by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER VII
IN THE SILENT ROOMS
Presently Graham resumed his examination of his apartments. Curiositykept him moving in spite of his fatigue. The inner room, he perceived,was high, and its ceiling dome shaped, with an oblong aperture in thecentre, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad vanes seemed tobe rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint hummingnote of its easy motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. Asthese vanes sprang up one after the other, Graham could get transientglimpses of the sky. He was surprised to see a star.
This drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of theserooms was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about thecornices. There were no windows. And he began to recall that along allthe vast chambers and passages he had traversed with Howard he hadobserved no windows at all. Had there been windows? There were windows onthe street indeed, but were they for light? Or was the whole city lit dayand 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 wasthe whole city uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested in thesequestions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, the simplyconstructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour ofbedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was acurious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and colour,that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were several verycomfortable chairs, a light table on silent runners carrying severalbottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substancelike jelly. Then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, nowriting materials. "The world has changed indeed," he said.
He observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows ofpeculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white thatharmonized with the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre ofthis side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having awhite smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitoryidea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute forbooks, but at first it did not seem so.
The lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. At first sight it seemed likeRussian. Then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English about certainof 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 thattitle, then he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in theworld. But this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. Hepuzzled 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 ifthey 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 asort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on theupper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressedthis and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voices andmusic, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. He suddenlyrealised what this might be, and stepped back to regard it.
On the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, andin this picture were figures that moved. Not only did they move, but theywere conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like reality viewedthrough an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube. Hisinterest was seized at once by the situation, which presented a manpacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty but petulantwoman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed so strange toGraham. "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 Sleeperwakes," used jestingly as a proverb for remote postponement, and passedhimself by, a thing remote and incredible. But in a little while he knewthose two people like intimate friends.
At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of theapparatus 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 direeconomic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidentsthat conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes ofdubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in hisfirst impression of the city ways appeared again and again as the costumeof the common people. He had no doubt the story was contemporary, and itsintense realism was undeniable. And the end had been a tragedy thatoppressed him. He sat staring at the blankness.
He started and rubbed his eyes. He had been so absorbed in the latter-daysubstitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little green and white roomwith more than a touch of the surprise of his first awakening.
He stood up, and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland. Theclearness of the kinetoscope drama passed, and the struggle in the vastplace of streets, the ambiguous Council, the swift phases of his wakinghour, came back. These people had spoken of the Council with suggestionsof a vague universality of power. And they had spoken of the Sleeper; ithad not really struck him vividly at the time that he was the Sleeper. Hehad to recall precisely what they had said....
He walked into the bedroom and peered up through the quick intervals ofthe revolving fan. As the fan swept round, a dim turmoil like the noiseof machinery came in rhythmic eddies. All else was silence. Though theperpetual day still irradiated his apartments, he perceived the littleintermittent strip of sky was now deep blue--black almost, with a dust oflittle stars....
He resumed his examination of the rooms. He could find no way of openingthe padded door, no bell nor other means of calling for attendance. Hisfeeling of wonder was in abeyance; but he was curious, anxious forinformation. He wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things.He tried to compose himself to wait until someone came to him. Presentlyhe became restless and eager for information, for distraction, for freshsensations.
He went back to the apparatus in the other room, and had soon puzzled outthe method of replacing the cylinders by others. As he did so, it cameinto his mind that it must be these little appliances had fixed thelanguage so that it was still clear and understandable after two hundredyears. The haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musicalfantasia. At first it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. Hepresently recognised what appeared to him to be an altered version of thestory of Tannhauser. The music was unfamiliar. But the rendering wasrealistic, and with a contemporary unfamiliarity. Tannhauser did not goto a Venusberg, but to a Pleasure City. What was a Pleasure City? Adream, surely, the fancy of a fantastic, voluptuous writer.
He became interested, curious. The story developed with a flavour ofstrangely twisted sentimentality. Suddenly he did not like it. He likedit 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-secondcentury Venusberg. He forgot the part played by the model in nineteenthcentury art, and gave way to an archaic indignation. He rose, angry andhalf ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. Hepulled forward the apparatus, and with some violence sought for a meansof stopping its action. Something snapped. A violet spark stung andconvulsed his arm and the thing was still. When he attempted next day toreplace these Tannhauser cylinders by another pair, he found theapparatus broken....
He struck out a path oblique to the room and paced to and fro, strugglingwith intolerable vast impressions. The things he had derived from thecylinders and the things he had seen, conflicted, confused him. It seemedto him the most amazing thing of all that in his thirty years of life hehad never tried to shape a picture of these coming times. "We were makingthe future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to think what futurewe were making. And here it is!"
; "What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midstof it all?" The vastness of street and house he was prepared for, themultitudes of people. But conflicts in the city ways! And thesystematised sensuality of a class of rich men!
He thought of Bellamy, the hero of whose Socialistic Utopia had so oddlyanticipated this actual experience. But here was no Utopia, noSocialistic state. He had already seen enough to realise that the ancientantithesis of luxury, waste and sensuality on the one hand and abjectpoverty on the other, still prevailed. He knew enough of the essentialfactors of life to understand that correlation. And not only were thebuildings of the city gigantic and the crowds in the street gigantic, butthe voices he had heard in the ways, the uneasiness of Howard, the veryatmosphere spoke of gigantic discontent. What country was he in? StillEngland it seemed, and yet strangely "un-English." His mind glanced atthe rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.
He prowled about his apartment, examining everything as a caged animalmight do. He was very tired, with that feverish exhaustion that does notadmit of rest. He listened for long spaces under the ventilator to catchsome 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 tohimself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundredand thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven'treversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of theoldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember theBulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. 'Tis a great age! Haha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughedagain deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was behavingfoolishly. "Steady," he said. "Steady!"
