire.Countless people did die for you that night."
Her face glowed. She glanced swiftly aside to see that no other heardher words.
Lincoln appeared some way off along the gallery, making his way throughthe press towards them. She saw him and turned to Graham strangelyeager, with a swift change to confidence and intimacy. "Sire," she saidquickly, "I cannot tell you now and here. But the common people are veryunhappy; they are oppressed--they are misgoverned. Do not forget thepeople, who faced death--death that you might live."
"I know nothing--" began Graham.
"I cannot tell you now."
Lincoln's face appeared close to them. He bowed an apology to the girl.
"You find the new world pleasant, Sire?" asked Lincoln, with smilingdeference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering byone comprehensive gesture. "At any rate, you find it changed."
"Yes," said Graham, "changed. And yet, after all, not so greatlychanged."
"Wait till you are in the air," said Lincoln. "The wind has fallen; evennow an aeropile awaits you."
The girl's attitude awaited dismissal.
Graham glanced at her face, was on the verge of a question, found awarning in her expression, bowed to her and turned to accompany Lincoln.