第 27 页

It was his constant surprise to find that points that one might have

expected to strike vividly at the very outset never occurred to him

until some trivial detail suddenly shaped as a riddle and pointed to the

obvious thing he had overlooked. In this matter, for instance, it had

not occurred to him that this continuity of the city, this exclusion of

weather, these vast halls and ways, involved the disappearance of the

household; that the typical Victorian "home," the little brick cell

containing kitchen and scullery, living rooms and bedrooms, had, save

for the ruins that diversified the countryside, vanished as surely as

the wattle hut. But now he saw what had indeed been manifest from

the first, that London, regarded as a living place, was no longer an

aggregation of houses but a prodigious hotel, an hotel with a thousand

classes of accommodation, thousands of dining halls, chapels, theatres,

markets and places of assembly, a synthesis of enterprises, of which he

chiefly was the owner. People had their sleeping rooms, with, it might

be, antechambers, rooms that were always sanitary at least whatever the

degree of comfort and privacy, and for the rest they lived much as many

people had lived in the new-made giant hotels of the Victorian days,

eating, reading, thinking, playing, conversing, all in places of public

resort, going to their work in the industrial quarters of the city or

doing business in their offices in the trading section.

He perceived at once how necessarily this state of affairs had developed

from the Victorian city. The fundamental reason for the modern city had

ever been the economy of co-operation. The chief thing to prevent the

merging of the separate households in his own generation was simply the

still imperfect civilisation of the people, the strong barbaric pride,

passions, and prejudices, the jealousies, rivalries, and violence of the

middle and lower classes, which had necessitated the entire separation

of contiguous households. But the change, the taming of the people, had

been in rapid progress even then. In his brief thirty years of previous

life he had seen an enormous extension of the habit of consuming meals

from home, the casually patronised horse-box coffee-house had given

place to the open and crowded Aerated Bread Shop for instance, women's

clubs had had their beginning, and an immense development of reading

rooms, lounges and libraries had witnessed to the growth of social

confidence. These promises had by this time attained to their complete

fulfillment. The locked 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 the

Victorian period to feed with every precaution of privacy that its

members, when occasion confronted them with a public meal, would

usually hide their embarrassment under horseplay or a markedly militant

demeanour. But these gaily, if lightly dressed people below, albeit

vivacious, hurried and uncommunicative, were dexterously mannered and

certainly 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 the

confusion, the broadcast crumbs, the splashes of viand and condiment,

the overturned drink and displaced ornaments, which would have marked

the stormy progress of the Victorian meal. The table furniture was

very different. There were no ornaments, no flowers, and the table was

without a cloth, being made, he learnt, of a solid substance having

the texture and appearance of damask. He discerned that this damask

substance was patterned with gracefully designed trade advertisements.

In a sort of recess before each diner was a complete apparatus of

porcelain and metal. There was one plate of white porcelain, and by

means of taps for hot and cold volatile fluids the diner washed this

himself between the courses; he also washed his elegant white metal

knife and fork and spoon as occasion required.

Soup and the chemical wine that was the common drink were delivered

by similar taps, and the remaining covers travelled automatically in

tastefully arranged dishes down the table along silver rails. The diner

stopped these and helped himself at his discretion. They appeared at

a little door at one end of the table, and vanished at the other. That

turn of democratic sentiment in decay, that ugly pride of menial souls,

which renders equals loth to wait on one another, was very strong he

found among these people. He was so preoccupied with these details that

it was only just as he was leaving the place that he remarked the huge

advertisement dioramas that marched majestically along the upper walls

and proclaimed the most remarkable commodities.

Beyond this place they came into a crowded hall, and he discovered the

cause of the noise that had perplexed him. They paused at a turnstile at

which 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 said vociferately. "He is in excellent health. He is going to devote

the rest of his life to aeronautics. He says women are more beautiful

than ever. Galloop! Wow! Our wonderful civilisation astonishes him

beyond measure. Beyond all measure. Galloop. He puts great trust in Boss

Ostrog, absolute confidence in Boss Ostrog. Ostrog is to be his chief

minister; is authorised to remove or reinstate public officers--all

patronage will be in his hands. All patronage in the hands of Boss

Ostrog! The Councillors have been sent back to their own prison above

the Council House."

Graham stopped at the first sentence, and, looking up, beheld a

foolish trumpet face from which this was brayed. This was the General

Intelligence Machine. For a space it seemed to be gathering breath,

and a regular throbbing from its cylindrical body was audible. Then it

trumpeted "Galloop, Galloop," and broke out again.

