IN THE SILENT ROOMS
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 vanes 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 vanes 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.
"Thi 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 recognised 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 was very tired, with 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 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 the rooms. 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
sound-proof 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 system of
concealment of which you are the face. 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 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."