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CHAPTER XXIII. WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING

For a time the Master of the Earth was not even master of his own mind.

Even his will seemed a will not his own, his own acts surprised him

and were but a part of the confusion of strange experiences that poured

across his being. These things were definite, the aeroplanes were

coming, Helen Wotton had warned the people of their coming, and he was

Master of the Earth. Each of these facts seemed struggling for complete

possession of his thoughts. They protruded from a background of swarming

halls, elevated passages, rooms jammed with ward leaders in council

kinematograph and telephone rooms, and windows looking out on a seething

sea of marching men. The man in yellow, and men whom he fancied were

called Ward Leaders, were either propelling him forward or following

him obediently; it was hard to tell. Perhaps they were doing a little of

both. Perhaps some power unseen and unsuspected, propelled them all. He

was aware that he was going to make a proclamation to the People of the

Earth, aware of certain grandiose phrases floating in his mind as the

thing he meant to say. Many little things happened, and then he found

himself with the man in yellow entering a little room where this

proclamation of his was to be made.

This room was grotesquely latter-day in its appointments. In the centre

was a bright oval lit by shaded electric lights from above. The rest

was in shadow, and the double finely fitting doors through which he came

from the swarming Hall of the Atlas made the place very still. The dead

thud of these as they closed behind him, the sudden cessation of the

tumult in which he had been living for hours, the quivering circle of

light, the whispers and quick noiseless movements of vaguely visible

attendants in the shadows, had a strange effect upon Graham. The huge

ears of a phonographic mechanism gaped in a battery for his words, the

black eyes of great photographic cameras awaited his beginning, beyond

metal rods and coils glittered dimly, and something whirled about with a

droning hum. He walked into the centre of the light, and his shadow drew

together black and sharp to a little blot at his feet.

The vague shape of the thing he meant to say was already in his mind.

But this silence, this isolation, the sudden withdrawal from that

contagious crowd, this silent audience of gaping, glaring machines

had not been in his anticipation. All his supports seemed withdrawn

together; he seemed to have dropped into this suddenly, suddenly to have

discovered himself. In a moment he was changed. He found that he now

feared to be inadequate, he feared to be theatrical, he feared the

quality of his voice, the quality of his wit, astonished, he turned to

the man in yellow with a propitiatory gesture. "For a moment," he said,

"I must wait. I did not think it would be like this. I must think of the

thing I have to say."

While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news

that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Arawan.

"Arawan?" he said. "Where is that? But anyhow, they are coming. They

will be here. When?"

"By twilight."

"Great God! In only a few hours. What news of the flying stages?" he

asked.

"The people of the south-west wards are ready."

"Ready!"

He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.

"I suppose it must be a sort of speech. Would to God I knew certainly

the thing that should be said! Aeroplanes at Arawan! They must have

started before the main fleet. And the people only ready! Surely..."

"Oh! what does it matter whether I speak well or ill?" he said, and felt

the light grow brighter.

He had framed some vague sentence of democratic sentiment when suddenly

doubts overwhelmed him. His belief in his heroic quality and calling

he found had altogether lost its assured conviction. The picture of a

little strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible destinies

replaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this revolt

against Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse of

passionate inadequacy against inevitable things. He thought of that

swift flight of aeroplanes like the swoop of Fate towards him. He was

astonished that he could have seen things in any other light. In that

final emergency he debated, thrust debate resolutely aside, determined

at all costs to go through with the thing he had undertaken. And he

could find no word to begin. Even as he stood, awkward, hesitating, with

an indiscrete apology for his inability trembling on his lips, came the

noise of many people crying out, the running to and fro of feet. "Wait,"

cried someone, and a door opened. "She is coming," said the voices.

Graham turned, and the watching lights waned.

Through the open doorway he saw a slight grey figure advancing across

a spacious hall. His heart leapt. It was Helen Wotton. Behind and about

her marched a riot of applause. The man in yellow came out of the nearer

shadows into the circle of light.

"This is the girl who told us what Ostrog had dune," he said.

Her face was aflame, and the heavy coils of her black hair fell about

her shoulders. The folds of the soft silk robe she wore streamed from

her and floated in the rhythm of her advance. She drew nearer and

nearer, and his heart was beating fast. All his doubts were gone. The

shadow of the doorway fell athwart her face and she was near him. "You

have not betrayed us?" she cried. "You are with us?"

"Where have you been?" said Graham.

"At the office of the south-west wards. Until ten minutes since I did

not know you had returned. I went to the office of the south-west wards

to find the Ward Leaders in order that they might tell the people."

"I came back so soon as I heard--."

"I knew," she cried, "knew you would be with us. And it was I--it was

I that told them. They have risen. All the world is rising. The people

have awakened. Thank God that I did not act in vain! You are Master

still."

"You told them" he said slowly, and he saw that in spite of her steady

eyes her lips trembled and her throat rose and fell.

"I told them. I knew of the order. I was here. I heard that the negroes

were to come to London to guard you and to keep the people down--to keep

you a prisoner. And I stopped it. I came out and told the people. And

you are Master still."

Graham glanced at the black lenses of the cameras, the vast listening

ears, and back to her face. "I am Master still," he said slowly, and the

swift rush of a fleet of aeroplanes passed across his thoughts.

"And you did this? You, who are the niece of Ostrog."

"For you," she cried. "For you! That you for whom the world has waited

should not be cheated of your power."

Graham stood for a space, wordless, regarding her. His doubts and

questionings had fled before her presence. He remembered the things that

he had meant to say. He faced the cameras again and the light about him

grew brighter. He turned again towards her.

