CHAPTER XX. IN THE CITY WAYS
And that night, unknown and unsuspected, Graham, dressed in the costumeof an inferior wind-vane official keeping holiday, and accompanied byAsano in Labour Company canvas, surveyed the city through which hehad wandered when it was veiled in darkness. But now he saw it lit andwaking, a whirlpool of life. In spite of the surging and swaying of theforces of revolution, in spite of the unusual discontent, the mutteringsof the greater struggle of which the first revolt was but the prelude,the myriad streams of commerce still flowed wide and strong. He knew nowsomething of the dimensions and quality of the new age, but he was notprepared for the infinite surprise of the detailed view, for the torrentof colour and vivid impressions that poured past him.
This was his first real contact with the people of these latter days.He realised that all that had gone before, saving his glimpses of thepublic theatres and markets, had had its element of seclusion, had beena movement within the comparatively narrow political quarter, that allhis previous experiences had revolved immediately about the question ofhis own position. But here was the city at the busiest hours of night,the people to a large extent returned to their own immediate interests,the resumption of the real informal life, he common habits of the newtime.
They emerged at first into a street whose opposite ways were crowdedwith the blue canvas liveries. This swarm Graham saw was a portion of aprocession--it was odd to see a procession parading the city seated Theycarried banners of coarse red stuff with red letters. "No disarmament,"said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed letters andwith variant spelling, and "Why should we disarm?" "No disarming." "Nodisarming." Banner after banner went by, a stream of banners flowingpast, and at last at the end, the song of the revolt and a noisy band ofstrange instruments. "They all ought to be at work," said Asano. "Theyhave had no food these two days, or they have stolen it."
Presently Asano made a detour to avoid the congested crowd that gapedupon the occasional passage of dead bodies from hospital to a mortuary,the gleanings after death's harvest of the first revolt.
That night few people were sleeping, everyone was abroad. A vastexcitement, perpetual crowds perpetually changing, surrounded Graham;his mind was confused and darkened by an incessant tumult, by the criesand enigmatical fragments of the social struggle that was as yetonly beginning. Everywhere festoons and banners of black and strangedecorations, intensified the quality of his popularity. Everywhere hecaught snatches of that crude thick dialect that served the illiterateclass, the class, that is, beyond the reach of phonograph culture, intheir common-place intercourse. Everywhere this trouble of disarmamentwas in the air, with a quality of immediate stress of which he had noinkling during his seclusion in the Wind-Vane quarter. He perceived thatas soon as he returned he must discuss this with Ostrog, this and thegreater issues of which it was the expression, in a far more conclusiveway than he had so far done. Perpetually that night, even in the earlierhours of their wanderings about the city, the spirit of unrest andrevolt swamped his attention, to the exclusion of countless strangethings he might otherwise have observed.
This preoccupation made his impressions fragmentary. Yet amidst so muchthat was strange and vivid, no subject, however personal and insistent,could exert undivided sway. There were spaces when the revolutionarymovement passed clean out of his mind, was drawn aside like a curtainfrom before some startling new aspect of the time. Helen had swayed hismind to this intense earnestness of enquiry, but there came times whenshe, even, receded beyond his conscious thoughts. At one moment, forexample, he found they were traversing the religious quarter, forthe easy transit about the city afforded by the moving ways renderedsporadic churches and chapels no longer necessary--and his attention wasvividly arrested by the facade of one of the Christian sects.
They were travelling seated on one of the swift upper ways, the placeleapt upon them at a bend and advanced rapidly towards them. It wascovered with inscriptions from top to base, in vivid white and blue,save where a vast and glaring kinematograph transparency presented arealistic New Testament scene, and where a vast festoon of black to showthat the popular religion followed the popular politics, hung across thelettering Graham had already become familiar with the phonotype writingand these inscriptions arrested him, being to his sense for themost part almost incredible blasphemy. Among the less offensive were"Salvation on the First Floor and turn to the Right." "Put your Money onyour Maker." "The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! LookSlippy!" "What Christ would say to the Sleeper;--Join the Up-to-dateSaints!" "Be a Christian--without hindrance to your present Occupation.""All the Brightest Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual.""Brisk Blessings for Busy Business Men."
"But this is appalling!" said Graham, as that deafening scream ofmercantile piety towered above them.
"What is appalling?" asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainlyfor anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.
