Prominent People

: When The Sleeper Wakes

The state apartments of the Wind Vane Keeper would have seemed

astonishingly intricate to Graham had he entered them fresh from his

nineteenth century life, but already he was growing accustomed to the

scale of the new time. They can scarcely be described as halls and

rooms, seeing that a complicated system of arches, bridges, passages and

galleries divided and united every part of the great space. He came

out th
ough one of the now familiar sliding panels upon a. plateau of

landing at the head of a flight of very broad and gentle steps, with

men and women far more brilliantly dressed than any he had hitherto seen

ascending and descending. From this position he looked down a vista of

intricate ornament in lustreless white and mauve and purple, spanned by

bridges that seemed wrought of porcelain and filigree, and terminating

far off in a cloudy mystery of perforated screens.



Glancing upward, he saw tier above tier of ascending galleries

with faces looking down upon him. The air was full of the babble of

innumerable voices and of a music that descended from above, a gay and

exhilarating music whose source he never discovered.



The central aisle was thick with people, but by no means uncomfortably

crowded; altogether that assembly must have numbered many thousands.

They were brilliantly, even fantastically dressed, the men as fancifully

as the women, for the sobering influence of the Puritan conception of

dignity upon masculine dress had long since passed away. The hair of

the men, too, though it was rarely worn long, was commonly curled in

a manner that suggested the barber, and baldness had vanished from

the earth. Frizzy straight-cut masses that would have charmed Rossetti

abounded, and one gentleman, who was pointed out to Graham under the

mysterious title of an "amorist", wore his hair in two becoming plaits a

la Marguerite. The pigtail was in evidence; it would seem that citizens

of Chinese extraction were no longer ashamed of their race. There was

little uniformity of fashion apparent in the forms of clothing worn. The

more shapely men displayed their symmetry in trunk hose, and here were

puffs and slashes, and there a cloak and there a robe. The fashions of

the days of Leo the Tenth were perhaps the prevailing influence, but

the aesthetic conceptions of the far east were also patent. Masculine

embonpoint, which, in Victorian times, would have been subjected to

the tightly buttoned perils, the ruthless exaggeration of tight-legged

tight-armed evening dress, now formed but the basis of a wealth of

dignity and drooping folds. Graceful slenderness abounded' also. To

Graham, a typically stiff man from a typically stiff period, not only

did these men seem altogether too graceful in person, but altogether too

expressive in their vividly expressive faces. They gesticulated, they

expressed surprise, interest, amusement, above all, they expressed

the emotions excited in their minds by the ladies about them with

astonishing frankness. Even at the first glance it was evident that

women were in a great majority.



The ladies in the company of these gentlemen displayed in dress, bearing

and manner alike, less emphasis and more intricacy. Some affected a

classical simplicity of robing and subtlety of fold, after the fashion

of the First French Empire, and flashed conquering arms and shoulders as

Graham passed. Others had closely-fitting dresses without seam or belt

at the waist, sometimes with long folds falling from the shoulders. The

delightful confidences of evening dress had not been diminished by the

passage of two centuries.



Everyone's movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln that

he saw men as Raphael's cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him that

the attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of every

rich person's education. The Master's entry was greeted with a sort of

tittering applause, but these people showed their distinguished manners

by not crowding upon him nor annoying him by any persistent scrutiny, as

he descended the steps towards the floor of the aisle.



He had already learnt from Lincoln that these were the leaders of

existing London society; almost every person there that night was either

a powerful official or the immediate connexion of a powerful official.

Many had returned from the European Pleasure Cities expressly to welcome

him. The aeronautic authorities, whose defection had played a part

in the overthrow of the Council only second to Graham's were very

prominent, and so, too, was the Wind Vane Control. Amongst others there

were several of the more prominent officers of the Food Trust; the

controller of the European Piggeries had a particularly melancholy and

interesting countenance and a daintily cynical manner. A bishop in full

canonicals passed athwart Graham's vision, conversing with a gentleman

dressed exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurel

wreath.



