Read The Sleeper Awakes Page 21


  CHAPTER XVIII

  GRAHAM REMEMBERS

  She came upon him at last in a little gallery that ran from the Wind-VaneOffices toward his state apartments. The gallery was long and narrow,with a series of recesses, each with an arched fenestration that lookedupon a court of palms. He came upon her suddenly in one of theserecesses. She was seated. She turned her head at the sound of hisfootsteps and started at the sight of him. Every touch of colour vanishedfrom her face. She rose instantly, made a step toward him as if toaddress him, and hesitated. He stopped and stood still, expectant. Thenhe perceived that a nervous tumult silenced her, perceived, too, that shemust have sought speech with him to be waiting for him in this place.

  He felt a regal impulse to assist her. "I have wanted to see you," hesaid. "A few days ago you wanted to tell me something--you wanted to tellme of the people. What was it you had to tell me?"

  She looked at him with troubled eyes.

  "You said the people were unhappy?"

  For a moment she was silent still.

  "It must have seemed strange to you," she said abruptly.

  "It did. And yet--"

  "It was an impulse."

  "Well?"

  "That is all."

  She looked at him with a face of hesitation. She spoke with an effort."You forget," she said, drawing a deep breath.

  "What?"

  "The people--"

  "Do you mean--?"

  "You forget the people."

  He looked interrogative.

  "Yes. I know you are surprised. For you do not understand what you are.You do not know the things that are happening."

  "Well?"

  "You do not understand."

  "Not clearly, perhaps. But--tell me."

  She turned to him with sudden resolution. "It is so hard to explain. Ihave meant to, I have wanted to. And now--I cannot. I am not ready withwords. But about you--there is something. It is wonder. Your sleep--yourawakening. These things are miracles. To me at least--and to all thecommon people. You who lived and suffered and died, you who were acommon citizen, wake again, live again, to find yourself Master almostof the earth."

  "Master of the earth," he said. "So they tell me. But try and imagine howlittle I know of it."

  "Cities--Trusts--the Labour Department--"

  "Principalities, powers, dominions--the power and the glory. Yes, I haveheard them shout. I know. I am Master. King, if you wish. With Ostrog,the Boss--"

  He paused.

  She turned upon him and surveyed his face with a curious scrutiny."Well?"

  He smiled. "To take the responsibility."

  "That is what we have begun to fear." For a moment she said no more."No," she said slowly. "_You_ will take the responsibility. You will takethe responsibility. The people look to you."

  She spoke softly. "Listen! For at least half the years of your sleep--inevery generation--multitudes of people, in every generation greatermultitudes of people, have prayed that you might awake--_prayed_."

  Graham moved to speak and did not.

  She hesitated, and a faint colour crept back to her cheek. "Do you knowthat you have been to myriads--King Arthur, Barbarossa--the King whowould come in his own good time and put the world right for them?"

  "I suppose the imagination of the people--"

  "Have you not heard our proverb, 'When the Sleeper wakes'? While you layinsensible and motionless there--thousands came. Thousands. Every firstof the month you lay in state with a white robe upon you and the peoplefiled by you. When I was a little girl I saw you like that, with yourface white and calm."

  She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the paintedwall before her. Her voice fell. "When I was a little girl I used tolook at your face.... It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like thepatience of God."

  "That is what we thought of you," she said. "That is how youseemed to us."

  She turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. "In thecity, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to see whatyou will do, full of strange incredible expectations."

  "Yes?"

  "Ostrog--no one--can take that responsibility."

  Graham looked at her in surprise, at her face lit with emotion. Sheseemed at first to have spoken with an effort, and to have fired herselfby speaking.

  "Do you think," she said, "that you who have lived that little life sofar away in the past, you who have fallen into and risen out of thismiracle of sleep--do you think that the wonder and reverence and hope ofhalf the world has gathered about you only that you may live anotherlittle life?... That you may shift the responsibility to any other man?"

  "I know how great this kingship of mine is," he said haltingly. "I knowhow great it seems. But is it real? It is incredible--dreamlike. Is itreal, or is it only a great delusion?"

  "It is real," she said; "if you dare."