"_This!_ Surely the essence of religion is reverence."
"Oh _that!_" Asano looked at Graham. "Does it shock you?" he said in thetone of one who makes a discovery. "I suppose it would, of course. I hadforgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and peoplesimply haven't the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as theyused to do." He smiled. "In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and thecountryside. Though somewhere I've read of Sunday afternoons that--"
"But, _that_," said Graham, glancing back at the receding blue andwhite. "That is surely not the only--"
"There are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect doesn'ttell it doesn't pay. Worship has moved with the times. There are highclass sects with quieter ways--costly incense and personal attentionsand all that. These people are extremely popular and prosperous. Theypay several dozen lions for those apartments to the Council--to you, Ishould say."
Graham still felt a difficulty with the coinage, and this mention ofa dozen lions brought him abruptly to that matter. In a moment thescreaming temples and their swarming touts were forgotten in this newinterest. A turn of a phrase suggested, and an answer confirmed the ideathat gold and silver were both demonetised, that stamped gold which hadbegun its reign amidst the merchants of Phoenicia was at last dethroned.The change had been graduated but swift, brought about by an extensionof the system of cheques that had even in his previous life alreadypractically superseded gold in all the larger business transactions. Thecommon traffic of the city, the common currency indeed of all the world,was conducted by means of the little brown, green and pink councilcheques for small amounts, printed with a blank payee. Asano had severalwith him, and at the first opportunity he supplied the gaps in hisset. They were printed not on tearable paper, but on a semi-transparentfabric of silken, flexibility, interwoven with silk. Across them allsprawled a facsimile of Graham's signature, his first encounter with thecurves and turns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and threeyears.
Some intermediary experiences made no impression sufficiently vivid toprevent the matter of the disarmament claiming his thoughts again;a blurred picture of a Theosophist temple that promised MIRACLES inenormous letters of unsteady fire was least submerged perhaps, butthen came the view of the dining hall in Northumberland Avenue. Thatinterested him very greatly.
By the energy and thought of Asano he was able to view this place froma little screened gallery reserved for the attendants of the tables. Thebuilding was pervaded by a distant muffled hooting, piping and bawling,of which he did not at first understand the import, but which recalleda certain mysterious leathery voice he had heard after the resumption ofthe lights on the night of his solitary wandering.
He had grown accustomed now to vastness and great numbers of people,nevertheless this spectacle held him for a long time. It was as hewatched the table service more immediately beneath, and interspersedwith many questions and answers concerning details, that the realisationof the full significance of the feast of several thousand people came tohim.
It was his con
stant surprise to find that points that one might haveexpected to strike vividly at the very outset never occurred to himuntil some trivial detail suddenly shaped as a riddle and pointed to theobvious thing he had overlooked. In this matter, for instance, it hadnot occurred to him that this continuity of the city, this exclusion ofweather, these vast halls and ways, involved the disappearance of thehousehold; that the typical Victorian "home," the little brick cellcontaining kitchen and scullery, living rooms and bedrooms, had, savefor the ruins that diversified the countryside, vanished as surely asthe wattle hut. But now he saw what had indeed been manifest fromthe first, that London, regarded as a living place, was no longer anaggregation of houses but a prodigious hotel, an hotel with a thousandclasses of accommodation, thousands of dining halls, chapels, theatres,markets and places of assembly, a synthesis of enterprises, of which hechiefly was the owner. People had their sleeping rooms, with, it mightbe, antechambers, rooms that were always sanitary at least whatever thedegree of comfort and privacy, and for the rest they lived much as manypeople had lived in the new-made giant hotels of the Victorian days,eating, reading, thinking, playing, conversing, all in places of publicresort, going to their work in the industrial quarters of the city ordoing business in their offices in the trading section.
He perceived at once how necessarily this state of affairs had developedfrom the Victorian city. The fundamental reason for the modern city hadever been the economy of co-operation. The chief thing to prevent themerging of the separate households in his own generation was simply thestill imperfect civilisation of the people, the strong barbaric pride,passions, and prejudices, the jealousies, rivalries, and violence of themiddle and lower classes, which had necessitated the entire separationof contiguous households. But the change, the taming of the people, hadbeen in rapid progress even then. In his brief thirty years of previouslife he had seen an enormous extension of the habit of consuming mealsfrom home, the casually patronised horse-box coffee-house had givenplace to the open and crowded Aerated Bread Shop for instance, women'sclubs had had their beginning, and an immense development of readingrooms, lounges and libraries had witnessed to the growth of socialconfidence. These promises had by this time attained to their completefulfillment. The locked and barred household had passed away.