"You have saved me," he said; "you have saved my power. And the battle

is beginning. God knows what this night will see--but not dishonour."

He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon

him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly. "Men

and women of the new age," he said; "You have arisen to do battle for

the race... There is no easy victory before us."

He stopped to gather words. The thoughts that had been in his mind

before she came returned, but transfigured, no longer touched with the

shadow of a possible irrelevance. "This night is a beginning," he cried.

"This battle that is coming, this battle that rushes upon us to-night,

is only a beginning. All your lives, it may be, you must fight. Take no

thought though I am beaten, though I am utterly overthrown."

He found the thing in his mind too vague for words. He paused

momentarily, and broke into vague exhortations, and then a rush of

speech came upon him. Much that he said was but the humanitarian

commonplace of a vanished age, but the conviction of his voice touched

it to vitality. He stated the case of the old days to the people of the

new age, to the woman at his side. "I come out of the past to you,"

he said, "with the memory of an age that hoped. My age was an age of

dreams--of beginnings, an age of noble hopes; throughout the world

we had made an end of slavery; throughout the world we had spread the

desire and anticipation that wars might cease, that all men and women

might live nobly, in freedom and peace. ... So we hoped in the days that

are past. And what of those hopes? How is it with man after two hundred

years?

"Great cities, vast powers, a collective greatness beyond our dreams.

For that we did not work, and that has come. But how is it with the

little lives that make up this greater life? How is it with the common

lives? As it has ever been--sorrow and labour, lives cramped and

unfulfilled, lives tempted by power, tempted by wealth, and gone to

waste and folly. The old faiths have faded and changed, the new faith--.

Is there a new faith?"

Things that he had long wished to believe, he found that he believed. He

plunged at belief and seized it, and clung for a time at her level. He

spoke gustily, in broken incomplete sentences, but with all his heart

and strength, of this new faith within him. He spoke of the greatness of

self-abnegation, of his belief in an immortal life of Humanity in which

we live and move and have our being. His voice rose and fell, and the

recording appliances hummed their hurried applause, dim attendants

watched him out of the shadow. Through all those doubtful places his

sense of that silent spectator beside him sustained his sincerity. For a

few glorious moments he was carried away; he felt no doubt of his heroic

quality, no doubt of his heroic words, he had it all straight and plain.

His eloquence limped no longer. And at last he made an end to speaking.

"Here and now," he cried, "I make my will. All that is mine in the world

I give to the people of the world. All that is mine in the world I give

to the people of the world. I give it to you, and myself I give to you.

And as God wills, I will live for you, or I will die."

He ended with a florid gesture and turned about. He found the light of

his present exaltation reflected in the face of the girl. Their eyes

met; her eyes were swimming with tears of enthusiasm. They seemed to be

urged towards each other. They clasped hands and stood gripped, facing

one another, in an eloquent silence. She whispered. "I knew," she

whispered. "I knew." He could not speak, he crushed her hand in his. His

mind was the theatre of gigantic passions.

The man in yellow was beside them. Neither had noted his coming. He was

saying that the south-west wards were marching. "I never expected it so

soon," he cried. "They have done wonders. You must send them a word to

help them on their way."

Graham dropped Helen's hand and stared at him absent-mindedly. Then

with a start he returned to his previous preoccupation about the flying

stages.

"Yes," he said. "That is good, that is good." He weighed a message.

"Tell them;--well done South West."

He turned his eyes to Helen Wotton again. His face expressed his

struggle between conflicting ideas. "We must capture the flying stages,"

he explained. "Unless we can do that they will land negroes. At all

costs we must prevent that."

He felt even as he spoke that this was not what had been in his mind

before the interruption. He saw a touch of surprise in her eyes. She

seemed about to speak and a shrill bell drowned her voice.

It occurred to Graham that she expected him to lead these marching

people, that that was the thing he had to do. He made the offer

abruptly. He addressed the man in yellow, but he spoke to her. He saw

her face respond. "Here I am doing nothing," he said.

"It is impossible," protested the man in yellow.

"It is a fight in a warren. Your place is here."

He explained elaborately. He motioned towards the room where Graham must

wait, he insisted no other course was possible. "We must know where you

are," he said. "At any moment a crisis may arise needing your presence

and decision." The room was a luxurious little apartment with news

machines and a broken mirror that had once been en _rapport_ with the

crow's nest specula. It seemed a matter of course to Graham that Helen

should stop with him.

A picture had drifted through his mind of such a vast dramatic struggle

as the masses in the ruins had suggested. But here was no spectacular

battle-field such as he imagined. Instead was seclusion--and suspense.

It was only as the afternoon wore on that he pieced together a truer

picture of the fight that was raging, inaudibly and invisibly,

within four miles of him, beneath the Roehampton stage. A strange and

unprecedented contest it was, a battle that was a hundred thousand

little battles, a battle in a sponge of ways and channels, fought out

of sight of sky or sun under the electric glare, fought out in a vast

confusion by multitudes untrained in arms, led chiefly by acclamation,

multitudes dulled by mindless labour and enervated by the tradition of

two hundred years of servile security against multitudes demoralised by

lives of venial privilege and sensual indulgence. They had no artillery,

no differentiation into this force or that; the only weapon on either

side was the little green metal carbine, whose secret manufacture and

sudden distribution in enormous quantities had been one of Ostrog's

culminating moves against the Council. Few had had any experience with

this weapon, many had never discharged one, many who carried it came