by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER XX
IN THE CITY WAYS
And that night, unknown and unsuspected, Graham, dressed in the costumeof an inferior wind-vane official keeping holiday, and accompanied byAsano in Labour Department canvas, surveyed the city through which he hadwandered when it was veiled in darkness. But now he saw it lit andwaking, a whirlpool of life. In spite of the surging and swaying of theforces of revolution, in spite of the unusual discontent, the mutteringsof the greater struggle of which the first revolt was but the prelude,the myriad streams of commerce still flowed wide and strong. He knew nowsomething of the dimensions and quality of the new age, but he was notprepared for the infinite surprise of the detailed view, for the torrentof colour and vivid impressions that poured past him.
This was his first real contact with the people of these latter days. Herealised that all that had gone before, saving his glimpses of the publictheatres and markets, had had its element of seclusion, had been amovement within the comparatively narrow political quarter, that all hisprevious experiences had revolved immediately about the question of hisown position. But here was the city at the busiest hours of night, thepeople to a large extent returned to their own immediate interests, theresumption of the real informal life, the common habits of the new time.
They emerged at first into a street whose opposite ways were crowdedwith the blue canvas liveries. This swarm Graham saw was a portion of aprocession--it was odd to see a procession parading the city _seated_.They carried banners of coarse black stuff with red letters. "Nodisarmament," said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubedletters and with variant spelling, and "Why should we disarm?" "Nodisarming." "No disarming." Banner after banner went by, a stream ofbanners flowing past, and at last at the end, the song of the revolt anda noisy band of strange instruments. "They all ought to be at work," saidAsano. "They have had no food these two days, or they have stolen it."
Presently Asano made a detour to avoid the congested crowd that gapedupon the occasional passage of dead bodies from hospital to a mortuary,the gleanings after death's harvest of the first revolt.
That night few people were sleeping, everyone was abroad. A vastexcitement, perpetual crowds perpetually changing, surrounded Graham; hismind was confused and darkened by an incessant tumult, by the cries andenigmatical fragments of the social struggle that was as yet onlybeginning. Everywhere festoons and banners of black and strangedecorations, intensified the quality of his popularity. Everywhere hecaught snatches of that crude thick dialect that served the illiterateclass, the class, that is, beyond the reach of phonograph culture, intheir commonplace intercourse. Everywhere this trouble of disarmament wasin the air, with a quality of immediate stress of which he had no inklingduring his seclusion in the Wind-Vane quarter. He perceived that as soonas he returned he must discuss this with Ostrog, this and the greaterissues of which it was the expression, in a far more conclusive way thanhe had so far done. Perpetually that night, even in the earlier hours oftheir wanderings about the city, the spirit of unrest and revolt swampedhis attention, to the exclusion of countless strange things he mightotherwise have observed.
This preoccupation made his impressions fragmentary. Yet amidst so muchthat was strange and vivid, no subject, however personal and insistent,could exert undivided sway. There were spaces when the revolutionarymovement passed clean out of his mind, was drawn aside like a curtainfrom before some startling new aspect of the time. Helen had swayed hismind to this intense earnestness of enquiry, but there came times whenshe, even, receded beyond his conscious thoughts. At one moment, forexample, he found they were traversing the religious quarter, for theeasy transit about the city afforded by the moving ways rendered sporadicchurches and chapels no longer necessary--and his attention was vividlyarrested by the facade of one of the Christian sects.
They were travelling seated on one of the swift upper ways, the placeleapt upon them at a bend and advanced rapidly towards them. It wascovered with inscriptions from top to base, in vivid white and blue, savewhere a vast and glaring kinematograph transparency presented a realisticNew Testament scene, and where a vast festoon of black to show that thepopular religion followed the popular politics, hung across thelettering. Graham had already become familiar with the phonotype writingand these inscriptions arrested him, being to his sense for the most partalmost incredible blasphemy. Among the less offensive were "Salvation onthe First Floor and turn to the Right." "Put your Money on your Maker.""The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! Look Slippy!" "WhatChrist would say to the Sleeper;--Join the Up-to-date Saints!" "Be aChristian--without hindrance to your present Occupation." "All theBrightest Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual." "BriskBlessings for Busy Business Men."
"But this is appalling!" said Graham, as that deafening scream ofmercantile piety towered above them.
"What is appalling?" asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainlyfor anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.