These people below him belonged, he learnt, to the lower middle class,the class just above the blue labourers, a class so accustomed in theVictorian period to feed with every precaution of privacy that itsmembers, when occasion confronted them with a public meal, wouldusually hide their embarrassment under horseplay or a markedly militantdemeanour. But these gaily, if lightly dressed people below, albeitvivacious, hurried and uncommunicative, were dexterously mannered andcertainly quite at their ease with regard to one another.
He noted a slight significant thing; the table, as far as he could see,was and remained delightfully neat, there was nothing to parallel theconfusion, the broadcast crumbs, the splashes of viand and condiment,the overturned drink and displaced ornaments, which would have markedthe stormy progress of the Victorian meal. The table furniture wasvery different. There were no ornaments, no flowers, and the table waswithout a cloth, being made, he learnt, of a solid substance havingthe texture and appearance of damask. He discerned that this damasksubstance was patterned with gracefully designed trade advertisements.
In a sort of recess before each diner was a complete apparatus ofporcelain and metal. There was one plate of white porcelain, and bymeans of taps for hot and cold volatile fluids the diner washed thishimself between the courses; he also washed his elegant white metalknife and fork and spoon as occasion required.
Soup and the chemical wine that was the common drink were deliveredby similar taps, and the remaining covers travelled automatically intastefully arranged dishes down the table along silver rails. The dinerstopped these and helped himself at his discretion. They appeared ata little door at one end of the table, and vanished at the other. Thatturn of democratic sentiment in decay, that ugly pride of menial souls,which renders equals loth to wait on one another, was very strong hefound among these people. He was so preoccupied with these details thatit was only just as he was leaving the place that he remarked the hugeadvertisement dioramas that marched majestically along the upper wallsand proclaimed the most remarkable commodities.
Beyond this place they came into a crowded hall, and he discovered thecause of the noise that had perplexed him. They paused at a turnstile atwhich a payment was made.
Graham's attention was immediately arrested by a violent, loud hoot,followed by a vast leathery voice. "The Master is sleeping peacefully,"it said vociferately. "He is in excellent health. He is going to devotethe rest of his life to aeronautics. He says women are more beautifulthan ever. Galloop! Wow! Our wonderful civilisation astonishes himbeyond measure. Beyond all measure. Galloop. He puts great trust in BossOstrog, absolute confidence in Boss Ostrog. Ostrog is to be his chiefminister; is authorised to remove or reinstate public officers--allpatronage will be in his hands. All patronage in the hands of BossOstrog! The Councillors have been sent back to their own prison abovethe Council House."
Graham stopped at the first sentence, and, looking up, beheld afoolish trumpet face from which this was brayed. This was the GeneralIntelligence Machine. For a space it seemed to be gathering breath,and a regular throbbing from its cylindrical body was audible. Then ittrumpeted "Galloop, Galloop," and broke out again.
"Paris is now pacified. All resistance is over. Galloop! The blackpolice hold every position of importance in the city. They fought withgreat bravery, singing songs written in praise of their ancestors bythe poet Kipling. Once or twice they got out of hand, and tortured andmutilated wounded and captured insurgents, men and women. Moral--don'tgo rebelling. Haha! Galloop, Galloop! They are lively fellows. Livelybrave fellows. Let this be a lesson to the disorderly banderlog of thiscity. Yah! Banderlog! Filth of the earth! Galloop, Galloop!"
The voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among thecrowd. "Damned niggers." A man began to harangue near them. "Is this theMaster's doing, brothers? Is this the Master's doing?"
"Black police!" said Graham. "What is that? You don't mean--"
Asano touched his arm and gave him a warning look, and forthwith anotherof these mechanisms screamed deafeningly and gave tongue in a shrillvoice. "Yahaha, Yahah, Yap! Hear a live paper yelp! Live paper. Yaha!Shocking outrage in Paris. Yahahah! The Parisians exasperated by theblack police to the pitch of assassination. Dreadful reprisals. Savagetimes come again. Blood! Blood! Yaha!" The nearer Babble Machine hootedstupendously, "Galloop, Galloop," drowned the end of the sentence, andproceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments onthe horrors of disorder. "Law and order must be maintained," said thenearer Babble Machine.