"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 of

the Councillors. But he's one of the Red Rose Royalists--a delightful

club--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 the

general inversion of the new age. He bowed condescendingly to his first

introduction. It was evident that subtle distinctions of class prevailed

even 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 suntanned

face contrasted oddly with the delicate complexions about him. Just

at present his critical defection from the Council made him a very

important person indeed.



His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham's ideas, with

the general bearing. He made a few commonplace remarks, assurances of

loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master's health. His manner was

breezy, his accent lacked the easy staccato of latter-day English. He

made it admirably clear to Graham that he was a bluff "aerial dog"--he

used that phrase--that there was no nonsense about him, that he was

a thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't

profess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worth

knowing He made a manly bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness and

passed.



"I am glad to see that type endures," said Graham



"Phonographs and kinematographs," said Lincoln, a little spitefully. "He

has studied from the life." Graham glanced at the burly form again. It

was oddly reminiscent.



"As a matter of fact we bought him," said Lincoln. "Partly. And partly

he was afraid of Ostrog Everything rested with him."



He turned sharply to introduce the Surveyor-General of the Public School

Trust. This person was a willowy figure in a blue-grey academic gown, he

beamed down upon Graham through pince-nez of a Victorian pattern, and

illustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand.

Graham was immediately interested in this gentleman's functions, and

asked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-General

seemed quietly amused at the Master's fundamental bluntness. He was a

little vague as to the monopoly of education his Company possessed; it

was done by contract with the syndicate that ran the numerous London

Municipalities, but he waxed enthusiastic over educational progress

since the Victorian times. "We have conquered Cram," he said,

"completely conquered Cram--there is not an examination left in the

world. 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 not

attract then--we let it go. We cover an immense field."



He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. The

Surveyor-General mentioned the names of Pestalozzi and Froebel

with profound respect, although he displayed no intimacy with their

epoch-making works. Graham learnt that University Extension still

existed in a modified form. "There is a certain type of girl, for

example," said the Surveyor-General, dilating with a sense of his

usefulness, "with a perfect passion for severe studies--when they are

not too difficult you know. We cater for them by the thousand. At

this moment," he said with a Napoleonic touch, "nearly five hundred

phonographs are lecturing in different parts of London on the influence

exercised by Plato and Swift on the love affairs of Shelley, Hazlitt,

and Burns. And afterwards they write essays on the lectures, and the

names in order of merit are put in conspicuous places. You see how your

little germ has grown? The illiterate middle-class of your days has

quite passed away."



"About the public elementary schools," said Graham. "Do you control

them?"



The Surveyor-General did, "entirely." Now, Graham, in his later

democratic days, had taken a keen interest in these and his questioning

quickened. Certain casual phrases that had fallen from the old man

with whom he had talked in the darkness recurred to him. The

Surveyor-General, in effect, endorsed the old man's words. "We have

abolished Cram," he said, a phrase Graham was beginning to interpret

as the abolition of all sustained work. The Surveyor-General became

sentimental. "We try and make the elementary schools very pleasant for

the little children. They will have to work so soon. Just a few simple

principles--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 get

the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialistic

dreams--anarchy even! Agitators will get to work among them. I take

it--I have always taken it--that my foremost duty is to fight against

popular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?"



"I wonder," said Graham thoughtfully. "But there are a great many things

I want to know."



Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham's face throughout the

conversation, 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 some

of these ladies?"



The daughter of the Manager of the Piggeries of the European Food Trust

was a particularly charming little person with red hair and animated

blue eyes. Lincoln left him awhile to converse with her, and she

displayed herself as quite an enthusiast for the "dear old times,"

as she called them, that had seen the beginning of his trance. As

she talked she smiled, and her eyes smiled in a manner that demanded

reciprocity.