"_This_! Surely the essence of religion is reverence."
"Oh _that_!" Asano looked at Graham. "Does it shock you?" he said in thetone of one who makes a discovery. "I suppose it would, of course. I hadforgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and peoplesimply haven't the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as theyused to do." He smiled. "In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and thecountryside. Though somewhere I've read of Sunday afternoons that--"
"But _that_," said Graham, glancing back at the receding blue and white."That is surely not the only--"
"There are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect doesn't_tell_ it doesn't pay. Worship has moved with the times. There are highclass sects with quieter ways--costly incense and personal attentionsand all that. These people are extremely popular and prosperous. Theypay several dozen lions for those apartments to the Council--to you, Ishould say."
Graham still felt a difficulty with the coinage, and this mention of adozen lions brought him abruptly to that matter. In a moment thescreaming temples and their swarming touts were forgotten in this newinterest. A turn of a phrase suggested, and an answer confirmed the ideathat gold and silver were both demonetised, that stamped gold which hadbegun its reign amidst the merchants of Phoenicia was at last dethroned.The change had been graduated but swift, brought about by an extension ofthe system of cheques that had even in his previous life alreadypractically superseded gold in all the larger business transactions. Thecommon traffic of the city, the common currency indeed of all the world,was conducted by means of the little brown, green and pink councilcheques for small amounts, printed with a blank payee. Asano had severalwith him, and at the first opportunity he supplied the gaps in his set.They were printed not on tearable paper, but on a semi-transparent fabricof silken flexibility, interwoven with silk. Across them all sprawled afacsimile of Graham's signature, his first encounter with the curves andturns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and three years.
Some intermediary experiences made no impression sufficiently vivid toprevent the matter of the disarmament claiming his thoughts again; ablurred picture of a Theosophist temple that promised MIRACLES inenormous letters of unsteady fire was least submerged perhaps, but thencame the view of the dining hall in Northumberland Avenue. Thatinterested him very greatly.
By the energy and thought of Asano he was able to view this place from alittle screened gallery reserved for the attendants of the tables. Thebuilding was pervaded by a distant muffled hooting, piping and bawling,of which he did not at first understand the import, but which recalled acertain mysterious leathery voice he had heard after the resumption ofthe lights on the night of his solitary wandering.
He had grown accustomed to vastness and great numbers of people,nevertheless this spectacle held him for a long time. It was as hewatched the table service more immediately beneath, and interspersedwith many questions and answers concerning details, that therealisation of the full significance of the feast of several thousandpeople came to him.
He perceived at once how necessarily this state of affairs had developedfrom the Victorian city. The fundamental reason for the modern city hadever been the economy of co-operation. The chief thing to prevent themerging of the separate households in his own generation was simply thestill imperfect civilisation of the people, the strong barbaric pride,passions, and prejudices, the jealousies, rivalries, and violence of themiddle and lower classes, which had necessitated the entire separation ofcontiguous households. But the change, the taming of the people, had beenin rapid progress even then. In his brief thirty years of previous lifehe had seen an enormous extension of the habit of consuming meals fromhome, the casually patronised horse-box coffee-house had given place tothe open and crowded Aerated Bread Shop for instance, women's clubs hadhad their beginning, and an immense development of reading rooms, loungesand libraries had witnessed to the growth of social confidence. Thesepromises had by this time attained to their complete fulfilment. Thelocked and barred household had passed away.
These people below him belonged, he learnt, to the lower middle class,the class just above the blue labourers, a class so accustomed in theVictorian period to feed with every precaution of privacy that itsmembers, when occasion confronted them with a public meal, would usuallyhide their embarrassment under horseplay or a markedly militantdemeanour. But these gaily, if lightly dressed people below, albeitvivacious, hurried and uncommunicative, were dexterously mannered andcertainly quite at their ease with regard to one another.
He noted a slight significant thing; the table, as far as he could see,was and remained delightfully neat, there was nothing to parallel theconfusion, the broadcast crumbs, the splashes of viand and condiment, theoverturned drink and displaced ornaments, which would have marked thestormy progress of the Victorian meal. The table furniture was verydifferent. There were no ornaments, no flowers, and the table was withouta cloth, being made, he learnt, of a solid substance having the textureand appearance of damask. He discerned that this damask substance waspatterned with gracefully designed trade advertisements.