"But," began Graham.
"Don't ask questions here," said Asano, "or you will be involved in anargument."
"Then let us go on," said Graham, "for I want to know more of this."
As he and his companion pushed their way through the excited crowd thatswarmed beneath these voices, towards the exit, Graham conceived moreclearly the proportion and features of this room. Altogether, greatand small, there must have been nearly a thousand of these erections,piping, hooting, bawling and gabbling in that great space, each withits crowd of excited listeners, the majority of them men dressed in bluecanvas. There were all sizes of machines, from the little gossippingmechanisms that chuckled out mechanical sarcasm in odd corners, througha number of grades to such fifty-foot giants as that which had firsthooted over Graham.
This place was unusually crowded, because of the intense public interestin the course of affairs in Paris. Evidently the struggle had been muchmore savage than Ostrog had represented it. All the mechanisms werediscoursing upon that topic, and the repetition of the people made thehuge hive buzz with such phrases as "Lynched policemen," "Women burntalive," "Fuzzy Wuzzy." "But does the Master allow such things?" asked aman near him. "Is this the beginning of the Mas
ter's rule?"
Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule? For a long time after hehad left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machinespursued him; "Galloop, Galloop," "Yahahah, Yaha, Yap! Yaha!" Is this thebeginning of the Master's rule?
Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closelyon the nature of the Parisian struggle. "This disarmament! What wastheir trouble? What does it all mean?" Asano seemed chiefly anxious toreassure him that it was "all right." "But these outrages!" "You cannothave an omelette," said Asano, "without breaking eggs. It is only therough people. Only in one part of the city. All the rest is all right.The Parisian labourers are the wildest in the world, except ours."
"What! the Londoners?"
"No, the Japanese. They have to be kept in order." "But burning womenalive!"
"A Commune!" said Asano. "They would rob you of your property. Theywould do away with property and give the world over to mob rule. You areMaster, the world is yours. But there will be no Commune here. There isno need for black police here.
"And every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes--Frenchspeaking negroes. Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo."
"Regiments?" said Graham, "I thought there was only one--."
"No," said Asano, and glanced at him. "There is more than one."
Graham felt unpleasantly helpless.
"I did not think," he began and stopped abruptly He went off at atangent to ask for information about these Babble Machines. For the mostpart, the crowd present had been shabbily or even raggedly dressed, andGraham learnt that so far as the more prosperous classes were concerned,in all the more comfortable private apartments of the city were fixedBabble Machines that would speak directly a lever was pulled. The tenantof the apartment could connect this with the cables of any of the greatNews Syndicates that he preferred. When he learnt this presently, hedemanded the reason of their absence from his own suite of apartments.Asano stared. "I never thought," he said. "Ostrog must have had themremoved."
Graham stared. "How was I to know?" he exclaimed.
"Perhaps he thought they would annoy you," said Asano.
"They must be replaced directly I return," said Graham after aninterval.
He found a difficulty in understanding that this news room and thedining hall were not great central places, that such establishments wererepeated almost beyond counting all over the city. But ever and againduring the night's expedition his ears, in some new quarter would pickout from the tumult of the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ ofBoss Ostrog, "Galloop, Galloop!" or the shrill "Yahaha, Yaha, Yap!--Heara live paper yelp!" of its chief rival.
Repeated, too, everywhere, were such _creches_ as the one he nowentered. It was reached by a lift, and by a glass bridge that flungacross the dining hall and traversed the ways at a slight upward angle.To enter the first section of the place necessitated the use of hissolvent signature under Asano's direction. They were immediatelyattended to by a man in a violet robe and gold clasp, the insignia ofpractising medical men. He perceived from this man's manner that hisidentity was known, and proceeded to ask questions on the strangearrangements of the place without reserve.
