In The Silent Rooms
:
When The Sleeper Wakes
Presently Graham resumed his examination of his apartments. Curiosity
kept him moving in spite of his fatigue. The inner room, he perceived,
was high, and its ceiling dome shaped', with an oblong aperture in the
centre, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad vans seemed to
be rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint humming
note of its easy motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. As
/>
these vans sprang up one after the other, Graham could get transient
glimpses of the sky. He was surprised to see a star.
This drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of these
rooms was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about the
cornices. There were no windows. And he began to recall that along
all the vast chambers and passages he had traversed with Howard he had
observed no windows at all. Had there been windows? There were windows
on the street indeed, but were they for light? Or was the whole city lit
day and night for evermore, so that there was no night there?
And another thing dawned upon him. There was no fireplace in either
room. Was the season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, or
was the whole City uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested in
these questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, the
simply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour
of bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was a
curious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and
colour, that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were several very
comfortable chairs, a light table on silent runners carrying several
bottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substance
like jelly. Then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, no
writing materials. "The world has changed indeed," he said.
He observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows of
peculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white that
harmonized With the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre of
this side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having a
white smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitory
idea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute for
books, but at first it did not seem so.
The lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. At first sight it seemed
like Russian. Then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English about
certain of the words.
"oi Man huwdbi Kin"
forced itself on him as "The Man who would be King." "Phonetic
spelling," he said. He remembered reading a story with that title, then
he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world. But
this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He puzzled out
the titles of two adjacent cylinders. 'The Heart of Darkness,' he had
never heard of before nor 'The Madonna of the Future'--no doubt if they
were 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 a
sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the
upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressed
this and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voices
and music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. He
suddenly 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, but
they were conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like reality
viewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube.
His interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented a
man pacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty but
petulant woman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed so
strange to Graham. "I have worked," said the man, "but what have you
been doing?"
"Ah!" said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair.
Within five minutes he heard himself named, heard "when the Sleeper
wakes," used jestingly as a proverb for remote postponement, and passed
himself by, a thing remote and incredible. But in a little while he knew
those two people like intimate friends.
At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the
apparatus 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 dire
economic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidents
that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of
dubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in his
first impression of the city ways appeared again and again as
the costume of the common people. He had no doubt the story was
contemporary, and its intense realism was undeniable. And the end had
been a tragedy that oppressed him. He sat staring at the blankness.
He started and rubbed his eyes. He had been so absorbed in the
latter-day substitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little green
and white room with more than a touch of the surprise of his first
awakening.
He stood up, and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland. The
clearness of the kinetoscope drama passed, and the struggle in the vast
place of streets, the ambiguous Council, the swift phases of his waking
hour, came back. These people had spoken of the Council with suggestions
of a vague universality of power. And they had spoken of the Sleeper; it
had 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 of
the revolving fan. As the fan swept round, a dim turmoil like the noise
of machinery came in rhythmic eddies. All else was silence.
Though the perpetual day still irradiated his apartments, he perceived
the 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 opening
the padded door, no bell nor other means of calling for attendance.
His feeling of wonder was in abeyance; but he was curious, anxious for
information. He wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things.
He tried to compose himself to wait until someone came to him. Presently
he became restless and eager for information, for distraction, for fresh
sensations.
He went back to the apparatus in the other room, and had soon puzzled
out the method of replacing the cylinders by others. As he did so, it
came into his mind that it must be these little appliances had fixed the
language so that it was still clear and understandable after two hundred
years. The haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musical
fantasia. At first it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. He
presently recognized what appeared to him to be an altered version of
the story of Tannhauser. The music was unfamiliar. But the rendering was
realistic, and with a contemporary unfamiliarity. Tannhauser did not
go to a Venusberg, but to a Pleasure City. What was a Pleasure City? A
dream, surely, the fancy of a fantastic, voluptuous writer.
