CHAPTER VII. IN THE SILENT ROOMS
Presently Graham resumed his examination of his apartments. Curiositykept him moving in spite of his fatigue. The inner room, he perceived,was high, and its ceiling dome shaped, with an oblong aperture in thecentre, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad fans seemed tobe rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint hummingnote of its easy motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. Asthese vans sprang up one after the other, Graham could get transientglimpses of the sky. He was surprised to see a star.
This drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of theserooms was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about thecornices. There were no windows. And he began to recall that alongall the vast chambers and passages he had traversed with Howard he hadobserved no windows at all. Had there been windows? There were windowson the street indeed, but were they for light? Or was the whole city litday and night for evermore, so that there was no night there?
And another thing dawned upon him. There was no fireplace in eitherroom. Was the season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, orwas the whole City uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested inthese questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, thesimply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labourof bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was acurious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form andcolour, that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were several verycomfortable chairs, a light table on silent runners carrying severalbottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substancelike jelly. Then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, nowriting materials. "The world has changed indeed," he said.
He observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows ofpeculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white thatharmonized with the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre ofthis side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having awhite smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitoryidea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute forbooks, but at first it did not seem so.
The lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. At first sight it seemedlike Russian. Then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English aboutcertain of the words.
"oi Man huwdbi Kin"
forced itself on him as "The Man who would be King." "Phoneticspelling," he said. He remembered reading a story with that title, thenhe recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world. Butthis thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He puzzled outthe titles of two adjacent cylinders. 'The Heart of Darkness,' he hadnever heard of before nor 'The Madonna of the Future'--no doubt if theywere indeed stories, they were by post Victorian authors.
He puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it.Then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. He opened asort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on theupper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressedthis and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voicesand music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. Hesuddenly realised what this might be, and stepped back to regard it.
On the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured,and in this picture were figures that moved. Not only did they move, butthey were conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like realityviewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube.His interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented aman pacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty butpetulant woman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed sostrange to Graham. "I have worked," said the man, "but what have youbeen doing?"
"Ah!" said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair.Within five minutes he heard himself named, heard "when the Sleeperwakes," used jestingly as a proverb for remote postponement, and passedhimself by, a thing remote and incredible. But in a little while he knewthose two people like intimate friends.
At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of theapparatus was blank again.
It was a strange world into which he had been permitted to see,unscrupulous, pleasure seeking, energetic, subtle, a world too of direeconomic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidentsthat conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes ofdubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in hisfirst impression of the city ways appeared again and again asthe costume of the common people. He had no doubt the story wascontemporary, and its intense realism was undeniable. And the end hadbeen a tragedy that oppressed him. He sat staring at the blankness.
He started and rubbed his eyes. He had been so absorbed in thelatter-day substitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little greenand white room with more than a touch of the surprise of his firstawakening.
He stood up, and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland. Theclearness of the kinetoscope drama passed, and the struggle in the vastplace of streets, the ambiguous Council, the swift phases of his wakinghour, came back. These people had spoken of the Council with suggestionsof a vague universality of power. And they had spoken of the Sleeper; ithad not really struck him vividly at the time that he was the Sleeper.He had to recall precisely what they had said.
He walked into the bedroom and peered up through the quick intervals ofthe revolving fan. As the fan swept round, a dim turmoil like the noiseof machinery came in rhythmic eddies. All else was silence.
Though the perpetual day still irradiated his apartments, he perceivedthe little intermittent strip of sky was now deep blue--black almost,with a dust of little stars.
He resumed his examination of the rooms. He could find no way of openingthe padded door, no bell nor other means of calling for attendance.His feeling of wonder was in abeyance; but he was curious, anxious forinformation. He wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things.He tried to compose himself to wait until someone came to him. Presentlyhe became restless and eager for information, for distraction, for freshsensations.
He went back to the apparatus in the other room, and had soon puzzledout the method of replacing the cylinders by others. As he did so, itcame into his mind that it must be these little appliances had fixed thelanguage so that it was still clear and understandable after two hundredyears. The haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musicalfantasia. At first it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. Hepresently recognized what appeared to him to be an altered version ofthe story of Tannhauser. The music was unfamiliar. But the rendering wasrealistic, and with a contemporary unfamiliarity. Tannhauser did notgo to a Venusberg, but to a Pleasure City. What was a Pleasure City? Adream, surely, the fancy of a fantastic, voluptuous writer.
He became interested, curious. The story developed with a flavour ofstrangely twisted sentimentality. Suddenly he did not like it. He likedit less as it proceeded.
He had a revulsion of feeling. These were no pictures, no idealisations,but photographed realities. He wanted no more of the twenty-secondcentury Venusberg. He forgot the part played by the model in nineteenthcentury art, and gave way to an archaic indignation. He rose, angry andhalf ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. Hepulled forward the apparatus, and with some violence sought for a meansof stopping its action. Something snapped. A violet spark stung andconvulsed his arm and the thing was still. When he attempted next dayto replace these Tannhauser cylinders by another pair, he found theapparatus broken....