  "After all, like all kingship, my kingship is Belief. It is an illusionin the minds of men."

  "If you dare!" she said.

  "But--"

  "Countless men," she said, "and while it is in their minds--theywill obey."

  "But I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. Andthese others--the Councillors, Ostrog. They are wiser, cooler, they knowso much, every detail. And, indeed, what are these miseries of which youspeak? What am I to know? Do you mean--"

  He stopped blankly.

  "I am still hardly more than a girl," she said. "But to me the worldseems full of wretchedness. The world has altered since your day, alteredvery strangely. I have prayed that I might see you and tell you thesethings. The world has changed. As if a canker had seized it--and robbedlife of--everything worth having."

  She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. "Your days were thedays of freedom. Yes--I have thought. I have been made to think, for mylife--has not been happy. Men are no longer free--no greater, no betterthan the men of your time. That is not all. This city--is a prison. Everycity now is a prison. Mammon grips the key in his hand. Myriads,countless myriads, toil from the cradle to the grave. Is that right? Isthat to be--for ever? Yes, far worse than in your time. All about us,beneath us, sorrow and pain. All the shallow delight of such life as youfind about you, is separated by just a little from a life of wretchednessbeyond any telling. Yes, the poor know it--they know they suffer. Thesecountless multitudes who faced death for you two nights since--! You oweyour life to them."

  "Yes," said Graham, slowly. "Yes. I owe my life to them."

  "You come," she said, "from the days when this new tyranny of the citieswas scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny--a tyranny. In your days thefeudal war lords had gone, and the new lordship of wealth had still tocome. Half the men in the world still lived out upon the freecountryside. The cities had still to devour them. I have heard thestories out of the old books--there was nobility! Common men led lives oflove and faithfulness then--they did a thousand things. And you--you comefrom that time."

  "It was not--. But never mind. How is it now--?"

  "Gain and the Pleasure Cities! Or slavery--unthanked, unhonoured,slavery."

  "Slavery!" he said.

  "Slavery."

  "You don't mean to say that human beings are chattels."

  "Worse. That is what I want you to know, what I want you to see. I knowyou do not know. They will keep things from you, they will take youpresently to a Pleasure City. But you have noticed men and women andchildren in pale blue canvas, with thin yellow faces and dull eyes?"

  "Everywhere."

  "Speaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak."

  "I have heard it."

  "They are the slaves--your slaves. They are the slaves of the LabourDepartment you own."

  "The Labour Department! In some way--that is familiar. Ah! now Iremember. I saw it when I was wandering about the city, after thelights returned, great fronts of buildings coloured pale blue. Do youreally mean--?"

  "Yes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck you.Nearly a
third of our people wear it--more assume it now every day. ThisLabour Department has grown imperceptibly."

  "What _is_ this Labour Department?" asked Graham.

  "In the old times, how did you manage with starving people?"

  "There was the workhouse--which the parishes maintained."

  "Workhouse! Yes--there was something. In our history lessons. I remembernow. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew--partly--out ofsomething--you, perhaps, may remember it--an emotional religiousorganisation called the Salvation Army--that became a business company.In the first place it was almost a charity. To save people from workhouserigours. There had been a great agitation against the workhouse. Now Icome to think of it, it was one of the earliest properties your Trusteesacquired. They bought the Salvation Army and reconstructed it as this.The idea in the first place was to organise the labour of starvinghomeless people."

  "Yes."

  "Nowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing butthat Department. Its offices are everywhere. That blue is its colour. Andany man, woman or child who comes to be hungry and weary and with neitherhome nor friend nor resort, must go to the Department in the end--or seeksome way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means--for the poorthere is no easy death. And at any hour in the day or night there isfood, shelter and a blue uniform for all comers--that is the firstcondition of the Department's incorporation--and in return for a day'sshelter the Department extracts a day's work, and then returns thevisitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again."

  "Yes?"