In a sort of recess before each diner was a complex apparatus ofporcelain and metal. There was one plate of white porcelain, and by meansof taps for hot and cold volatile fluids the diner washed this himselfbetween the courses; he also washed his elegant white metal knife andfork and spoon as occasion required.
Soup and the chemical wine that was the common drink were delivered bysimilar taps, and the remaining covers travelled automatically intastefully arranged dishes down the table along silver rails. The dinerstopped these and helped himself at his discretion. They appeared at alittle door at one end of the table, and vanished at the other. That turnof democratic sentiment in decay, that ugly pride of menial souls, whichrenders equals loth to wait on one another, was very strong he foundamong these people. He was so preoccupied with these details that it wasonly as he was leaving the place that he remarked the huge advertisementdioramas that marched majestically along the upper walls and proclaimedthe most remarkable commodities.
Beyond this place they came into a crowded hall, and he discovered thecause of the noise that had perplexed him. They paused at a turnstile atwhich a payment was made.
Graham's attention was immediately arrested by a violent, loud hoot,followed by a vast leathery voice. "The Master is sleeping peacefully,"it vociferated. "He is in excellent health. He is going to devote therest of his life to aeronautics. He says women are more beautiful thanever. Galloop! Wow! Our wonderful civilisation astonishes him beyondmeasure. Beyond all measure. Galloop. He puts great trust in BossOstrog, absolute confidence in Boss Ostrog. Ostrog is to be his chiefminister; is authorised to remove or reinstate public officers--allpatronage will be in his hands. All patronage in the hands of BossOstrog! The Councillors have been sent back to their own prison abovethe Council House."
Graham stopped at the first sentence, and, looking up, beheld a foolishtrumpet face from which this was brayed. This was the GeneralIntelligence Machine. For a space it seemed to be gathering breath, and aregular throbbing from its cylindrical body was audible. Then ittrumpeted "Galloop, Galloop," and broke out again.
"Paris is now pacified. All resistance is over. Galloop! The black policehold every position of importance in the city. They fought with greatbravery, singing songs written in praise of their ancestors by the poetKipling. Once or twice they got out of hand, and tortured and mutilatedwounded and captured insurgents, men and women. Moral--don't gorebelling. Haha! Galloop, Galloop! They are lively fellows. Lively bravefellows. Let this be a lesson to the disorderly banderlog of this city.Yah! Banderlog! Filth of the earth! Galloop, Galloop!"
The voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among thecrowd. "Damned niggers." A man began to harangue near them. "Is this theMaster's doing, brothers? Is this the Master's doing?"
"Black police!" said Graham. "What is that? You don't mean--"
Asano touched his arm and gave him a warning look, and forthwith anotherof these mechanisms screamed deafeningly and gave tongue in a shrillvoice. "Yahaha, Yahah, Yap! Hear a live paper yelp! Live paper. Yaha!Shocking outrage in Paris. Yahahah! The Parisians exasperated by theblack police to the pitch of assassination. Dreadful reprisals. Savagetimes come again. Blood! Blood! Yaha!" The nearer Babble Machine hootedstupendously, "Galloop, Galloop," drowned the end of the sentence, andproceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments on thehorrors of disorder. "Law and order must be maintained," said the nearerBabble Machine.
"But," began Graham.
"Don't ask questions here," said Asano, "or you will be involved in anargument."
"Then let us go on," said Graham, "for I want to know more of this."
As he and his companion pushed their way through the excited crowd thatswarmed beneath these voices, towards the exit, Graham conceived moreclearly the proportion and features of this room. Altogether, great andsmall, there must have been nearly a thousand of these erections,piping, hooting, bawling and gabbling in that great space, each with itscrowd of excited listeners, the majority of them men dressed in bluecanvas. There were all sizes of machines, from the little gossipingmechanisms that chuckled out mechanical sarcasm in odd corners, througha number of grades to such fifty-foot giants as that which had firsthooted over Graham.
This place was unusually crowded, because of the intense public interestin the course of affairs in Paris. Evidently the struggle had been muchmore savage than Ostrog had represented it. All the mechanisms werediscoursing upon that topic, and the repetition of the people made thehuge hive buzz with such phrases as "Lynched policemen," "Women burntalive," "Fuzzy Wuzzy." "But does the Master allow such things?" asked aman near him. "Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule?"
Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closelyon the nature of the Parisian struggle. "This disarmament! What was theirtrouble? What does it all mean?" Asano seemed chiefly anxious to reassurehim that it was "all right."
"But these outrages!"
"You cannot have an omelette," said Asano, "without breaking eggs. It isonly the rough people. Only in one part of the city. All the rest is allright. The Parisian labourers are the wildest in the world, except ours."
"What! the Londoners?"
"No, the Japanese. They have to be kept in order."
"But burning women alive!"
"A Commune!" said Asano. "They would rob you of your property. They woulddo away with property and give the world over to mob rule. You areMaster, the world is yours. But there will be no Commune here. There isno need for black police here.
"And every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes--Frenchspeaking negroes. Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo."
"Regiments?" said Graham, "I thought there was only one--"
"No," said Asano, and glanced at him. "There is more than one."
Graham felt unpleasantly helpless.
"I did not think," he began and stopped abruptly. He went off at atangent to ask for information about these Babble Machines. For the mostpart, the crowd present had been shabbily or even raggedly dressed, andGraham learnt that so far as the more prosperous classes were concerned,in all the more comfortable private apartments of the city were fixedBabble Machines that would speak directly a lever was pulled. The tenantof the apartment could connect this with the cables of any of the greatNews Syndicates that he preferred. When he learnt this presently, hedemanded the reason of their absence from his own suite of apartments.Asano was embarrassed. "I never thought," he said. "Ostrog must have hadthem removed."
Graham stared. "How was I to know?" he exclaimed.
"Perhaps he thought they would annoy you," said Asano.
"They must be replaced directly I return," said Graham after an interval.
He found a difficulty in understanding that this news room and the dininghall were not great central places, that such establishments wererepeated almost beyond counting all over the city. But ever and againduring the night's expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult ofthe ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, "Galloop,Galloop!" or the shrill "Yahaha, Yaha Yap!--Hear a live paper yelp!" ofits chief rival.
Repeated, too, everywhere, were such _creches_ as the one he now entered.It was reached by a lift, and by a glass bridge that flung across thedining hall and traversed the ways at a slight upward angle. To enter thefirst section of the place necessitated the use of his solvent signatureunder Asano's direction. They were immediately attended to by a man in aviolet robe and gold clasp, the insignia of practising medical men. Heperceived from this man's manner that his identity was known, andproceeded to ask questions on the strange arrangements of the placewithout reserve.
On either side of the passage, which was silent and padded, as if todeaden the footfall, were narrow little doors, their size and arrangementsuggestive of the cells of a Victorian prison. But the upper portion ofeach door was of the same greenish transparent stuff that had enclosedhim at his awakening, and within, dimly seen, lay, in every case, a veryyoung baby in a little nest of wadding. Elaborate apparatus watched theatmosphere and rang a bell far away in the central office at theslightest departure from the optimum of temperature and moisture. Asystem of such _creches_ had almost entirely replaced the hazardousadventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently calledGraham's attention to the wet nurses, a vista of mechanical figures, witharms, shoulders, and breasts of astonishingly realistic modelling,articulation, and texture, but mere brass tripods below, and having inthe place of features a flat disc bearing advertisements likely to be ofinterest to mothers.
Of all the strange things that Graham came upon that night, none jarredmore upon his habits of thought than this place. The spectacle of thelittle pink creatures, their feeble limbs swaying uncertainly in vaguefirst movements, left alone, without embrace or endearment, was whollyrepugnant to him. The attendant doctor was of a different opinion. Hisstatistical evidence showed beyond dispute that in the Victorian timesthe most dangerous passage of life was the arms of the mother, that therehuman mortality had ever been most terrible. On the other hand this_creche_ company, the International Creche Syndicate, lost not one-halfper cent, of the million babies or so that formed its peculiar care. ButGraham's prejudice was too strong even for those figures.
Along one of the many passages of the place they presently came upon ayoung couple in the usual blue canvas peering through the transparencyand laughing hysterically at the bald head of their first-born. Graham'sface must have showed his estimate of them, for their merriment ceasedand they looked abashed. But this little incident accentuated his suddenrealisation of the gulf between his habits of thought and the ways of thenew age. He passed on to the crawling rooms and the Kindergarten,perplexed and distressed. He found the endless long playrooms were empty!the latter-day children at least still spent their nights in sleep. Asthey went through these, the little officer pointed out the nature of thetoys, developments of those devised by that inspired sentimentalistFroebel. There were nurses here, but much was done by machines that sangand danced and dandled.