His pacing became more regular. "This new world," he said. "I don'tunderstand it. _Why_? ... But it is all _why_!"
"I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things. Let me try andremember just how it began."
He was surprised at first to find how vague the memories of his firstthirty years had become. He remembered fragments, for the most parttrivial moments, things of no great importance that he had observed. Hisboyhood seemed the most accessible at first, he recalled school books andcertain lessons in mensuration. Then he revived the more salient featuresof his life, memories of the wife long since dead, her magic influencenow gone beyond corruption, of his rivals and friends and betrayers, ofthe decision of this issue and that, and then of his last years ofmisery, of fluctuating resolves, and at last of his strenuous studies. Ina little while he perceived he had it all again; dim perhaps, like metallong laid aside, but in no way defective or injured, capable ofre-polishing. And the hue of it was a deepening misery. Was it worthre-polishing? By a miracle he had been lifted out of a life that hadbecome 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 ventilatorpink with dawn. An old persuasion came out of the dark recesses of hismemory. "I must sleep," he said. It appeared as a delightful relief fromthis mental distress and from the growing pain and heaviness of hislimbs. He went to the strange little bed, lay down and was presentlyasleep....
He was destined to become very familiar indeed with these apartmentsbefore he left them, for he remained imprisoned for three days. Duringthat time no one, except Howard, entered the rooms. The marvel of hisfate 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 thisunaccountable solitude. Howard came regularly with subtly sustaining andnutritive fluids, and light and pleasant foods, quite strange to Graham.He always closed the door carefully as he entered. On matters of detailhe was increasingly obliging, but the bearing of Graham on the greatissues that were evidently being contested so closely beyond thesound-proof walls that enclosed him, he would not elucidate. He evaded,as politely as possible, every question on the position of affairs in theouter 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 himseeing, worked together in his mind. Almost every possible interpretationof his position he debated--even as it chanced, the right interpretation.Things that presently happened to him, came to him at last credible, byvirtue of this seclusion. When at length the moment of his releasearrived, it found him prepared....
Howard's bearing went far to deepen Graham's impression of his ownstrange importance; the door between its opening and closing seemed toadmit with him a breath of momentous happening. His enquiries becamemore definite and searching. Howard retreated through protests anddifficulties. The awakening was unforeseen, he repeated; it happenedto have fallen in with the trend of a social convulsion. "To explainit 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 shalldo. In some way I am arbitrator--I might be arbitrator."
"It is not that. But you have--I may tell you this much--the automaticincrease of your property puts great possibilities of interference inyour hands. And in certain other ways you have influence, with youreighteenth century notions."
"Nineteenth century," corrected Graham.
"With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of everyfeature 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 yourawakening. No one dreamt you would ever awake. The Council had surroundedyou with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact, we thought that youwere dead--a mere arrest of decay. And--but it is too complex. We darenot suddenly---while you are still half awake."
"It won't do," said Graham. "Suppose it is as you say--why am I not beingcrammed night and day with facts and warnings and all the wisdom of thetime to fit me for my responsibilities? Am I any wiser now than two daysago, 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 ofconcealment of which you are the face. Is this Council, or committee, orwhatever 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 whohave put me here. It will be ill. I am alive. Make no doubt of it, I amalive. Every day my pulse is stronger and my mind clearer and morevigorous. No more quiescence. I am a man come back to life. And I wantto _live_--"
"_Live_!"
Howard's face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in aneasy 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 anxiousthat 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 theconversation of this additional person some vague inkling of the strugglethat 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," hesaid, with a curious smile on his heavy face. "Our social ideas," hesaid, "have a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in comparison withyour times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this--by femininesociety, for instance. We think i
t no scandal. We have cleared our mindsof formulae. There is in our city a class, a necessary class, no longerdespised--discreet--"
Graham stopped dead.
"It would pass the time," said Howard. "It is a thing I should perhapshave 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 dominatedhis 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 amconcerned. 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 mylife before I slept I had worked out that pitiful question. I will notbegin again. There is a city, a multitude--. And meanwhile I am here likea rabbit in a bag."
His rage surged high. He choked for a moment and began to wave hisclenched fists. He gave way to an anger fit, he swore archaic curses. Hisgestures had the quality of physical threats.
"I do not know who your party may be. I am in the dark, and you keep mein the dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for no goodpurpose. 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. Hestopped. 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. Itmust 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 thenineteenth century was alone.
For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then heflung them down. "What a fool I have been!" he said, and gave way to hisanger again, stamping about the room and shouting curses.... For a longtime he kept himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at hisown folly, at the knaves who had imprisoned him. He did this because hedid not want to look calmly at his position. He clung to hisanger--because he was afraid of fear.
Presently he found himself reasoning with himself. This imprisonmentwas unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms--new legal forms--ofthe time permitted it. It must, of course, be legal. These people weretwo hundred years further on in the march of civilisation than theVictorian generation. It was not likely they would be less--humane. Yetthey had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula aswell 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 forthe most part logically valid, were quite unavailing. "Why shouldanything be done to me?"
"If the worst comes to the worst," he found himself saying at last, "Ican give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't they askme for it instead of cooping me up?"
He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council's possibleintentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's behaviour,sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mindcircled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither could heescape into this vast, crowded world? He would be worse off than a Saxonyeoman suddenly dropped into nineteenth century London. And besides, howcould 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 sounaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough, and yet curiouslyinsistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This alsoa Council had said:
"It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people."