GRAHAM REMEMBERS
She came upon him at last in a little gallery that ran from the Wind-Vane
Offices toward his state apartments. The gallery was long and narrow,
with a series of recesses, each with an arched fenestration that looked
upon a court of palms. He came upon her suddenly in one of these
recesses. She was seated. She turned her head at the sound of his
footsteps and started at the sight of him. Every touch of colour vanished
from her face. She rose instantly, made a step toward him as if to
address him, and hesitated. He stopped and stood still, expectant. Then
he perceived that a nervous tumult silenced her, perceived, too, that she
must 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," he
said. "A few days ago you wanted to tell me something--you wanted to tell
me 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. I
have meant to, I have wanted to. And now--I cannot. I am not ready with
words. But about you--there is something. It is wonder. Your sleep--your
awakening. These things are miracles. To me at least--and to all the
common people. You who lived and suffered and died, you who were a
common citizen, wake again, live again, to find yourself Master almost
of the earth."
"Master of the earth," he said. "So they tell me. But try and imagine how
little I know of it."
"Cities--Trusts--the Labour Department--"
"Principalities, powers, dominions--the power and the glory. Yes, I have
heard 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 take
the responsibility. The people look to you."
She spoke softly. "Listen! For at least half the years of your sleep--in
every generation--multitudes of people, in every generation greater
multitudes 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 know
that you have been to myriads--King Arthur, Barbarossa--the King who
would 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 lay
insensible and motionless there--thousands came. Thousands. Every first
of the month you lay in state with a white robe upon you and the people
filed by you. When I was a little girl I saw you like that, with your
face white and calm."
She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the painted
wall before her. Her voice fell. "When I was a little girl I used to
look at your face.... It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the
patience of God."
"That is what we thought of you," she said. "That is how you
seemed to us."
She turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. "In the
city, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to see what
you 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. She
seemed at first to have spoken with an effort, and to have fired herself
by speaking.
"Do you think," she said, "that you who have lived that little life so
far away in the past, you who have fallen into and risen out of this
miracle of sleep--do you think that the wonder and reverence and hope of
half the world has gathered about you only that you may live another
little life?... That you may shift the responsibility to any other man?"
"I know how great this kingship of mine is," he said haltingly. "I know
how great it seems. But is it real? It is incredible--dreamlike. Is it
real, 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 illusion
in the minds of men."
"If you dare!" she said.
"But--"
"Countless men," she said, "and while it is in their minds--they
will obey."
"But I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. And
these others--the Councillors, Ostrog. They are wiser, cooler, they know
so much, every detail. And, indeed, what are these miseries of which you
speak? 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 world
seems full of wretchedness. The world has altered since your day, altered
very strangely. I have prayed that I might see you and tell you these
things. The world has changed. As if a canker had seized it--and robbed
life of--everything worth having."
She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. "Your days were the
days of freedom. Yes--I have thought. I have been made to think, for my
life--has not been happy. Men are no longer free--no greater, no better
than the men of your time. That is not all. This city--is a prison. Every
city now is a prison. Mammon grips the key in his hand. Myriads,
countless myriads, toil from the cradle to the grave. Is that right? Is
that 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 you
find about you, is separated by just a little from a life of wretchedness
beyond any telling. Yes, the poor know it--they know they suffer. These
countless multitudes who faced death for you two nights since--! You owe
your 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 cities
was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny--a tyranny. In your days the
feudal war lords had gone, and the new lordship of wealth had still to
come. Half the men in the world still lived out upon the free
countryside. The cities had still to devour them. I have heard the
stories out of the old books--there was nobility! Common men led lives of
love and faithfulness then--they did a thousand things. And you--you come
from 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 know
you do not know. They will keep things from you, they will take you
presently to a Pleasure City. But you have noticed men and women and
children 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 Labour
Department you own."
