PROMINENT PEOPLE
The state apartments of the Wind Vane Keeper would have astonished Graham
had he entered them fresh from his nineteenth century life, but already
he was growing accustomed to the scale of the new time. He came out
through 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
subtle and varied 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 did not discover.
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 _à
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
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 Department; 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 sun-tanned
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 offered 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 curt 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
Schools. 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. 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 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 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 days," 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 past, 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 Department. 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, wear that
purple. 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 skilfully 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 the position
that was conceded him, his manner became 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.
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 watching him.
For the moment he did not remember when he had seen her, and then 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 talked repeated her remark, and Graham recalled
himself to the quasi-regal flirtation upon which he was engaged.
Yet, unaccountably, 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 ladies who crowded
about him were beginning to exercise ceased. He no longer gave 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 the
girl of the first revolt.
Where, precisely, had he seen her?...
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.
Ah! Now he remembered!
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. 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.
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 amusing, 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 aeroplane 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.