第 8 页

apparatus broken....

He struck out a path oblique to the room and paced to and fro,

struggling with intolerable vast impressions. The things he had derived

from the cylinders and the things he had seen, conflicted, confused him.

It seemed to him the most amazing thing of all that in his thirty years

of life he had never tried to shape a picture of these coming times.

"We were making the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to

think what future we were making. And here it is!"

"What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midst

of it all?" The vastness of street and house he was prepared for,

the multitudes of people. But conflicts in the city ways! And the

systematised sensuality of a class of rich men!

He thought of Bellamy, the hero of whose Socialistic Utopia had so

oddly anticipated this actual experience. But here was no Utopia,

no Socialistic state. He had already seen enough to realise that the

ancient antithesis of luxury, waste and sensuality on the one hand and

abject poverty on the other, still prevailed. He knew enough of the

essential factors of life to understand that correlation. And not only

were the buildings of the city gigantic and the crowds in the street

gigantic, but the voices he had heard in the ways, the uneasiness of

Howard, the very atmosphere spoke of gigantic discontent. What country

was he in? Still England it seemed, and yet strangely "un-English." His

mind glanced at the rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.

He prowled about his apartment, examining everything as a caged animal

might do. He felt very tired, felt that feverish exhaustion that does

not admit of rest. He listened for long spaces under the ventilator to

catch some 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 to

himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundred

and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven't

reversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of the

oldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember the

Bulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. 'Tis a great age!

Ha ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then

laughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was

behaving foolishly. "Steady," he said. "Steady!"

His pacing became more regular. "This new world," he said. "I don't

understand it. _Why?_... But it is all _why!_"

"I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things Let me try and

remember just how it began."

He was surprised at first to find how vague the memories of his first

thirty years had become. He remembered fragments, for the most part

trivial moments, things of no great importance that he had observed. His

boyhood seemed the most accessible at first, he recalled school books

and certain lessons in mensuration. Then he revived the more salient

features of his life, memories of the wife long since dead, her magic

influence now gone beyond corruption, of his rivals and friends and

betrayers, of the swift decision of this issue and that, and then of

his, last years of misery, of fluctuating resolves, and at last of his

strenuous studies. In a little while he perceived he had it all again;

dim perhaps, like metal long laid aside, but in no way defective or

injured, capable of re-polishing. And the hue of it was a deepening

misery. Was it worth re-polishing? By a miracle he had been lifted out

of a life that had become 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

ventilator pink with dawn. An old persuasion came out of the dark

recesses of his memory. "I must sleep," he said. It appeared as a

delightful relief from this mental distress and from the growing pain

and heaviness of his limbs. He went to the strange little bed, lay down

and was presently asleep.

He was destined to become very familiar indeed with these apartments

before he left them, for he remained imprisoned for three days. During

that time no one, except Howard, entered his prison. The marvel of his

fate 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 this

unaccountable solitude. Howard came regularly with subtly sustaining and

nutritive fluids, and light and pleasant foods, quite strange to Graham.

He always closed the door carefully as he entered. On matters of detail

he was increasingly obliging, but the bearing of Graham on the great

issues that were evidently being contested so closely beyond the

soundproof walls that enclosed him, he would not elucidate. He evaded,

as politely as possible, every question on the position of affairs in

the outer 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

him seeing, worked together in his mind. Almost every possible

interpretation of his position he debated--even as it chanced, the right

interpretation. Things that presently happened to him, came to him at

last credible, by virtue of this seclusion. When at length the moment of

his release arrived, it found him prepared.

Howard's bearing went far to deepen Graham's impression of his own

strange importance; the door between its opening and closing seemed to

admit with him a breath of momentous happening. His enquiries became

more definite and searching. Howard retreated through protests and

difficulties. The awakening was unforeseen, he repeated; it happened to

have fallen in with the trend of a social convulsion.

"To explain it 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 shall

do. In some way I am arbitrator--I might be arbitrator."

"It is not that. But you have--I may tell you this much--the automatic

increase of your property puts great possibilities of interference in

your hands. And in certain other ways you have influence, with your

eighteenth century notions."

"Nineteenth century," corrected Graham.

"With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every

feature 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 your

awakening. No one dreamt you would ever awake. The Council had

surrounded you with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact, we

thought that you were dead--a mere arrest of decay. And--but it is too

complex. We dare not suddenly--while you are still half awake."

"It won't do," said Graham. "Suppose it is as you say--why am I not

being crammed night and day with facts and warnings and all the wisdom

of the time to fit me for my responsibilities? Am I any wiser now than

two days ago, if it is two days, when I awoke?"

Howard pulled his lip.

"I am beginning to feel--every hour I feel more clearly--a sense of

complex concealment of which you are the salient point. Is this Council,

or committee, or whatever 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 who

have put me here. It will be ill. I am alive. Make no doubt of it, I

am alive. Every day my pulse is stronger and my mind clearer and more

vigorous. No more quiescence. I am a man come back to life. And I want

to _live_--"

"_Live!_"

Howard's face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in an

easy 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 anxious

that 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

the conversation of this additional person some vague inkling of

the struggle that 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," he

said, with a curious smile on his heavy face.

"Our social ideas," he said, "have a certain increased liberality,

perhaps, in comparison with your times. If a man wishes to relieve such

a tedium as this--by feminine society, for instance. We think it no

scandal. We have cleared our minds of formulae. There is in our city a

class, a necessary class, no longer despised--discreet--"

Graham stopped dead.

"It would pass the time," said Howard. "It is a thing I should

perhaps have 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 that

his imagination suddenly created dominated his 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 am concerned. 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 my life before I slept I had worked out

that pitiful question. I will not begin again. There is a city, a

multitude--. And meanwhile I am here like a rabbit in a bag."

His rage surged high. He choked for a moment and began to wave his

clenched fists. He gave way to an anger fit, he swore archaic curses.

His gestures had the quality of physical threats.

"I do not know who your party may be. I am in the dark, and you keep

me in the dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for no

good purpose. 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. He

stopped. 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.

It must 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

the nineteenth century was alone.

For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he

flung them down. "What a fool I have been!" he said, and gave way to

his anger again, stamping about the room and shouting curses. For a long

time he kept himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at his

own folly, at the knaves who had imprisoned him. He did this because

he did not want to look calmly at his position. He clung to his

anger--because he was afraid of Fear.

Presently he found himself reasoning with himself This imprisonment was

unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms--new legal forms--of the

time permitted it. It must, of course, be legal. These people were two

hundred years further on in the march of civilisation than the Victorian

generation. It was not likely they would be less--humane. Yet they

had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as well 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

for the most part logically valid, were quite unavailing. "Why should

anything be done to me?"

"If the worst comes to the worst," he found himself saying at last, "I

can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't they

ask me for it instead of cooping me up?"

He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council's possible

intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's behaviour,

sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mind

circled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither could

he escape into this vast, crowded world? He would be worse off than

a Saxon yeoman suddenly dropped into nineteenth century London. And

besides, how could 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 so

unaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough and yet curiously

insistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This also

a Council had said:

"It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people."

CHAPTER VIII. THE ROOF SPACES

As the fans in the circular aperture of the inner room rotated and

permitted glimpses of the night, dim sounds drifted in thereby. And

Graham, standing underneath, wrestling darkly with the unknown powers

that imprisoned him, and which he had now deliberately challenged, was

startled by the sound of a voice.

He peered up and saw in the intervals of the rotation, dark and dim,

the face and shoulders of a man regarding him. When a dark hand was

extended, the swift fan struck it, swung round and beat on with a little