"The Labour Department! In some way--that is familiar. Ah! now I
remember. I saw it when I was wandering about the city, after the
lights returned, great fronts of buildings coloured pale blue. Do you
really 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. This
Labour 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 remember
now. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew--partly--out of
something--you, perhaps, may remember it--an emotional religious
organisation called the Salvation Army--that became a business company.
In the first place it was almost a charity. To save people from workhouse
rigours. There had been a great agitation against the workhouse. Now I
come to think of it, it was one of the earliest properties your Trustees
acquired. They bought the Salvation Army and reconstructed it as this.
The idea in the first place was to organise the labour of starving
homeless people."
"Yes."
"Nowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing but
that Department. Its offices are everywhere. That blue is its colour. And
any man, woman or child who comes to be hungry and weary and with neither
home nor friend nor resort, must go to the Department in the end--or seek
some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means--for the poor
there is no easy death. And at any hour in the day or night there is
food, shelter and a blue uniform for all comers--that is the first
condition of the Department's incorporation--and in return for a day's
shelter the Department extracts a day's work, and then returns the
visitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again."
"Yes?"
"Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your time men starved
in your streets. That was bad. But they died--_men_. These people in
blue--. The proverb runs: 'Blue canvas once and ever.' The Department
trades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of the
supply. People come to it starving and helpless--they eat and sleep for a
night and day, they work for a day, and at the end of the day they go
out again. If they have worked well they have a penny or so--enough for a
theatre or a cheap dancing place, or a kinematograph story, or a dinner
or a bet. They wander about after that is spent. Begging is prevented by
the police of the ways. Besides, no one gives. They come back again the
next day or the day after--brought back by the same incapacity that
brought them first. At last their proper clothing wears out, or their
rags get so shabby that they are ashamed. Then they must work for months
to get fresh. If they want fresh. A great number of children are born
under the Department's care. The mother owes them a month thereafter--the
children they cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they pay
two years' service. You may be sure these children are educated for the
blue 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 abolished
destitution. 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 a
man or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking
system in the Department's offices all over the world. Besides, who can
leave the city poor? To go to Paris costs two Lions. And for
insubordination there are the prisons--dark and miserable--out of sight
below. 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 their
shameful lives, their privations and hardships. Too poor even for the
Euthanasy, the rich man's refuge from life. Dumb, crippled millions,
countless millions, all the world about, ignorant of anything but
limitations and unsatisfied desires. They are born, they are thwarted and
they 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 be
changed. Ostrog--"
"That is our hope. That is the hope of the world. But Ostrog will not do
it. He is a politician. To him it seems things must be like this. He
does not mind. He takes it for granted. All the rich, all the
influential, all who are happy, come at last to take these miseries for
granted. They use the people in their politics, they live in ease by
their degradation. But you--you who come from a happier age--it is to
you the people look. To you."
He looked at her face. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. He felt
a rush of emotion. For a moment he forgot this city, he forgot the
race, and all those vague remote voices, in the immediate humanity of
her 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 of
men. For you might rule it--you could rule it.
"The people are stirring. All over the world the people are stirring. It
wants but a word--but a word from you--to bring them all together. Even
the middle sort of people are restless--unhappy.
"They are not telling you the things that are happening. The people will
not go back to their drudgery--they refuse to be disarmed. Ostrog has
awakened something greater than he dreamt of--he has awakened hopes."
His heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weigh
considerations.
"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, and
the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams? Could one
man--_one man_--?" His voice sank and ceased.
"Not one man, but all men--give them only a leader to speak the desire of
their 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," he
said, "I have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me. No--let
me speak. I want to do--not right--I have not the strength for that--but
something rather right than wrong. It will bring no millennium, but I am
resolved now, that I will rule. What you have said has awakened me... You
are right. Ostrog must know his place. And I will learn--.... One thing I
promise 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 I
will help you?" she said.
There came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking the
hour. 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 you
have 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 turned
from her towards the Wind-Vane office.