Graham was still not clear upon many points. "But so many orphans," hesaid perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again thatthey were not orphans.
So soon as they had left the _creche_ he began to speak of the horror thebabies in their incubating cases had caused him. "Is motherhood gone?" hesaid. "Was it a cant? Surely it was an instinct. This seems sounnatural--abominable almost."
"Along here we shall come to the dancing place," said Asano by way ofreply. "It is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the political unrest itwill be crowded. The women take no great interest in politics--except afew here and there. You will see the mothers--most young women in Londonare mothers. In that class it is considered a creditable thing to haveone child--a proof of animation. Few middle class people have more thanone. With the Labour Department it is different. As for motherhood! Theystill take an immense pride in the children. They come here to look atthem quite often."
"Then do you mean that the population of the World--?"
"Is falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour Department. Inspite of scientific discipline they are reckless--"
The air was suddenly dancing with music, and down a way they approachedobliquely, set with gorgeous pillars as it seemed of clear amethyst,flowed a concourse of gay people and a tumult of merry cries andlaughter. He saw curled heads, wreathed brows, and a happy intricateflutter of gamboge pass triumphant across the picture.
"You will see," said Asano with a faint smile. "The world has changed. Ina moment you will see the mothers of the new age. Come this way. We shallsee those yonder again very soon."
They ascended a certain height in a swift lift, and changed to a slowerone. As they went on the music grew upon them, until it was near and fulland splendid, and, moving with its glorious intricacies they coulddistinguish the beat of innumerable dancing feet. They made a payment ata turnstile, and emerged upon the wide gallery that overlooked thedancing place, and upon the full enchantment of sound and sight.
"Here," said Asano, "are the fathers and mothers of the littleones you saw."
The hall was not so richly decorated as that of the Atlas, but savingthat, it was, for its size, the most splendid Graham had seen. Thebeautiful white-limbed figures that supported the galleries reminded himonce more of the restored magnificence of sculpture; they seemed towrithe in engaging attitudes, their faces laughed. The source of themusic t
hat filled the place was hidden, and the whole vast shining floorwas thick with dancing couples. "Look at them," said the little officer,"see how much they show of motherhood."
The gallery they stood upon ran along the upper edge of a huge screenthat cut the dancing hall on one side from a sort of outer hall thatshowed through broad arches the incessant onward rush of the city ways.In this outer hall was a great crowd of less brilliantly dressed people,as numerous almost as those who danced within, the great majority wearingthe blue uniform of the Labour Department that was now so familiar toGraham. Too poor to pass the turnstiles to the festival, they were yetunable to keep away from the sound of its seductions. Some of them evenhad cleared spaces, and were dancing also, fluttering their rags in theair. Some shouted as they danced, jests and odd allusions Graham did notunderstand. Once someone began whistling the refrain of the revolutionarysong, but it seemed as though that beginning was promptly suppressed. Thecorner was dark and Graham could not see. He turned to the hall again.Above the caryatids were marble busts of men whom that age esteemed greatmoral emancipators and pioneers; for the most part their names werestrange to Graham, though he recognised Grant Allen, Le Gallienne,Nietzsche, Shelley and Goodwin. Great black festoons and eloquentsentiments reinforced the huge inscription that partially defaced theupper end of the dancing place, and asserted that "The Festival of theAwakening" was in progress.
"Myriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that, quiteapart from the labourers who refuse to go back," said Asano. "Thesepeople are always ready for holidays."
Graham walked to the parapet and stood leaning over, looking down at thedancers. Save for two or three remote whispering couples, who had stolenapart, he and his guide had the gallery to themselves. A warm breath ofscent and vitality came up to him. Both men and women below were lightlyclad, bare-armed, open-necked, as the universal warmth of the citypermitted. The hair of the men was often a mass of effeminate curls,their chins were always shaven, and many of them had flushed or colouredcheeks. Many of the women were very pretty, and all were dressed withelaborate coquetry. As they swept by beneath, he saw ecstatic faces witheyes half closed in pleasure.
"What sort of people are these?" he asked abruptly.
"Workers--prosperous workers. What you would have called the middleclass. Independent tradesmen with little separate businesses havevanished long ago, but there are store servers, managers, engineers of ahundred sorts. To-night is a holiday of course, and every dancing placein the city will be crowded, and every place of worship."