He struck out a path oblique to the room and paced to and fro,struggling with intolerable vast impressions. The things he had derivedfrom the cylinders and the things he had seen, conflicted, confused him.It seemed to him the most amazing thing of all that in his thirty yearsof life he had never tried to shape a picture of these coming times."We were making the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled tothink what future we were making. And here it is!"
/> "What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midstof it all?" The vastness of street and house he was prepared for,the multitudes of people. But conflicts in the city ways! And thesystematised sensuality of a class of rich men!
He thought of Bellamy, the hero of whose Socialistic Utopia had sooddly anticipated this actual experience. But here was no Utopia,no Socialistic state. He had already seen enough to realise that theancient antithesis of luxury, waste and sensuality on the one hand andabject poverty on the other, still prevailed. He knew enough of theessential factors of life to understand that correlation. And not onlywere the buildings of the city gigantic and the crowds in the streetgigantic, but the voices he had heard in the ways, the uneasiness ofHoward, the very atmosphere spoke of gigantic discontent. What countrywas he in? Still England it seemed, and yet strangely "un-English." Hismind glanced at the rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.
He prowled about his apartment, examining everything as a caged animalmight do. He felt very tired, felt that feverish exhaustion that doesnot admit of rest. He listened for long spaces under the ventilator tocatch some distant echo of the tumults he felt must be proceeding in thecity.
He began to talk to himself. "Two hundred and three years!" he said tohimself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundredand thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven'treversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of theoldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember theBulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. 'Tis a great age!Ha ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and thenlaughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he wasbehaving foolishly. "Steady," he said. "Steady!"
His pacing became more regular. "This new world," he said. "I don'tunderstand it. _Why?_... But it is all _why!_"
"I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things Let me try andremember just how it began."
He was surprised at first to find how vague the memories of his firstthirty years had become. He remembered fragments, for the most parttrivial moments, things of no great importance that he had observed. Hisboyhood seemed the most accessible at first, he recalled school booksand certain lessons in mensuration. Then he revived the more salientfeatures of his life, memories of the wife long since dead, her magicinfluence now gone beyond corruption, of his rivals and friends andbetrayers, of the swift decision of this issue and that, and then ofhis, last years of misery, of fluctuating resolves, and at last of hisstrenuous studies. In a little while he perceived he had it all again;dim perhaps, like metal long laid aside, but in no way defective orinjured, capable of re-polishing. And the hue of it was a deepeningmisery. Was it worth re-polishing? By a miracle he had been lifted outof a life that had become intolerable.
He reverted to his present condition. He wrestled with the facts invain. It became an inextricable tangle. He saw the sky through theventilator pink with dawn. An old persuasion came out of the darkrecesses of his memory. "I must sleep," he said. It appeared as adelightful relief from this mental distress and from the growing painand heaviness of his limbs. He went to the strange little bed, lay downand was presently asleep.
He was destined to become very familiar indeed with these apartmentsbefore he left them, for he remained imprisoned for three days. Duringthat time no one, except Howard, entered his prison. The marvel of hisfate mingled with and in some way minimised the marvel of his survival.He had awakened to mankind it seemed only to be snatched away into thisunaccountable solitude. Howard came regularly with subtly sustaining andnutritive fluids, and light and pleasant foods, quite strange to Graham.He always closed the door carefully as he entered. On matters of detailhe was increasingly obliging, but the bearing of Graham on the greatissues that were evidently being contested so closely beyond thesoundproof walls that enclosed him, he would not elucidate. He evaded,as politely as possible, every question on the position of affairs inthe outer world.
And in those three days Graham's incessant thoughts went far and wide.All that he had seen, all this elaborate contrivance to preventhim seeing, worked together in his mind. Almost every possibleinterpretation of his position he debated--even as it chanced, the rightinterpretation. Things that presently happened to him, came to him atlast credible, by virtue of this seclusion. When at length the moment ofhis release arrived, it found him prepared.
Howard's bearing went far to deepen Graham's impression of his ownstrange importance; the door between its opening and closing seemed toadmit with him a breath of momentous happening. His enquiries becamemore definite and searching. Howard retreated through protests anddifficulties. The awakening was unforeseen, he repeated; it happened tohave fallen in with the trend of a social convulsion.
"To explain it I must tell you the history of a gross and a half ofyears," protested Howard.
"The thing is this," said Graham. "You are afraid of something I shalldo. In some way I am arbitrator--I might be arbitrator."
"It is not that. But you have--I may tell you this much--the automaticincrease of your property puts great possibilities of interference inyour hands. And in certain other ways you have influence, with youreighteenth century notions."
"Nineteenth century," corrected Graham.