  "Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your time men starvedin your streets. That was bad. But they died--_men_. These people inblue--. The proverb runs: 'Blue canvas once and ever.' The Departmenttrades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of thesupply. People come to it starving and helpless--they eat and sleep for anight and day, they work for a day, and at the end of the day they goout again. If they have worked well they have a penny or so--enough for atheatre or a cheap dancing place, or a kinematograph story, or a dinneror a bet. They wander about after that is spent. Begging is prevented bythe police of the ways. Besides, no one gives. They come back again thenext day or the day after--brought back by the same incapacity thatbrought them first. At last their proper clothing wears out, or theirrags get so shabby that they are ashamed. Then they must work for monthsto get fresh. If they want fresh. A great number of children are bornunder the Department's care. The mother owes them a month thereafter--thechildren they cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they paytwo years' service. You may be sure these children are educated for theblue canvas. And so it is the Department works."

  "And none are destitute in the city?"

  "None. They are either in blue canvas or in prison. We have abolisheddestitution. It is engraved upon the Department's checks."

  "If they will not work?"

  "Most people will work at that pitch, and the Department has powers.There are stages of unpleasantness in the work--stoppage of food--and aman or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-markingsystem in the Department's offices all over the world. Besides, who canleave the city poor? To go to Paris costs two Lions. And forinsubordination there are the prisons--dark and miserable--out of sightbelow. There are prisons now for many things."

  "And a third of the people wear this blue canvas?"

  "More than a third. Toilers, living without pride or delight or hope,with the stories of Pleasure Cities ringing in their ears, mocking theirshameful lives, their privations and hardships. Too poor even for theEuthanasy, the rich man's refuge from life. Dumb, crippled millions,countless millions, all the world about, ignorant of anything butlimitations and unsatisfied desires. They are born, they are thwarted andthey die. That is the state to which we have come."

  For a space Graham sat downcast.

  "But there has been a revolution," he said. "All these things will bechanged. Ostrog--"

  "That is our hope. That is the hope of the world. But Ostrog will not doit. He is a politician. To him it seems things must be like this. Hedoes not mind. He takes it for granted. All the rich, all theinfluential, all who are happy, come at last to take these miseries forgranted. They use the people in their politics, they live in ease bytheir degradation. But you--you who come from a happier age--it is toyou the people look. To you."

  He looked at her face. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. He felta rush of emotion. For a moment he forgot this city, he forgot therace, and all those vague remote voices, in the immediate humanity ofher beauty.

  "But what am I to do?" he said with his eyes upon her.

  "Rule," she answered, bending towards him and speaking in a low tone."Rule the world as it has never been ruled, for the good and happiness ofmen. For you might rule it--you could rule it.

  "The people are stirring. All over the world the people are stirring. Itwants but a word--but a word from you--to bring them all together. Eventhe middle sort of people are restless--unhappy.

  "They are not telling you the things that are happening. The people willnot go back to their drudgery--they refuse to be disarmed. Ostrog hasawakened something greater than he dreamt of--he has awakened hopes."

  His heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weighconsiderations.

  "They only want their leader," she said.

  "And then?"

  "You could do what you would;--the world is yours."

  He sat, no longer regarding her. Presently he spoke. "The old dreams, andthe thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams? Could oneman--_one man_--?" His voice sank and ceased.

  "Not one man, but all men--give them only a leader to speak the desire oftheir hearts."

  He shook his head, and for a time there was silence.

  He looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. "I have not your faith," hesaid, "I have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me. No--letme speak. I want to do--not right--I have not the strength for that--butsomething rather right than wrong. It will bring no millennium, but I amresolved now, that I will rule. What you have said has awakened me... Youare right. Ostrog must know his place. And I will learn--.... One thing Ipromise you. This Labour slavery shall end."

  "And you will rule?"

  "Yes. Provided--. There is one thing."

  "Yes?"

  "That you will help me."

  "_I_--a girl!"

  "Yes. Does it not occur to you I am absolutely alone?"

  She started and for an instant her eyes had pity. "Need you ask whether Iwill help you?" she said.

  There came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking thehour. Graham rose.

  "Even now," he said, "Ostrog will be waiting." He hesitated, facing her."When I have asked him certain questions--. There is much I do not know.It may be, that I will go to see with my own eyes the things of which youhave spoken. And when I return--?"

  "I shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here again."

  They regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turnedfrom her towards the Wind-Vane office.