"But--the women?"
"The same. There's a thousand forms of work for women now. But you hadthe beginning of the independent working-woman in your days. Most womenare independent now. Most of these are married more or less--there are anumber of methods of contract--and that gives them more money, andenables them to enjoy themselves."
"I see," said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirlof movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helpless limbs."And these are--mothers."
"Most of them."
"The more I see of these things the more complex I find your problems.This, for instance, is a surprise. That news from Paris was a surprise."
In a little while he spoke again:
"These are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the modern wayof seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging about me--habitsbased, I suppose, on needs that are over and done with. Of course, in ourtime, a woman was supposed not only to bear children, but to cherishthem, to devote herself to them, to educate them--all the essentials ofmoral and mental education a child owed its mother. Or went without.Quite a number, I admit, went without. Nowadays, clearly, there is nomore need for such care than if they were butterflies. I see that! Onlythere was an ideal--that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently andserenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men--to love her was asort of worship--"
He stopped and repeated, "A sort of worship."
"Ideals change," said the little man, "as needs change."
Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words.Graham's mind returned to the thing at hand.
"Of course I see the perfect reasonableness of this. Restraint,soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish act, they are necessitiesof the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness is man's tribute tounconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practicalpurposes--his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a blackpolice--and life is joyous."
He looked at the dancers again. "Joyous," he said.
"There are weary moments," said the little officer, reflectively.
"They all look young. Down there I should be visibly the oldest man. Andin my own time I should have passed as middle-aged."
"They are young. There are few old people in this class in thework cities."
"How is that?"
"Old people's lives are not so pleasant as they used to be, unless theyare rich to hire lovers and helpers. And we have an institution calledEuthanasy."
"Ah! that Euthanasy!" said Graham. "The easy death?"
"The easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does itwell. People will pay the sum--it is a costly thing--long beforehand, gooff to some pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, very weary."
"There is a lot left for me to understand," said Graham after a pause."Yet I see the logic of it all. Our array of angry virtues and sourrestraints was the consequence of danger and insecurity. The Stoic, thePuritan, even in my time, were vanishing types. In the old days man wasarmed against Pain, now he is eager for Pleasure. There lies thedifference. Civilisation has driven pain and danger so far off--forwell-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have beenasleep two hundred years."
For a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricateevolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful.
"Before God," said Graham, suddenly, "I would rather be a woundedsentinel freezing in the snow than one of these painted fools!"
"In the snow," said Asano, "one might think differently."
"I am uncivilised," said Graham, not heeding him. "That is the trouble. Iam primitive--Paleolithic. _Their_ fountain of rage and fear and anger issealed and closed, the habits of a lifetime make them cheerful and easyand delightful. You must bear with my nineteenth century shocks anddisgusts. These people, you say, are skilled workers and so forth. Andwhile these dance, men are fighting--men are dying in Paris to keep theworld--that they may dance."
Asano smiled faintly. "For that matter, men are dying in London," hesaid.
There was a moment's silence.
"Where do these sleep?" asked Graham.
"Above and below--an intricate warren."
"And where do they work? This is--the domestic life."
"You will see little work to-night. Half the workers are out or underarms. Half these people are keeping holiday. But we will go to the workplaces if you wish it."
For a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. "I wantto see the workers. I have seen enough of these," he said.
Asano led the way along the gallery across the dancing hall. Presentlythey came to a transverse passage that brought a breath of fresher,colder air.
Asano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went back toit, and turned to Graham with a smile. "Here, Sire," he said, "issomething--will be familiar to you at least--and yet--. But I will nottell you. Come!"
He led the way along a closed passage that presently became cold. Thereverberation of their feet told that this passage was a bridge. Theycame into a circular gallery that was glazed in from the outer weather,and so reached a circular chamber which seemed familiar, though Grahamcould not recall distinctly when he had entered it before. In this was aladder--the first ladder he had seen since his awakening--up which theywent, and came into a high, dark, cold place in which was another almostvertical ladder. This they ascended, Graham still perplexed.
But at the top he understood, and recognised the metallic bars to whichhe clung. He was in the cage under the ball of St. Paul's. The dome rosebut a little way above the general contour of the city, into the stilltwilight, and sloped away, shining greasily under a few distant lights,into a circumambient ditch of darkness.