On either side of the passage, which was silent and padded, as ifto deaden the footfall, were narrow little doors, their size andarrangement suggestive of the cells of a Victorian prison. But the upperportion of each door was of the same greenish transparent stuff thathad enclosed him at his awakening, and within, dimly seen, lay, in everycase, a very young baby in a little nest of wadding. Elaborate apparatuswatched the atmosphere and rang a bell far away in the central office atthe slightest departure from the optimum of temperature and moisture. Asystem of such _creches_ had almost entirely replaced the hazardousadventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently calledGraham's attention to the wet nurses, a vista of mechanical figures,with arms, shoulders and breasts of astonishingly realistic modelling,articulation, and texture, but mere brass tripods below, and having inthe place of features a flat disc bearing advertisements likely to be ofinterest to mothers.
Of all the strange things that Graham came upon that night, none jarredmore upon his habits of thought than this place. The spectacle of thelittle pink creatures, their feeble limbs swaying uncertainly in vaguefirst movements, left alone, without embrace or endearment, was whollyrepugnant to him. The attendant doctor was of a different opinion. Hisstatistical evidence showed beyond dispute that in the Victorian timesthe most dangerous passage of life was the arms of the mother, thatthere human mortality had ever been most terrible. On the other handthis _creche_ company, the International Creche Syndicate, lost notone-half per cent of the million babies or so that formed its peculiarcare. But Graham's prejudice was too strong even for those figures.
Along one of the many passages of the place they presently came upon ayoung couple in the usual blue canvas peering through the transparencyand laughing hysterically at the bald head of their first-born. Graham'sface must have showed his estimate of them, for their merriment ceasedand they looked abashed. But this little incident accentuated his suddenrealisation of the gulf between his habits of thought and the ways ofthe new age. He passed on to the crawling rooms and the Kindergarten,perplexed and distressed. He found the endless long playrooms wereempty! the latter-day children at least still spent their nights insleep. As they went through these, the little officer pointed out thenature of the toys, developments of those devised by that inspiredsentimentalist Froebel. There were nurses here, but much was done bymachines that sang and danced and dandled.
Graham was still not clear upon many points. "But so many orphans," hesaid perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt againthat they were not orphans.
So soon as they had left the _creche_ he began to speak of the horrorthe babies in their incubating cases had caused him. "Is motherhoodgone?" he said. "Was it a cant? Surely it was an instinct. This seems sounnatural--abominable almost."
"Along here we shall come to the dancing place," said Asano by way ofreply. "It is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the political unrestit will be crowded. The women take no great interest in politics--excepta few here and there. You will see the mothers--most young women inLondon are mothers. In that class it is considered a creditable thing tohave one child--a proof of animation. Few middle class people have morethan one. With the Labour Company it is different. As for motherhoodThey still take an immense pride in the children. They come here to lookat them quite often."
"Then do you mean that the population of the world--?"
"Is falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour Company. Theyare reckless--."
The air was suddenly dancing with music, and down a way they approachedobliquely, set with gorgeous pillars as it seemed of clear amethyst,flowed a concourse of gay people and a tumult of merry cries andlaughter. He saw curled heads, wreathed brows, and a happy intricateflutter of gamboge pass triumphant across the picture.
"You will see," said Asano with a faint smile "The world has changed.In a moment you will see the mothers of the new age. Come this way. Weshall see those yonder again very soon."
They ascended a certain height in a swift lift, and changed to a slowerone. As they went on the music grew upon them, until it was near andfull and splendid, and, moving with its glorious intricacies they coulddistinguish the beat of innumerable dancing feet. They made a paymentat a turnstile, and emerged upon the wide gallery that overlooked thedancing place, and upon the full enchantment of sound and sight.
"Here," said Asano, "are the fathers and mothers of the little ones yousaw."
The hall was not so richly decorated as that of the Atlas, but savingthat, it was, for its size, the most splendid Graham had seen. Thebeautiful white limbed figures that supported the galleries remindedhim once more of the restored magnificence of sculpture; they seemedto writhe in engaging attitudes, their faces laughed. The source of themusic that filled the place was hidden, and the whole vast shining floorwas th
ick with dancing couples. "Look at them," said the little officer,"see how much they show of motherhood."