"Paris is now pacified. All resistance is over. Galloop! The black

police hold every position of importance in the city. They fought with

great bravery, singing songs written in praise of their ancestors by

the poet Kipling. Once or twice they got out of hand, and tortured and

mutilated wounded and captured insurgents, men and women. Moral--don't

go rebelling. Haha! Galloop, Galloop! They are lively fellows. Lively

brave fellows. 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 the

crowd. "Damned niggers." A man began to harangue near them. "Is this the

Master'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 another

of these mechanisms I screamed deafeningly and gave tongue in a shrill

voice. "Yahaha, Yahah, Yap! Hear a live paper yelp! Live paper. Yaha!

Shocking outrage in Paris. Yahahah! The Parisians exasperated by the

black police to the pitch of assassination. Dreadful reprisals. Savage

times come again. Blood! Blood! Yaha!" The nearer Babble Machine hooted

stupendously, "Galloop, Galloop," drowned the end of the sentence, and

proceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments on

the horrors of disorder. "Law and order must be maintained," said the

nearer Babble Machine.

"But," began Graham.

"Don't ask questions here," said Asano, "or you will be involved in an

argument."

"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 that

swarmed beneath these voices, towards the exit, Graham conceived more

clearly the proportion and features of this room. Altogether, great

and small, there must have been nearly a thousand of these erections,

piping, hooting, bawling and gabbling in that great space, each with

its crowd of excited listeners, the majority of them men dressed in blue

canvas. There were all sizes of machines, from the little gossipping

mechanisms that chuckled out mechanical sarcasm in odd corners, through

a number of grades to such fifty-foot giants as that which had first

hooted over Graham.

This place was unusually crowded, because of the intense public interest

in the course of affairs in Paris. Evidently the struggle had been much

more savage than Ostrog had represented it. All the mechanisms were

discoursing upon that topic, and the repetition of the people made the

huge hive buzz with such phrases as "Lynched policemen," "Women burnt

alive," "Fuzzy Wuzzy." "But does the Master allow such things?" asked a

man near him. "Is this the beginning of the Master's rule?"

Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule? For a long time after he

had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machines

pursued him; "Galloop, Galloop," "Yahahah, Yaha, Yap! Yaha!" Is this the

beginning of the Master's rule?

Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closely

on the nature of the Parisian struggle. "This disarmament! What was

their trouble? What does it all mean?" Asano seemed chiefly anxious to

reassure him that it was "all right." "But these outrages!" "You cannot

have an omelette," said Asano, "without breaking eggs. It is only the

rough people. Only in one part of the city. All the rest is all right.

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

would do away with property and give the world over to mob rule. You are

Master, the world is yours. But there will be no Commune here. There is

no need for black police here.

"And every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes--French

speaking 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 a

tangent to ask for information about these Babble Machines. For the most

part, the crowd present had been shabbily or even raggedly dressed, and

Graham learnt that so far as the more prosperous classes were concerned,

in all the more comfortable private apartments of the city were fixed

Babble Machines that would speak directly a lever was pulled. The tenant

of the apartment could connect this with the cables of any of the great

News Syndicates that he preferred. When he learnt this presently, he

demanded the reason of their absence from his own suite of apartments.

Asano stared. "I never thought," he said. "Ostrog must have had them

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

dining hall were not great central places, that such establishments were

repeated almost beyond counting all over the city. But ever and again

during the night's expedition his ears, in some new quarter would pick

out from the tumult of the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of

Boss Ostrog, "Galloop, Galloop!" or the shrill "Yahaha, Yaha, Yap!--Hear

a live paper yelp!" of its 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 the dining hall and traversed the ways at a slight upward angle.

To enter the first section of the place necessitated the use of his

solvent signature under Asano's direction. They were immediately

attended to by a man in a violet robe and gold clasp, the insignia of

practising medical men. He perceived from this man's manner that his

identity was known, and proceeded to ask questions on the strange

arrangements of the place without reserve.

On either side of the passage, which was silent and padded, as if

to deaden the footfall, were narrow little doors, their size and

arrangement suggestive of the cells of a Victorian prison. But the upper

portion of each door was of the same greenish transparent stuff that

had enclosed him at his awakening, and within, dimly seen, lay, in every

case, a very young baby in a little nest of wadding. Elaborate apparatus

watched the atmosphere and rang a bell far away in the central office at

the slightest departure from the optimum of temperature and moisture. A

system of such _creches_ had almost entirely replaced the hazardous

adventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently called

Graham's attention to the wet nurses, a vista of mechanical figures,

with arms, shoulders and breasts of astonishingly realistic modelling,

articulation, and texture, but mere brass tripods below, and having in

the place of features a flat disc bearing advertisements likely to be of

interest to mothers.

Of all the strange things that Graham came upon that night, none jarred

more upon his habits of thought than this place. The spectacle of the

little pink creatures, their feeble limbs swaying uncertainly in vague

first movements, left alone, without embrace or endearment, was wholly

repugnant to him. The attendant doctor was of a different opinion. His

statistical evidence showed beyond dispute that in the Victorian times

the most dangerous passage of life was the arms of the mother, that