Out between the bars he looked upon the wind-clear northern sky and sawthe starry constellations all unchanged. Capella hung in the west, Vegawas rising, and the seven glittering points of the Great Bear sweptoverhead in their stately circle about the Pole.
He saw these stars in a clear gap of sky. To the east and south the greatcircular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out the heavens, sothat the glare about the Council House was hidden. To the southwest hungOrion, showing like a pallid ghost through a tracery of iron-work andinterlacing shapes above a dazzling coruscation of lights. A bellowingand siren screaming that came from the flying stages warned the worldthat one of the aeroplanes was ready to start. He remained for a spacegazing towards the glaring stage. Then his eyes went back to thenorthward constellations.
For a long time he was silent. "This," he said at last, smiling in theshadow, "seems the strangest thing of all. To stand in the dome of St.Paul's and look once more upon these familiar, silent stars!"
Thence Graham was taken by Asano along devious ways to the great gamblingand business quarters where the bulk of the fortunes in the city werelost and made. It impressed him as a well-nigh interminable series ofvery high halls, surrounded by tiers upon tiers of galleries into whichopened thousands of offices, and traversed by a complicated multitude ofbridges, footways, aerial motor rails, and trapeze and cable leaps. Andhere more than anywhere the note of vehement vitality, of uncontrollable,hasty activity, rose high. Everywhere was violent advertisement, untilhis brain swam at the tumult of light and colour. And Babble Machines ofa peculiarly rancid tone were abundant and filled the air with strenuoussquealing and an idiotic slang. "Skin your eyes and slide," "Gewhoop,Bonanza," "Gollipers come and hark!"
The place seemed to him to be dense with people either profoundlyagitated or swelling with obscure cunning, yet he learnt that the placewas comparatively empty, that the great political convulsion of the lastfew days had reduced transactions to an unprecedented minimum. In onehuge place were long avenues of roulette tables, each with an excited,undignified crowd about it; in another a yelping Babel of white-facedwomen and red-necked leathery-lunged men bought and sold the shares of anabsolutely fictitious business undertaking which, every five minutes,paid a dividend of ten per cent, and cancelled a certain proportion ofits shares by means of a lottery wheel.
These business activities were prosecuted with an energy that readilypassed into violence, and Graham approaching a dense crowd found at itscentre a couple of prominent merchants in violent controversy with teethand nails on some delicate point of business etiquette. Something stillremained in life to be fought for. Further he had a shock at a vehementannouncement in phonetic letters of scarlet flame, each twice the heightof a man, that "WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R. WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R."
"Who's the proprietor?" he asked.
"You."
"But what do they assure me?" he asked. "What do they assure me?"
"Didn't you have assurance?"
Graham thought. "Insurance?"
"Yes--Insurance. I remember that was the older word. They are insuringyour life. Dozands of people are taking out policies, myriads of lionsare being put on you. And further on other people are buying annuities.They do that on everybody who is at all prominent. Look there!"
A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screensuddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. "Anueteson the Propraiet'r--x 5 pr. G." The people began to boo and shout atthis, a number of hard breathing, wild-eyed men came running past,clawing with hooked fingers at the air. There was a furious crush about alittle doorway.
Asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. "Seventeen per cent, perannum is their annuity on you. They would not pay so much per cent, ifthey could see you now, Sire. But they do not know. Your own annuitiesused to be a very safe investment, but now you are sheer gambling, ofcourse. This is probably a desperate bid. I doubt if people will gettheir money."
The crowd of would-be annuitants grew so thick about them that for sometime they could move neither forward nor backward. Graham noticed whatappeared to him to be a high proportion of women among the speculators,and was reminded again of the economic independence of their sex. Theyseemed remarkably well able to take care of themselves in the crowd,using their elbows with particular skill, as he learnt to his cost. Onecurly-headed person caught in the pressure for a space, lookedsteadfastly at him several times, almost as if she recognised him, andthen, edging deliberately towards him, touched his hand with her arm in ascarcely accidental manner, and made it plain by a look as ancient asChaldea that he had found favour in her eyes. And then a lank,grey-bearded man, perspiring copiously in a noble passion of self-help,blind to all earthly things save that glaring bait, thrust between themin a cataclysmal rush towards that alluring "X 5 pr. G."
"I want to get out of this," said Graham to Asano. "This is not what Icame to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue. Theseparasitic lunatics--"
He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.