The gallery they stood upon ran along the upper edge of a huge screenthat cut the dancing hall on one side from a sort of outer hall thatshowed through broad arches the incessant onward rush of the city ways.In this outer hall was a great crowd of less brilliantly dressed people,as numerous almost as those who danced within, the great majoritywearing the blue uniform of the Labour Company that was now so familiarto Graham. Too poor to pass the turnstiles to the festival, they wereyet unable to keep away from the sound of its seductions. Some of themeven had cleared spaces, and were dancing also, fluttering their rags inthe air. Some shouted as they danced, jests and odd allusions Grahamdid not understand. Once someone began whistling the refrain of therevolutionary song, but it seemed as though that beginning was promptlysuppressed. The corner was dark and Graham could not see. He turned tothe hall again. Above the caryatidae were marble busts of men whom thatage esteemed great moral emancipators and pioneers; for the most parttheir names were strange to Graham, though he recognised Grant Allen,Le Gallienne, Nietzsche, Shelley and Goodwin. Great black festoonsand eloquent sentiments reinforced the huge inscription that partiallydefaced the upper end of the dancing place, and asserted that "TheFestival of the Awakening" was in progress.
"Myriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that, quiteapart from the labourers who refuse to go back," said Asano. "Thesepeople are always ready for holidays."
Graham walked to the parapet and stood leaning over, looking down at thedancers. Save for two or three remote whispering couples, who had stolenapart, he and his guide had the gallery to themselves. A warm breath ofscent and vitality came up to him. Both men and women below were lightlyclad, bare-armed, open-necked, as the universal warmth of the citypermitted. The hair of the men was often a mass of effeminate curls,their chins were always shaven, and many of them had flushed or colouredcheeks. Many of the women were very pretty, and all were dressed withelaborate coquetry. As they swept by beneath, he saw ecstatic faces witheyes half closed in pleasure.
"What sort of people are these?" he asked abruptly.
"Workers--prosperous workers. What you would have called the middleclass. Independent tradesmen with little separate businesses havevanished long ago, but there are store servers, managers, engineers ofa hundred sorts. Tonight is a holiday of course, and every dancing placein the city will be crowded, and every place of worship."
"But--the women?"
"The same. There's a thousand forms of work for women now. But you hadthe beginning of the independent working-woman in your days. Most womenare independent now. Most of these are married more or less--there area number of methods of contract--and that gives them more money, andenables them to enjoy themselves."
"I see," said Graham looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirlof movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helplesslimbs. "And these are--mothers."
"Most of them."
"The more I see of these things the more complex I find your problems.This, for instance, is a surprise. That news from Paris was a surprise."
In a little while he spoke again:
"These are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into themodern way of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging aboutme--habits based, I suppose, on needs that are over and done with. Ofcourse, in our time, a woman was supposed not only to bear children,but to cherish them, to devote herself to them, to educate them--allthe essentials of moral and mental education a child owed its mother. Orwent without. Quite a number, I admit, went without. Nowadays, clearly,there is no more need for such care than if they were butterflies. I seethat! Only there was an ideal--that figure of a grave, patient woman,silently and serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men--tolove her was a sort of worship--"
He stopped and repeated, "A sort of worship."
"Ideals change," said the little man, "as needs change."
Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words.Graham's mind returned to the thing at hand.
"Of course I see the perfect reasonableness of this Restraint,soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish a act, they arenecessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness isman's tribute to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature nowfor all practical purposes--his political affairs are managed by Bosseswith a black police--and life is joyous."
He looked at the dancers again. "Joyous," he said.
"There are weary moments," said the little officer, reflectively.
"They all look young. Down there I should be visibly the oldest man. Andin my own time I should have passed as middle-aged."
"They are young. There are few old people in this class in the workcities."
"How is that?"
"Old people's lives are not so pleasant as they used to be, unless theyare rich to hire lovers and helpers. And we have an institution calledEuthanasy."
"Ah! that Euthanasy!" said Graham. "The easy death?"
"The easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does itwell. People will pay the sum--it is a costly thing--long beforehand,go off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, veryweary."
"There is a lot left for me to understand," said Graham after a pause."Yet I see the logic of it all. Our array of angry virtues and sourrestraints was the consequence of danger and insecurity. The Stoic, thePuritan, even in my time, were vanishing types. In the old days manwas armed against Pain, now he is eager for Pleasure. There lies thedifference. Civilisation has driven pain and danger so far off--forwell-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have beenasleep two hundred years."
For a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricateevolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful.
"Before God," said Graham, suddenly, "I would rather be a woundedsentinel freezing in the snow than one of these painted fools!"
"In the snow," said Asano, "one might think differently."
