THREE DAYS
Lincoln awaited Graham in an apartment beneath the flying stages. He
seemed curious to learn all that had happened, pleased to hear of the
extraordinary delight and interest which Graham took in flying. Graham
was in a mood of enthusiasm. "I must learn to fly," he cried. "I must
master that. I pity all poor souls who have died without this
opportunity. The sweet swift air! It is the most wonderful experience in
the world."
"You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences," said
Lincoln. "I do not know what you will care to do now. We have music that
may seem novel."
"For the present," said Graham, "flying holds me. Let me learn more of
that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to
one's learning."
"There is, I believe," said Lincoln. "But for you--! If you would like to
occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut to-morrow."
Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for
a while. "And as for affairs," he asked abruptly. "How are things
going on?"
Lincoln waved affairs aside. "Ostrog will tell you that to-morrow,"
he said. "Everything is settling down. The Revolution accomplishes
itself all over the world. Friction is inevitable here and there, of
course; but your rule is assured. You may rest secure with things in
Ostrog's hands."
"Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call it,
forthwith--before I sleep?" said Graham, pacing. "Then I could be at it
the very first thing to-morrow again...."
"It would be possible," said Lincoln thoughtfully. "Quite possible.
Indeed, it shall be done." He laughed. "I came prepared to suggest
amusements, but you have found one for yourself. I will telephone to the
aeronautical offices from here and we will return to your apartments in
the Wind-Vane Control. By the time you have dined the aeronauts will be
able to come. You don't think that after you have dined you might
prefer--?" He paused.
"Yes," said Graham.
"We had prepared a show of dancers--they have been brought from the
Capri theatre."
"I hate ballets," said Graham, shortly. "Always did. That other--. That's
not what I want to see. We had dancers in the old days. For the matter of
that, they had them in ancient Egypt. But flying--"
"True," said Lincoln. "Though our dancers--"
"They can afford to wait," said Graham; "they can afford to wait. I know.
I'm not a Latin. There's questions I want to ask some expert--about your
machinery. I'm keen. I want no distractions."
"You have the world to choose from," said Lincoln; "whatever you want
is yours."
Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned
through the city streets to Graham's apartments. Far larger crowds had
assembled to witness his return than his departure had gathered, and
the shouts and cheering of these masses of people sometimes drowned
Lincoln's answers to the endless questions Graham's aerial journey had
suggested. At first Graham had acknowledged the cheering and cries of
the crowd by bows and gestures, but Lincoln warned him that such a
recognition would be considered incorrect behaviour. Graham, already a
little wearied by rhythmic civilities, ignored his subjects for the
remainder of his public progress.
Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of
kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched
Graham's commands for models of machines and small machines to illustrate
the various mechanical advances of the last two centuries. The little
group of appliances for telegraphic communication attracted the Master so
strongly that his delightfully prepared dinner, served by a number of
charmingly dexterous girls, waited for a space. The habit of smoking had
almost ceased from the face of the earth, but when he expressed a wish
for that indulgence, enquiries were made and some excellent cigars were
discovered in Florida, and sent to him by pneumatic despatch while the
dinner was still in progress. Afterwards came the aeronauts, and a feast
of ingenious wonders in the hands of a latter-day engineer. For the time,
at any rate, the neat dexterity of counting and numbering machines,
building machines, spinning engines, patent doorways, explosive motors,
grain and water elevators, slaughter-house machines and harvesting
appliances, was more fascinating to Graham than any bayadère. "We were
savages," was his refrain, "we were savages. We were in the stone
age--compared with this.... And what else have you?"