"I have tried," she said, "countless times--to imagine those old

romantic days. And to you they are memories. How strange and crowded the

world must seem to you! I have seen photographs and pictures of the old

times, the little isolated houses built of bricks made out of burnt mud

and all black with soot from your fires, the railway bridges, the simple

advertisements, the solemn savage Puritanical men in strange black

coats and those tall hats of theirs, iron railway trains on iron bridges

overhead, horses and cattle, and even dogs running half wild about the

streets. 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 sighed

encouragingly. "No?"



"No," said Graham. "It was a little life--and unmeaning. But this--.

We thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet I

see--although in this world I am barely four days old--looking back on

my own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time--the mere beginning of

this new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find it

hard 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 dark

about 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 great

public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?"



"That? He's a most important officer. That is Morden. He is managing

director of the Antibilious Pill Company. I have heard that his workers

sometimes 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 a

wonderful time it is! That man in purple?"



"He is not quite one of the inner circle, you know. But we like him. He

is really clever and very amusing. He is one of the heads of the

Medical Faculty of our London University. All medical men, you know, are

shareholders in the Medical Faculty Company, and wear that purple. You

have to be--to be qualified. But of course, people who are paid by fees

for doing something--" She smiled away the social pretensions of all

such people.



"Are any of your great artists or authors here?"



"No authors. They are mostly such queer people--and so preoccupied about

themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some of

them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful isn't it? But I think

Wraysbury, 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 in

his hands." She smiled.



Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was

expressive. "Have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?" he

said. "Who are your great painters?"



She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. "For a moment," she said, "I

thought you meant--" She laughed again. "You mean, of course, those good

men you used to think so much of because they could cover great spaces

of canvas with oil-colours? Great oblongs. And people used to put the

things in gilt frames and hang them up in rows in their square rooms. We

haven'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 above

suspicion, and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. "And

here," and she indicated her eyelid.



Graham had an adventurous moment. Then a grotesque memory of a picture

he had somewhere seen of Uncle Toby and the Widow flashed across his

mind. An archaic shame came upon him. He became acutely aware that he

was visible to a great number of interested people. "I see," he remarked

inadequately. He turned awkwardly away from her, fascinating facility.

He looked about him to meet a number of eyes that immediately occupied

themselves with other things. Possibly he coloured a little. "Who is

that talking with the lady in saffron?" he asked, avoiding her eyes.



The person in question he learnt was one of the great organisers of the

American theatres just fresh from a gigantic production at Mexico. His

face reminded Graham of a bust of Caligula. Another striking looking

man was the Black Labour Master. The phrase at the time made no deep

impression, but afterwards it recurred;--the Black Labour Master? The

little lady, in no degree embarrassed, pointed out to him a charming

little woman as one of the subsidiary wives of the Anglican Bishop of

London. She added encomiums on the episcopal courage--hitherto there had

been a rule of clerical monogamy--"neither a natural nor an expedient

condition of things. Why should the natural development of the

affections be dwarfed and restricted because a man is a priest?"



"And, bye the bye," she added, "are you an Anglican?" Graham was on the

verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a "subsidiary wife,"

apparently an euphemistic phrase, when Lincoln's return broke off this

very suggestive and interesting conversation. They crossed the aisle to

where a tall man in crimson, and two charming persons in Burmese costume

(as it seemed to him) awaited him diffidently. From their civilities he

passed to other presentations.



In a little while his multitudinous impressions began to organise

themselves into a general effect. At first the glitter of the gathering

had raised all the democrat in Graham; he had felt hostile and

satirical. But it is not in human nature to resist an atmosphere of

courteous regard. Soon the music, the light, the play of colours, the

shining arms and shoulders about him, the touch of hands, the transient

interest of smiling faces, the frothing sound of skillfully modulated

voices, the atmosphere of compliment, interest and respect, had woven

together into a fabric of indisputable pleasure. Graham for a time

forgot his spacious resolutions. He gave way insensibly to the

intoxication of me position that was conceded him, his manner became

less conscious, more convincingly regal, his feet walked assuredly, the

black robe fell with a bolder fold and pride ennobled his voice. After

all 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 it

occurred to him that he owed some apology to the charming little person

with the red hair and blue eyes. He felt guilty of a clumsy snub. It

was not princely to ignore her advances, even if his policy necessitated

their rejection. He wondered if he should see her again. And suddenly

a little thing touched all the glamour of this brilliant gathering and

changed its quality.