"I am uncivilised," said Graham, not heeding him. "That is the trouble.I am primitive--Palaeolithic. Their fountain of rage and fear and angeris sealed and closed, the habits of a lifetime make them cheerful andeasy and delightful. You must bear with my nineteenth century shocks anddisgusts. These people, you say, are skilled workers and so forth. Andwhile these dance, men are fighting--men are dying in Paris to keep theworld--that they may dance."
Asano smiled faintly. "For that matter, men are dying in London," hesaid.
There was a moment's silence.
"Where do these sleep?" asked Graham.
"Above and below--an intricate warren."
"And where do they work? This is--the domestic life."
"You will see little work to-night. Half the workers are out or underarms. Half these people are keeping holiday. But we will go to the workplaces if you wish it."
For a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. "Iwant to see the workers. I have seen enough of these," he said.
Asano led the way along the gallery across the dancing hall. Presentlythey came to a transverse passage that brought a breath of fresher,colder air.
Asano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went backto it, and turned to Graham with a smile. "Here, Sire," he said, "issomething--will be familiar to you at least--and yet--. But I will nottell you. Come!"
He led the way along a closed passage that presently became cold. Thereverberation of their feet told that this passage was a bridge. Theycame into a circular gallery that was glazed in from the outer weather,and so reached a circular chamber which seemed familiar, though Grahamcould not recall distinctly when he had entered it before. In this was aladder--the first ladder he had seen since his awakening--up which theywent, and came into a high, dark, cold place in which was another almostvertical ladder. This they ascended, Graham still perplexed.
But at the top he understood, and recognized the metallic b
ars to whichhe clung. He was in the cage under the ball of St. Paul's. The dome rosebut a little way above the general contour of the city, into the stilltwilight, and sloped away, shining greasily under a few distant lights,into a circumambient ditch of darkness.
Out between the bars he looked upon the wind-clear northern sky and sawthe starry constellations all unchanged. Capella hung in the west, Vegawas rising, and the seven glittering points of the Great Bear sweptoverhead in their stately circle about the Pole.
He saw these stars in a clear gap of sky. To the east and south thegreat circular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out theheavens, so that the glare about the Council House was hidden. To thesouth-west hung Orion, showing like a pallid ghost through a tracery ofiron-work and interlacing shapes above a dazzling coruscation of lights.A bellowing and siren screaming that came from the flying stages warnedthe world that one of the aeroplanes was ready to start. He remained fora space gazing towards the glaring stage. Then his eyes went back to thenorthward constellations.
For a long time he was silent. "This," he said at last, smiling in theshadow, "seems the strangest thing of all. To stand in the dome of SaintPaul's and look once more upon these familiar, silent stars!"
Thence Graham was taken by Asano along devious ways to the greatgambling and business quarters where the bulk of the fortunes in thecity were lost and made. It impressed him as a well-nigh interminableseries of very high halls, surrounded by tiers upon tiers of galleriesinto which opened thousands of offices, and traversed by a complicatedmultitude of bridges, footways, aerial motor rails, and trapeze andcable leaps. And here more than anywhere the note of vehement vitality,of uncontrollable, hasty activity, rose high. Everywhere was violentadvertisement, until his brain swam at the tumult of light and colour.And Babble Machines of a peculiarly rancid tone were abundant and filledthe air with strenuous squealing and an idiotic slang. "Skin your eyesand slide," "Gewhoop, Bonanza," "Gollipers come and hark!"
The place seemed to him to be dense with people either profoundlyagitated or swelling with obscure cunning, yet he learnt that the placewas comparatively empty, that the great political convulsion of the lastfew days had reduced transactions to an unprecedented minimum. In onehuge place were long avenues of roulette tables, each with an excited,undignified crowd about it; in another a yelping Babel of white-facedwomen and red-necked leathery-lunged men bought and sold the shares ofan absolutely fictitious business undertaking which, every five minutes,paid a dividend of ten per cent and cancelled a certain proportion ofits shares by means of a lottery wheel.
These business activities were prosecuted with an energy that readilypassed into violence, and Graham approaching a dense crowd found at itscentre a couple of prominent merchants in violent controversy with teethand nails on some delicate point of business etiquette. Something stillremained in life to be fought for. Further he had a shock at a vehementannouncement in phonetic letters of scarlet flame, each twice the heightof a man, that "WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R. WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R."
"Who's the proprietor?" he asked.
"You."