There came also practical psychologists with some very interesting
developments in the art of hypnotism. The names of Milne Bramwell,
Fechner, Liebault, William James, Myers and Gurney, he found, bore a
value now that would have astonished their contemporaries. Several
practical applications of psychology were now in general use; it had
largely superseded drugs, antiseptics and anesthetics in medicine; was
employed by almost all who had any need of mental concentration. A real
enlargement of human faculty seemed to have been effected in this
direction. The feats of "calculating boys," the wonders, as Graham had
been wont to regard them, of mesmerisers, were now within the range of
anyone who could afford the services of a skilled hypnotist. Long ago
the old examination methods in education had been destroyed by these
expedients. Instead of years of study, candidates had substituted a few
weeks of trances, and during the trances expert coaches had simply to
repeat all the points necessary for adequate answering, adding a
suggestion of the post-hypnotic recollection of these points. In process
mathematics particularly, this aid had been of singular service, and it
was now invariably invoked by such players of chess and games of manual
dexterity as were still to be found. In fact, all operations conducted
under finite rules, of a quasi-mechanical sort that is, were now
systematically relieved from the wanderings of imagination and emotion,
and brought to an unexampled pitch of accuracy. Little children of the
labouring classes, so soon as they were of sufficient age to be
hypnotised, were thus converted into beautifully punctual and
trustworthy machine minders, and released forthwith from the long, long
thoughts of youth. Aeronautical pupils, who gave way to giddiness,
could be relieved from their imaginary terrors. In every street were
hypnotists ready to print permanent memories upon the mind. If anyone
desired to remember a name, a series of numbers, a song or a speech, it
could be done by this method, and conversely memories could be effaced,
habits removed, and desires eradicated--a sort of psychic surgery was,
in fact, in general use. Indignities, humbling experiences, were thus
forgotten, widows would obliterate their previous husbands, angry lovers
release themselves from their slavery. To graft desires, however, was
still impossible, and the facts of thought transference were yet
unsystematised. The psychologists illustrated their expositions with
some astounding experiments in mnemonics made through the agency of a
troupe of pale-faced children in blue.
Graham, like most of the people of his former time, distrusted the
hypnotist, or he might then and there have eased his mind of many painful
preoccupations. But in spite of Lincoln's assurances he held to the old
theory that to be hypnotised was in some way the surrender of his
personality, the abdication of his will. At the banquet of wonderful
experiences that was beginning, he wanted very keenly to remain
absolutely himself.
The next day, and another day, and yet another day passed in such
interests as these. Each day Graham spent many hours in the glorious
entertainment of flying. On the third, he soared across middle France,
and within sight of the snow-clad Alps. These vigorous exercises gave him
restful sleep; he recovered almost wholly from the spiritless anemia of
his first awakening. And whenever he was not in the air, and awake,
Lincoln was assiduous in the cause of his amusement; all that was novel
and curious in contemporary invention was brought to him, until at last
his appetite for novelty was well-nigh glutted. One might fill a dozen
inconsecutive volumes with the strange things they exhibited. Each
afternoon he held his court for an hour or so. He found his interest in
his contemporaries becoming personal and intimate. At first he had been
alert chiefly for unfamiliarity and peculiarity; any foppishness in their
dress, any discordance with his preconceptions of nobility in their
status and manners had jarred upon him, and it was remarkable to him how
soon that strangeness and the faint hostility that arose from it,
disappeared; how soon he came to appreciate the true perspective of his
position, and see the old Victorian days remote and quaint. He found
himself particularly amused by the red-haired daughter of the Manager of
the European Piggeries. On the second day after dinner he made the
acquaintance of a latter-day dancing girl, and found her an astonishing
artist. And after that, more hypnotic wonders. On the third day Lincoln
was moved to suggest that the Master should repair to a Pleasure City,
but this Graham declined, nor would he accept the services of the
hypnotists in his aeronautical experiments. The link of locality held him
to London; he found a delight in topographical identifications that he
would have missed abroad. "Here--or a hundred feet below here," he could
say, "I used to eat my midday cutlets during my London University days.
Underneath here was Waterloo and the tiresome hunt for confusing trains.
Often have I stood waiting down there, bag in hand, and stared up into
the sky above the forest of signals, little thinking I should walk some
day a hundred yards in the air. And now in that very sky that was once a
grey smoke canopy, I circle in a monoplane."
During those three days Graham was so occupied with these distractions
that the vast political movements in progress outside his quarters had
but a small share of his attention. Those about him told him little.
Daily came Ostrog, the Boss, his Grand Vizier, his mayor of the palace,
to report in vague terms the steady establishment of his rule; "a little
trouble" soon to be settled in this city, "a slight disturbance" in that.
The song of the social revolt came to him no more; he never learned that
it had been forbidden in the municipal limits; and all the great emotions
of the crow's nest slumbered in his mind.
But on the second and third of the three days he found himself, in spite
of his interest in the daughter of the Pig Manager, or it may be by
reason of the thoughts her conversation suggested, remembering the girl
Helen Wotton, who had spoken to him so oddly at the Wind-Vane Keeper's
gathering. The impression, she had made was a deep one, albeit the
incessant surprise of novel circumstances had kept him from brooding upon
it for a space. But now her memory was coming to its own. He wondered
what she had meant by those broken half-forgotten sentences; the picture
of her eyes and the earnest passion of her face became more vivid as his
mechanical interests faded. Her slender beauty came compellingly between
him and certain immediate temptations of ignoble passion. But he did not
see her again until three full days were past.