He became interested, curious. The story developed with a flavour of
strangely twisted sentimentality. Suddenly he did not like it. He liked
it 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-second
century Venusberg. He forgot the part played by the model in nineteenth
century art, and gave way to an archaic indignation. He rose, angry and
half ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. He
pulled forward the apparatus, and with some violence sought for a means
of stopping its action. Something snapped. A violet spark stung and
convulsed his arm and the thing was still. When he attempted next day
to replace these Tannhauser cylinders by another pair, he found the
apparatus broken....
He struck out a path oblique to the room and paced to and fro,
struggling with intolerable vast impressions. The things he had derived
from 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 years
of 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 to
think what future we were making. And here it is!"
"What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midst
of it all?" The vastness of street and house he was prepared for,
the multitudes of people. But conflicts in the city ways! And the
systematised sensuality of a class of rich men!
He thought of Bellamy, the hero of whose Socialistic Utopia had so
oddly anticipated this actual experience. But here was no Utopia,
no Socialistic state. He had already seen enough to realise that the
ancient antithesis of luxury, waste and sensuality on the one hand and
abject poverty on the other, still prevailed. He knew enough of the
essential factors of life to understand that correlation. And not only
were the buildings of the city gigantic and the crowds in the street
gigantic, but the voices he had heard in the ways, the uneasiness of
Howard, the very atmosphere spoke of gigantic discontent. What country
was he in? Still England it seemed, and yet strangely "un-English." His
mind glanced at the rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.
He prowled about his apartment, examining everything as a caged animal
might do. He felt very tired, felt that feverish exhaustion that does
not admit of rest. He listened for long spaces under the ventilator to
catch some distant echo of the tumults he felt must be proceeding in the
city.
He began to talk to himself. "Two hundred and three years!" he said to
himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundred
and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven't
reversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of the
oldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember the
Bulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. 'Tis a great age!
Ha ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then
laughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was
behaving foolishly. "Steady," he said. "Steady!"
His pacing became more regular. "This new world," he said. "I don't
understand it. Why?... But it is all why!"
"I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things Let me try and
remember just how it began."
He was surprised at first to find how vague the memories of his first
thirty years had become. He remembered fragments, for the most part
trivial moments, things of no great importance that he had observed. His
boyhood seemed the most accessible at first, he recalled school books
and certain lessons in mensuration. Then he revived the more salient
features of his life, memories of the wife long since dead, her magic
influence now gone beyond corruption, of his rivals and friends and
betrayers, of the swift decision of this issue and that, and then of
his, last years of misery, of fluctuating resolves, and at last of his
strenuous studies. In a little while he perceived he had it all again;
dim perhaps, like metal long laid aside, but in no way defective or
injured, capable of re-polishing. And the hue of it was a deepening
misery. Was it worth re-polishing? By a miracle he had been lifted out
of a life that had become intolerable.
He reverted to his present condition. He wrestled with the facts in
vain. It became an inextricable tangle. He saw the sky through the
ventilator pink with dawn. An old persuasion came out of the dark
recesses of his memory. "I must sleep," he said. It appeared as a
delightful relief from this mental distress and from the growing pain
and heaviness of his limbs. He went to the strange little bed, lay down
and was presently asleep.
He was destined to become very familiar indeed with these apartments
before he left them, for he remained imprisoned for three days. During
that time no one, except Howard, entered his prison. The marvel of his
fate 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 this
unaccountable solitude. Howard came regularly with subtly sustaining and
nutritive fluids, and light and pleasant foods, quite strange to Graham.
He always closed the door carefully as he entered. On matters of detail
he was increasingly obliging, but the bearing of Graham on the great
issues that were evidently being contested so closely beyond the
soundproof walls that enclosed him, he would not elucidate. He evaded,
as politely as possible, every question on the position of affairs in
the 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 prevent
him seeing, worked together in his mind. Almost every possible
interpretation of his position he debated--even as it chanced, the right
interpretation. Things that presently happened to him, came to him at
last credible, by virtue of this seclusion. When at length the moment of
his release arrived, it found him prepared.
