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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 perpetual wonder 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 perpetual 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 an aeropile."

During those three days Graham was so occupied with such 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 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.

CHAPTER XVIII. 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 Company--"

"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

Company you own."

"The Labour Company! 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 Company has grown imperceptibly."

"What is this Labour Company?" 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 Company 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. 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 give work

to starving homeless people."

"Yes."

"Nowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing but

that Company. 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 Company 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 Company's incorporation--and in return for a

day's shelter the Company 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 days 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 Company

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 Company's care. The mother owes them a

month thereafter--the children they cherish and educate until they