"With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of everyfeature of our State."
"Am I a fool?"
"Certainly not."
"Do I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly?"
"You were never expected to act at all. No one counted on yourawakening. No one dreamt you would ever awake. The Council hadsurrounded you with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact, wethought that you were dead--a mere arrest of decay. And--but it is toocomplex. We dare not suddenly--while you are still half awake."
"It won't do," said Graham. "Suppose it is as you say--why am I notbeing crammed night and day with facts and warnings and all the wisdomof the time to fit me for my responsibilities? Am I any wiser now thantwo days ago, if it is two days, when I awoke?"
Howard pulled his lip.
"I am beginning to feel--every hour I feel more clearly--a sense ofcomplex concealment of which you are the salient point. Is this Council,or committee, or whatever they are, cooking the accounts of my estate?Is that it?"
"That note of suspicion--" said Howard.
"Ugh!" said Graham. "Now, mark my words, it will be ill for those whohave put me here. It will be ill. I am alive. Make no doubt of it, Iam alive. Every day my pulse is stronger and my mind clearer and morevigorous. No more quiescence. I am a man come back to life. And I wantto _live_--"
"_Live!_"
Howard's face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in aneasy confidential tone.
"The Council secludes you here for your good. You are restless.Naturally--an energetic man! You find it dull here. But we are anxiousthat everything you may desire--every desire--every sort of desire...There may be something. Is there any sort of company?"
He paused meaningly.
"Yes," said Graham thoughtfully. "There is."
"Ah! _Now!_ We have treated you neglectfully."
"The crowds in yonder streets of yours."
"That," said Howard, "I am afraid--. But--"
Graham began pacing the room. Howard stood near the door watching him.The implication of Howard's suggestion was only half evident to GrahamCompany? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sortof _company_? Would there be any possibilities of gathering fromthe conversation of this additional person some vague inkling ofthe struggle that had broken out so vividly at his waking moment? Hemeditated again, and the suggestion took colour. He turned on Howardabruptly.
"What do you mean by company?"
Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. "Human beings," hesaid, with a curious smile on his heavy face.
"Our social ideas," he said, "have a certain increased liberality,perhaps, in comparison with your times. If a man wishes to relieve sucha ted
ium as this--by feminine society, for instance. We think it noscandal. We have cleared our minds of formulae. There is in our city aclass, a necessary class, no longer despised--discreet--"
Graham stopped dead.
"It would pass the time," said Howard. "It is a thing I shouldperhaps have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much ishappening--"
He indicated the exterior world.
Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman thathis imagination suddenly created dominated his mind with an intenseattraction. Then he flashed into anger.
"No!" he shouted.
He began striding rapidly up and down the room.
"Everything you say, everything you do, convinces me--of some greatissue in which I am concerned. I do not want to pass the time, as youcall it. Yes, I know. Desire and indulgence are life in a sense--andDeath! Extinction! In my life before I slept I had worked outthat pitiful question. I will not begin again. There is a city, amultitude--. And meanwhile I am here like a rabbit in a bag."
His rage surged high. He choked for a moment and began to wave hisclenched fists. He gave way to an anger fit, he swore archaic curses.His gestures had the quality of physical threats.
"I do not know who your party may be. I am in the dark, and you keepme in the dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for nogood purpose. For no good purpose. I warn you, I warn you of theconsequences. Once I come at my power--"
He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. Hestopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.
"I take it this is a message to the Council," said Howard.
Graham had a momentary impulse to leap upon the man, fell or stun him.It must have shown upon his face; at any rate Howard's movement wasquick. In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man fromthe nineteenth century was alone.
For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then heflung them down. "What a fool I have been!" he said, and gave way tohis anger again, stamping about the room and shouting curses. For a longtime he kept himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at hisown folly, at the knaves who had imprisoned him. He did this becausehe did not want to look calmly at his position. He clung to hisanger--because he was afraid of Fear.
Presently he found himself reasoning with himself This imprisonment wasunaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms--new legal forms--of thetime permitted it. It must, of course, be legal. These people were twohundred years further on in the march of civilisation than the Victoriangeneration. It was not likely they would be less--humane. Yet theyhad cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as well aschastity?
His imagination set to work to suggest things that might be done to him.The attempts of his reason to dispose of these suggestions, thoughfor the most part logically valid, were quite unavailing. "Why shouldanything be done to me?"
"If the worst comes to the worst," he found himself saying at last, "Ican give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't theyask me for it instead of cooping me up?"
He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council's possibleintentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's behaviour,sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mindcircled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither couldhe escape into this vast, crowded world? He would be worse off thana Saxon yeoman suddenly dropped into nineteenth century London. Andbesides, how could anyone escape from these rooms?
"How can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?"
He thought of the tumult, the great social trouble of which he was sounaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough and yet curiouslyinsistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This alsoa Council had said:
"It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people."