He looked up and saw passing across a bridge of porcelain and looking

down upon him, a face that was almost immediately hidden, the face of

the girl he had seen overnight in the little room beyond the theatre

after his escape from the Council. And she was looking with much the

same expression of curious expectation, of uncertain intentness, upon

his proceedings. For the moment he did not remember when he had seen

her, and then with recognition came a vague memory of the stirring

emotions of their first encounter. But the dancing web of melody about

him kept the air of that great marching song from his memory.



The lady to whom he was talking repeated her remark, and Graham recalled

himself to the quasiregal flirtation upon which he was engaged.



But from that moment a vague restlessness, a feeling that grew to

dissatisfaction, came into his mind. He was troubled as if by some

half forgotten duty, by the sense of things important slipping from

him amidst this light and brilliance. The attraction that these bright

ladies who crowded about him were beginning to exercise ceased. He no

longer made vague and clumsy responses to the subtly amorous advances

that he was now assured were being made to him, and his eyes wandered

for another sight of that face that had appealed so strongly to his

sense of beauty. But he did not see her again until he was awaiting

Lincoln's return to leave this assembly. In answer to his request

Lincoln had promised that an attempt should be made to fly that

afternoon, if the weather permitted. He had gone to make certain

necessary arrangements.



Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a

bright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite--the subject was his

choice and not hers. He had interrupted her warm assurances of personal

devotion with a matter-of-fact inquiry. He found her, as he had already

found several other latter-day women that night, less well informed

than charming. Suddenly, struggling against the eddying drift of nearer

melody, 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 of

cable, the blue haze, and the pendant fabric of the lights of the public

ways. He heard the song break into a tumult of voices and cease. But now

he perceived quite clearly the drone and tumult of the moving platforms

and a murmur of many people. He had a vague persuasion that he could not

account for, a sort of instinctive feeling that outside in the ways a

huge crowd' must be watching this place in which their Master amused

himself. He wondered what they might be thinking.



Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of

this gathering reasserted itself, the motif of the marching song, once

it had begun, lingered in his mind.



The bright-eyed lady was still struggling with the mysteries of

Eadhamite when he perceived the girl he had seen in the theatre again.

She was coming now along the gallery towards him; he saw her first

before she saw him. She was dressed in a faintly luminous grey, her dark

hair about her brows was like a cloud, and as he saw her the cold light

from the circular opening into the ways fell upon her downcast face.



The lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in his

expression, and grasped her opportunity to escape. "Would you care to

know that girl, Sire?" she asked boldly. "She is Helen Wotton--a niece

of Ostrog's. She knows a great many serious things. She is one of the

most serious persons alive. I am sure you will like her."



In another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyed

lady had fluttered away.



"I remember you quite well," said Graham. "You were in that little

room. 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 face

was steady. "It was wonderful," she said, hesitated, and spoke with

a 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 heard

her words.



Lincoln appeared some way off along the gallery, making his way through

the press towards them. She saw him and turned to Graham strangely

eager, with a swift change to confidence and intimacy. "Sire," she said

quickly, "I cannot tell you now and here. But the common people are very

unhappy; they are oppressed--they are misgoverned. Do not forget the

people, 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 smiling

deference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering by

one comprehensive gesture. "At any rate, you find it changed."



"Yes," said Graham, "changed. And yet, after all, not so greatly

changed."



"Wait till you are in the air," said Lincoln. "The wind has fallen; even

now an aeropile awaits you."



The girl's attitude awaited dismissal.



Graham glanced at her face, was on the verge of a question, found a

warning in her expression, bowed to her and turned to accompany Lincoln.



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