Howard's bearing went far to deepen Graham's impression of his own
strange importance; the door between its opening and closing seemed to
admit with him a breath of momentous happening. His enquiries became
more definite and searching. Howard retreated through protests and
difficulties. The awakening was unforeseen, he repeated; it happened to
have fallen in with the trend of a social convulsion.
"To explain it I must tell you the history of a gross and a half of
years," protested Howard.
"The thing is this," said Graham. "You are afraid of something I shall
do. In some way I am arbitrator--I might be arbitrator."
"It is not that. But you have--I may tell you this much--the automatic
increase of your property puts great possibilities of interference in
your hands. And in certain other ways you have influence, with your
eighteenth century notions."
"Nineteenth century," corrected Graham.
"With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every
feature 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 your
awakening. No one dreamt you would ever awake. The Council had
surrounded you with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact, we
thought that you were dead--a mere arrest of decay. And--but it is too
complex. 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 not
being crammed night and day with facts and warnings and all the wisdom
of the time to fit me for my responsibilities? Am I any wiser now than
two 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 of
complex 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 who
have put me here. It will be ill. I am alive. Make no doubt of it, I
am alive. Every day my pulse is stronger and my mind clearer and more
vigorous. No more quiescence. I am a man come back to life. And I want
to live--"
"Live!"
Howard's face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in an
easy 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 anxious
that 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 Graham
Company? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sort
of company? Would there be any possibilities of gathering from
the conversation of this additional person some vague inkling of
the struggle that had broken out so vividly at his waking moment? He
meditated again, and the suggestion took colour. He turned on Howard
abruptly.
"What do you mean by company?"
Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. "Human beings," he
said, 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 such
a tedium as this--by feminine society, for instance. We think it no
scandal. We have cleared our minds of formulae. There is in our city a
class, a necessary class, no longer despised--discreet--"
Graham stopped dead.
"It would pass the time," said Howard. "It is a thing I should
perhaps have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much is
happening--"
He indicated the exterior world.
Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman that
his imagination suddenly created dominated his mind with an intense
attraction. 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 great
issue in which I am concerned. I do not want to pass the time, as you
call it. Yes, I know. Desire and indulgence are life in a sense--and
Death! Extinction! In my life before I slept I had worked out
that pitiful question. I will not begin again. There is a city, a
multitude--. And meanwhile I am here like a rabbit in a bag."
His rage surged high. He choked for a moment and began to wave his
clenched 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 keep
me in the dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for no
good purpose. For no good purpose. I warn you, I warn you of the
consequences. Once I come at my power--"
He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He
stopped. 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 was
quick. In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from
the nineteenth century was alone.
For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he
flung them down. "What a fool I have been!" he said, and gave way to
his anger again, stamping about the room and shouting curses. For a long
time he kept himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at his
own folly, at the knaves who had imprisoned him. He did this because
he did not want to look calmly at his position. He clung to his
anger--because he was afraid of Fear.
Presently he found himself reasoning with himself This imprisonment was
unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms--new legal forms--of the
time permitted it. It must, of course, be legal. These people were two
hundred years further on in the march of civilisation than the Victorian
generation. It was not likely they would be less--humane. Yet they
had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as well as
chastity?
His imagination set to work to suggest things that might be done to him.
The attempts of his reason to dispose of these suggestions, though
for the most part logically valid, were quite unavailing. "Why should
anything be done to me?"
"If the worst comes to the worst," he found himself saying at last, "I
can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't they
ask me for it instead of cooping me up?"
He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council's possible
intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's behaviour,
sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mind
circled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither could
he escape into this vast, crowded world? He would be worse off than
a Saxon yeoman suddenly dropped into nineteenth century London. And
besides, 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 so
unaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough and yet curiously
insistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This also
a Council had said:
"It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people."